This paper puts forward a research agenda in the area of explicit and implicit knowledge and learning of second or additional languages. Based on a brief overview of reliable findings as well as open questions in the field, three agenda items are highlighted. First, valid and reliable measures of explicit and, in particular, implicit knowledge and…

A wide range of English for academic purposes (EAP) programs are offered in British Columbia and across Canada. Understanding the advantages and disadvantages of an English for general academic purposes (EGAP) approach can provide important insights into how students might most benefit from their EAP program experiences. The insights in this…

From a complex dynamic systems (CDST) perspective, language is understood as a dynamic system comprised of subsystems that change and develop over time in response to learner-internal and -external factors (Verspoor et al., 2008). Accordingly, language development is seen as a process responsive to the dynamic interaction between the learner and…

Memory is inherently context-dependent: internal and environmental cues become bound to learnt information, and the later absence of these cues can impair recall. Here, we developed an approach to leverage context-dependence to optimise learning of challenging, interference-prone material. While navigating through desktop virtual reality (VR)…

English Medium Instruction (EMI) has been defined as 'the use of the English language to teach academic subjects (other than English itself) in countries or jurisdictions where the first language (L1) of the majority of the population is not English' (Macaro, 2018, p. 19). This definition has proved to be controversial but has underpinned the work…

This study examines the referential context effect on second-language relative clause ambiguity resolution by proficient L1 Chinese learners who learn English as a foreign language (EFL) and investigates whether the ambiguity resolution process is constrained by individuals' working memory capacity (WMC). It presents a self-paced reading study and…

Contemporary pedagogical experts have stressed the importance of context in education as a critical determinant of the success of learning outcomes. These recent arguments stem from earlier scholars who claimed that the context of education is often taken for granted, although its influence on teaching and learning is crucial. Perhaps the main…

Research in educational program administration provides insights into the operationalization of programs or organizational services; however, an area of research that is long due exploration and development is how English language programs (ELPs) differ in terms of planning, organization and services and the job English language program…

Besides explicit inference of word meanings, associating words with diverse contexts may be a key mechanism underlying vocabulary learning through reading. Drawing from distributional semantic theory, we developed a text modification method called reflash to facilitate both word-context association and explicit inference. Using a set of left and…

This paper considers the issue of the norm in the context of learner corpus research and its implications for foreign language teaching. It seeks to answer three main questions: Does learner corpus research require a native norm? What corpus-derived norms are available and how do we choose? What do we do with these norms in the classroom? The…

Our preferences and evaluations are often affected by contextual factors. One unavoidable context is language. We used an evaluative conditioning (EC) paradigm (pairing neutral stimuli with emotional or neutral stimuli) to investigate whether our evaluations are equally conditioned in a first (L1) and a second language (L2). An EC effect was…

This research delves into the washback effects of the Hong Kong Diploma of Education Examination (HKDSE) on the learning strategies employed by secondary school students in Hong Kong. By surveying 50 students to assess their English learning strategy profiles, this study seeks to identify potential biases in strategy selection indicative of…

Academic literacy development is shaped by multiple individual and contextual factors that mutually interact with one another. Previous studies have identified some of the factors, but few explored their complex and dynamic interactions in students' writing practices. The study adopts a case study method to examine EFL learners' academic literacy…

Information from television, the internet, and digital media surrounds us. Multimedia links us to other languages and cultures. Multimedia provides several benefits for foreign language learning. The goal of this research was to see how semi-contextualized television programs and subtitled TV shows help vocabulary retention during language…

The use of discourse markers, like that of any other linguistic element, is dependent on contextual factors that interact at the specific moment of an enunciation. The utterers, with the need to adjust their language product to their communicative intentions, perform an analysis of the contextual, material, and relational factors involved,…