When acquiring a second language, learners must become able to perceive the difference between novel sounds ("discrimination") and also associate strings of sounds with distinct vocabulary items ("lexical encoding"). Recent research has questioned whether discrimination is a sufficient or necessary condition for encoding, and…

Researchers commonly estimate the prevalence of nativelikeness among second-language learners by assessing how many of them perform similarly to a sample of native speakers on one or several linguistic tasks. Even when the native (L1) samples and second-language (L2) samples are comparable in terms of age, socio-economic status, educational…

Previous research on pronunciation errors observed that the most frequently mispronounced English phonemes are word-initial consonants. The findings of the current study invalidate those observations by presenting the data analysis of 40 Turkish EFL learners' speech samples, which illustrates that segmental speech errors are position-independent…

This paper investigates the various roles found in the EFL classroom, such as native English-speaking teachers, learners' parents, and study habits outside of the classroom. During the study, the development of learners' reading comprehension, vocabulary, and writing ability was measured over the course of one semester in a weekly 2-hour English…

We investigated typical errors made by Mandarin-speaking children when measured by the Preschool Language Scales-fifth edition, Screening Test (PLS-5 Screening Test). The intention was to provide preliminary data for the development of a guideline for early childhood educators and psychologists who use the test with Mandarin-speaking children.…

This case study analyzed data from an asynchronous written mediated exchange between a native speaker and nonnative speaker of English. Three methods of analysis-error analysis, propositional complexity (idea units), and qualitative analysis were used to analyze learner performance over time. The results from these methods were visualized and…

This study investigated common spelling errors among first language English speakers who study Arabic at the college level. A sample of 63 students (45 males and 18 females) was asked to write texts about a variety of topics and then to answer survey questions regarding their perceptions and strategies. Their writing produced 457 spelling errors,…

Formulaic sequences are found to be processed faster than their matched novel phrases in previous studies. Given the variety of formulaic types, few studies have compared processing on different types of formulaic sequences. The present study explored the processing among idioms, speech formulae and written formulae. It has been found that in…

This paper attempts to demonstrate the differences in writing between International English Language Testing System (IELTS) bands 6.0, 6.5 and 7.0. An analysis of exemplars provided from the IELTS test makers reveals that IELTS 6.0, 6.5 and 7.0 writers can make a minimum of 206 errors, 96 errors and 35 errors per 1000 words. The following section…

According to recent studies, there is a persistence of adverb placement errors in the written productions of francophone learners and users of English at an intermediate to advanced level. In this paper, we present strategies for the automatic detection and correction of errors in the placement of manner adverbs, using linguistic-based natural…

This article investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of two expressions of the semantic feature [definite] in Russian, a language without articles, by English and Korean native speakers. Within the Feature Reassembly approach (Lardiere, 2009), Slabakova (2009) has argued that reassembling features that are represented overtly in the…

In an attempt to contribute to existing research on Generation 1.5 students, the current study uses quantitative and qualitative methods to compare error patterns in a corpus of Generation 1.5, L1, and L2 community college student writing. This error analysis provides one important way to determine if error patterns in Generation 1.5 student…

Previous evidence shows that nouns are easier for many language users to retrieve than verbs, but scant research has been conducted with children in bilectal environments (where both standard and non-standard forms of a language are spoken). This study investigates object and action naming in children who are native speakers of a non-standard…

Bilingual children are frequently misdiagnosed as having Specific Language Impairment (SLI). Misdiagnosis may be minimized by tests with high degrees of sensitivity and specificity. The current study used a new test, the School-Age Sentence Imitation Test-English 32 (SASIT-E32), to investigate sentence repetition in monolingual and bilingual…

This study investigated sentence-processing strategies adopted by advanced nonnative speakers (NNSs) and native speakers (NSs) of English in the context of an English structure with which NNSs reportedly have an acquisition difficulty (e.g., Swan & Smith, 2001)--namely, modal perfect (MP). Participants read MP sentences such as "He could have…