Phonotactic patterns are generalizations that govern the order of consonants and vowels, within words and syllables. Certain second-order phonotactic patterns--those that relate multiple sounds within a syllable, such as "if the vowel is [near-close near-front unrounded vowel], then [s] can only appear at the end of the…

Adult learners know that language is for communicating and that there are patterns in the language that need to be learned. This affects the way they engage with language input; they search for form-meaning linkages, and this effortful engagement could interfere with their learning, especially for things like grammatical gender that often have at…

This study examined use of connectors in oral narratives of 27 adult American learners of French, classified into four groups according to length of instruction and learning environment (classroom, immersion, mixed). Results show patterns of acquisition generally similar to those of children learning French as a native language and…

Comparison of normal-speaking (N=20) and misarticulating (N=20) four- to six-year-olds and adults (N=16) revealed that adults were significantly more accurate in detecting mispronunciations than either group of children, while performance between the two groups of children was similar. Words that children found most difficult were also those on…

This article discusses second language vocabulary learning strategies and includes an analysis and classification of possible strategies and the report of a study conducted among second language learners in Japan. Research on vocabulary learning strategies is synthesized into two lists of strategies: 14 methods for initial learning of a new word's…

A study investigated whether adult learners of a second language would judge grammaticality differently in visual and aural judgment tasks. Four groups were tested: English first-language, French first-language, English second-language, and French second-language. Results indicate judgments were slower and less accurate in the aural condition,…

A case study of second language development in a college student focused on comparative changes in the development of oral and written skills over a period of two years. The subject was a Russian student of English as a second language who had recently arrived in the United States. Errors and syntactic maturity were analyzed in writing samples…