In many domains, learners extract recurring units from continuous sequences. For example, in unknown languages, fluent speech is perceived as a continuous signal. Learners need to extract the underlying words from this continuous signal and then memorize them. One prominent candidate mechanism is statistical learning, whereby learners track how…

Bilingual students can take notes in their first language (L1) or their second language (L2). Higher note-taking quality, which might differ between the L1 and L2, has been associated with better memory of new content. In this study, we examined how language of note taking within bilinguals affects note quality and memory of new content. One…

Using advanced quantitative methods, this article demonstrates that cumulative exposure to the school language is the best language experience predictor of proficiency in that language (as indexed by sentence repetition, lexical semantic, and discourse semantic tasks) in a highly diverse group of 5- to 7-year-old bilingual children in monolingual…

The objective of this study was to explore the role played by phonological memory (PM) in the learning of new second language (L2) vocabulary presented in a narrated story. The proposal was that individuals with a strong PM would do better on this largely auditory task than those with poor PM capacity, since fewer visual/written cues could make…

Language-analytic ability, or the ability to treat language as an object of analysis and arrive at linguistic generalizations, is at the core of the constructs of language learning aptitude and metalinguistic awareness, which are implicated in our ability to learn explicitly. In the context of child second language (L2) learning, it has been…

Purpose: This study investigated within-language and between-language associations between phonological memory, vocabulary, and grammar in French-English (n = 43) and Spanish-English (n = 25) bilingual children at 30, 36, and 48 months. It was predicted that phonological memory would display both within-language and between-language relations to…

This study investigated the influence of cognitive ability on bilingual children's vocabulary development in both their languages. Sixty-nine bilingual immigrant children participated, with data collected at three annual intervals. At Time 1, the participants were 5 or 6 years old. Receptive vocabulary was tested in the minority (Turkish, Tarifit)…

This article reports a study examining whether foreign language (FL) word learning can be improved with reduction in cognitive load. Cognitive load theory has received substantial supports in various fields of learning but never in FL word learning. Due to the defined poverty in exposure to the FL, hence deprived cognitive pre-requisites for…

This state-of-the art paper focuses on the issue of linguistic giftedness, somewhat neglected in the second language acquisition (SLA) literature, attempting to reconceptualize, expand and update this concept in response to latest developments in the fields of psychology, linguistics and neurology. It first discusses contemporary perspectives on…

The present study investigated the use of vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs) by undergraduate Thai EFL students studying Vietnamese as their third language (L3) and examined if there is any relationship between the learners' strategy use and their success. A five-point Likert-scale questionnaire containing 39 items adapted from Schmitt's (1997)…

The contribution of phonological memory to syntactic abilities has been demonstrated in various populations, but its relationship to metasyntactic abilities, defined as the ability to control syntactic aspects of language, remains largely unexplored. This study therefore aims to examine the contribution of phonological memory in the completion of…

Previous studies show that second language (L2) learners with large phonological memory spans outperform learners with smaller memory spans on tests of L2 grammar. The current study investigated the relationship between phonological memory and L2 grammar in more detail than has been done earlier. Specifically, we asked how phonological memory…

The aim of this chapter, which is written from the perspective of psycholinguistic SLA research, is to establish a possible relationship between representations, processes and mechanisms of second language learning and knowledge as defined from within psycholinguistic SLA on the one hand, and the more behavioural performance outcomes such as…

This twin study examined the relative contributions of genes and environment on 2nd language reading acquisition of Chinese-speaking children learning English. We examined whether specific skills-visual word recognition, receptive vocabulary, phonological awareness, phonological memory, and speech discrimination-in the 1st and 2nd languages have…

Recasts are one type of corrective feedback that reformulates all or part of a learner's erroneous utterance during communicative interaction without changing the meaning. Categorized as implicit and input-providing corrective feedback, recasts have become the focus of debate in the area of interaction research in recent years. The debate…