Exploring the underinvestigated area of instruction during study abroad, this article offers a quantitative study of linguistic development among second language university learners of Chinese during a semester in China. A comparison is made between learners following task-based language teaching and a comparison group following a traditional…

The present study administered six test instruments to 13- to 14-year-old learners of English in Austria and Sweden (N = 213), countries offering settings with more explicit and implicit learning environments, respectively. Confirmatory Factor Analyses for Austria yielded a factor comprising timed grammaticality judgment tests, an oral narrative…

The current study investigated the effects of repetition on the learning of second language (L2) spoken word forms. Japanese university students learning L2 English were randomly assigned to one of three treatment conditions (one, three, and six exposures) and learned 40 words while hearing them and viewing their corresponding pictures. A…

This investigation aimed to provide insights into the controversial debate on the role that age at onset of bilingualism plays in human language capacity with a focus on what it entails for first language (L1) attrition. L1 performance of Turkish immigrants (n = 57) in the United Kingdom with age at onset ranging between 7 and 34 years was…

This study investigated how bilinguals' perception of their first language (L1) differs according to age of reduced contact with L1 after immersion in a second language (L2). Twenty-one L1 Korean-L2 English bilinguals in the United States, ranging in age of reduced contact from 3 to 15 years, and 17 control participants in Korea were tested…

To date, linguistic alignment studies in second language acquisition have mainly been conducted during face-to-face (FTF) interactions. In the current study, we examined and compared the effect of structural alignment on the development of English direct and indirect questions in FTF and synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) contexts.…

This quasi-experimental study examined the potential benefits of zero-error dictation, a teaching technique based on dialogue-driven dictation, and the extent to which target linguistic features and proficiency levels mediated its effects on second language (L2) learners' accurate use of French grammatical morphology. Seventy-nine learners of L2…

We report on an analysis of spontaneous gesture production in 2-year-old children who come from three countries (Italy, United Kingdom, Australia) and who speak two languages (Italian, English), in an attempt to tease apart the influence of language and culture when comparing children from different cultural and linguistic environments.…

This study compared receptive English grammar skills of two groups of 7- and 9-year-old Danish children at the beginning of second language (L2) instruction in English, and two groups of Spanish/Catalan children of the same age after several years of instruction. The study examined the influence of two language-related factors (receptive…

Adequately responding to linguistic diversity in the classroom is imperative in European school contexts, not least because of current migratory movements. This article presents the results of an intervention study with primary school English-foreign-language learners in Germany (N = 42, M[subscript age] = 8.70 years) from linguistically diverse…

This study investigated how standard and substandard varieties of first language (L1) Dutch affect grammatical gender assignments to nouns in second language (L2) German. While German distinguishes between masculine, feminine, and neuter gender, the masculine--feminine distinction has nearly disappeared in Standard Dutch. Many substandard Belgian…

This study examined the progress in lexical and grammatical knowledge among 252 learners of French in England across the last two years of primary education and into the first year of secondary school in relation to teaching and teacher factors. It compared linguistic outcomes from two different approaches, one which emphasized oracy and the other…

We present the case study of MB--a bilingual child with Down syndrome (DS) who speaks Russian (first language [L1]) and English (second language [L2]) and has learned to read in two different alphabets with different symbol systems. We demonstrate that, in terms of oral language, MB is as proficient in Russian as English, with a mild advantage for…

This study examined the motivation to learn English of Indonesian junior high school pupils, 13-14 years of age, in three distinct contexts: a metropolitan city, a provincial town, and a rural district. Utilizing Dornyei's second language (L2) Motivational Self System as the theoretical framework, this study employed a 50-item questionnaire to…

We investigated the scoring of the Speaking section of the Test of English as a Foreign Language[TM] Internet-based (TOEFL iBT[R]) test by speakers of English and one or more Indian languages. We explored the extent to which raters from India, after being trained and certified, were able to score the TOEFL examinees with mixed first languages…