This article presents the process of constructing and validating a test of metalinguistic awareness (MLA) for young school children (age 8-10). The test was developed between 2021 and 2023 as part of the MetaLearn research project, financed by The Research Council of Norway. The research team defines MLA as using metalinguistic knowledge at a…

This study explored the effects of listening-based lexical focus-on-form (lexical FonF) on the acquisition and retention of morphologically complex words. One hundred eighty-two adult English learners with two levels of English proficiency (higher and lower proficiency) from a public university in mainland China were assigned to three different…

Language teachers cannot help their students develop high levels of metalinguistic knowledge and language aptitude if they themselves are found lacking in these abilities. This article reports on a study that utilised a descriptive correlational mixed-methods research design to gather data from 89 multilingual teachers of English, Chinese, French,…

The present study examined the relative effects of discourse-based and sentence-level grammar instruction on the learning of English present perfect in academic writing, using a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design. Participants were 37 multilingual graduate students enrolled in different sections of an ESL-writing course at a U.S.…

The present study investigated the effects of different types of form-focused instruction (FFI) on the acquisition of French grammatical gender attribution. A quasi-experimental study was conducted with 140 participants in six intact French as a second language (L2) classes. The classes received six 80-minute instructional sessions consisting of…

The present study explored the effect of task repetition with and without explicit instruction on EFL learners' (n = 26) explicit and implicit English regular past tense structure development. One group (REP) repeated the same task (n = 12) while another group (EI + REP) received explicit instruction between performances of the same task (n = 14).…

There is growing evidence that dyslexia may involve difficulty with implicit learning, which may hinder learners with dyslexia to acquire spelling skills in a foreign language through implicit instruction. Paradoxically, this is exactly how Dutch students with dyslexia learn English spelling at school. This research aims to determine if…

Although research about the effectiveness of second or foreign language collaborative writing for jointly written products has proliferated in the last few decades, there has been less examination of whether and how pre-task preparation could maximize the language learning opportunities that collaborative writing can afford learners. Informed by…

The study investigates to what extent English as a second language (ESL) learners develop explicit and automatised explicit knowledge of two target-forms (third person singular 's' and future conditional if-clause) after input and output based instruction and whether learning effects differ depending on the target forms. The study follows a…

Recent years have witnessed a strong and increasing interest in the incidental learning of second language grammar. While much of this research has focused on the acquisition of second language word order or noun-determiner systems, relatively fewer studies have examined the learning of second language morphology. Results of studies that have…

It is often asserted that UK school-leavers know less grammatical terminology than in earlier years. However, objective data on this supposed phenomenon are somewhat scarce. The study reported in this paper aimed to see whether and to what extent knowledge about language (KaL) has declined over three decades, and how this might relate to…

This study investigates ESL learners' semantic awareness of English words by attempting to estimate a threshold beyond which ESL learners can be said to have reached native-like semantic knowledge. The "Vocabulary Levels Test," originally designed by Nation (1990) and later revised and expanded by Schmitt (2000), was used to operationalise this…

The aims, content, and methods of language awareness in the German "Gymnasium" curriculum are presented and compared with other, especially English, models. Pupils' command of metalanguage is also reported, including results of a test to assess their level of language awareness and its relationship to linguistic competence. (29…

The paper focuses on the development of teacher thinking, specifically L2 teachers' subject-matter cognitions, i.e. their Teacher Language Awareness (TLA) (see e.g. Andrews 2001, 2003). The study examines the evolving TLA, as it relates to grammar, of three teachers, each a graduate with more than 10 years' experience of teaching English in Hong…