Bilingual children often lag behind monolinguals on standardized measures of language acquisition, such as vocabulary tests. This bilingual lag could be related bilinguals' lesser experience with the target language relative to monolinguals. In this study, we predicted that sequential Mandarin-English bilinguals would perform worse than same-aged…

This study investigates the effects of three word-focused exercise conditions on vocabulary learning. The exercises were developed based on the involvement load hypothesis. This study also explores how individual differences (e.g. second-language English proficiency level and working memory) affect vocabulary learning outcomes. A total of 180…

Some listeners exhibit higher sensitivity to subphonemic acoustic differences (i.e., higher speech gradiency). Here, we asked whether higher gradiency in a listener's first language (L1) facilitates foreign language learning and explored the possible sources of individual differences in L1 gradiency. To address these questions, we tested 164…

The present study investigates the time course of acoustic cue integration in the processing of the Korean three-way laryngeal stop contrast by native Korean listeners and English second language (L2) learners of Korean. As such, this study seeks to understand how native listeners and L2 learners weight and integrate fine-grained acoustic…

The present study investigates the effect of task repetition and individual differences on Vietnamese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' lexical use and fluency in oral task performance. The study adopts a within-subjects design with forty students performing the same narrative task twice. Students also completed two prior vocabulary…

It is unknown whether and to what extent cognitive individual differences may play different roles in paper versus computer-based second language (L2) writing. This exploratory study is a first attempt to explore this issue, focusing on the effects of working memory and language aptitude on the quality of paper versus computer-based L2 writing…

Test-taker characteristics (TTCs), or individual difference variables, are known to be a systematic source of variance in language test performance. Although previous research has documented the impact of a range of TTCs on second language (L2) learners' test performance, few of these studies have involved young learners. Given that young L2…

Referential expressions such as pronouns are frequently used in conversations, and native speakers seem to understand who these expressions refer to effortlessly. Although the process of pronoun resolution seems to be easy, interpretations of pronouns are dependent on various sources of information from the discourse including morphosyntax (e.g.,…

Second language (L2) writing has been determined to be influenced by what is read, with language learners tending to borrow words and short phrases from input texts while writing (e.g., Wang & Wang, 2015). This phenomenon is referred to as lexical alignment. Only one empirical study has investigated the influence that the linguistic complexity…

Two studies examined the role of input distribution in English construction learning, by child learners from a Mandarin first-language background, and the extent to which phonological short-term memory and awareness predicted such learning. In the first study, 4th-grade students of Mandarin Chinese (N = 121) learned the English object-cleft…

The research on interpreting aptitude has focused on the abilities, skills and personal traits of individuals in order to predict their future interpreting performance. However, an important variable between the personal characteristics and success of trainee interpreters in interpreter training, which is instructional practices, is overlooked.…

The purpose of this study was to find out, whether three methods of presenting input, were effective in relation to language aptitude. Persian-speaking learners of English were provided with 20 grammatical collocations (verb-preposition collocations) embedded in authentic passages, lexically/grammatically elaborated passages, and…

This study investigated whether recasts provided during communicative interaction may improve Korean EFL learners' accuracy with regard to regular and irregular English past tense forms, and whether individual differences in working memory capacity may intervene in the effects of recasts. To this end, forty-two Korean university students were…

According to some accounts, the bilingual advantage is most pronounced in the domain of executive attention rather than inhibition and should therefore be more easily detected in conflict adaptation paradigms than in simple interference paradigms. We tested this idea using two conflict adaptation paradigms, one that elicits a list-wide…

The main purpose of the current study was to examine the role of vocabulary knowledge (VK) and syntactic knowledge (SK) in L2 listening comprehension, as well as their relative significance. Unlike previous studies, the current project employed assessment tasks to measure aural and proceduralized VK and SK. In terms of VK, to avoid…