As speakers interact, they add references to their common ground, which they can then reuse to facilitate listener comprehension. However, all references are not equally likely to be reused. The purpose of this study was to shed light on how the speakers' conceptualizations of the referents under discussion affect reuse (along with a generation…

Young children often provide ambiguous referential statements. Thus, the ability to identify when miscommunication has occurred and subsequently repair messages is an essential component of communicative development. The present study examined the impact of listener feedback and children's executive functioning in influencing children's ability to…

This study examined the relationship between targeted pronunciation instruction in French as a second language (L2) and listener-based ratings of accent, comprehensibility, and fluency. The ratings by 20 French listeners evaluating the speech of 30 adult L2 French learners enrolled in a 15-week listening and speaking course targeting segments,…

In 4 experiments we showed that picture naming latencies are affected by beliefs about the task concurrently performed by another speaker. Participants took longer to name pictures when they believed that their partner concurrently named pictures than when they believed their partner was silent (Experiments 1 and 4) or concurrently categorized the…

This article reports on a study on the effect of orthography on L1-based phonological transfer in L2 production in 40 novice English-speaking learners of Spanish. In particular, the role of auditory-orthographic training and production and the influence of grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences are examined. Data elicited via a picture-naming task…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of first language thinking-for-speaking patterns on the acquisition of Greek as a second language (L2), as well as to determine whether proficiency level and stays in the target-language country have an effect on such influence. The participants (N = 50) were Spanish/Catalan learners of…

Children have served as research subjects in several surveys on attitudes to insects and invertebrates. Most of the studies have used quantitative scoring methods to draw conclusions. This paper takes a different approach as it analyzes children's free-text comments to gain an understanding of their viewpoints. A total of 246 children aged 9-13…

Previous word learning studies suggest that children with autism spectrum disorder may have difficulty understanding pictorial symbols. Here we investigate the ability of children with autism spectrum disorder and language-matched typically developing children to contextualize symbolic information communicated by pictures in a search task that did…

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between explicit and implicit forms of Theory of Mind reasoning and to test the influence of experience on implicit Theory of Mind reasoning in individuals with autism spectrum disorders and in neurotypical adults. Results from two standard explicit Theory of Mind tasks are mixed: Individuals with…

The purpose of this study is to explore language teachers' perspectives on Iranian third grade senior high school EFL textbook, which is prescribed by the Ministry of Education. In data collection and analysis, the researchers used theoretical sampling and the coding schemes presented in grounded theory. Final analysis yielded "Negative…

Using a picture pointing task, this study examines toddlers' processing of phonological alternations that trigger sound changes in connected speech. Three experiments investigate whether 2;5- to 3-year-old children take into account assimilations--processes by which phonological features of one sound spread to adjacent sounds--for the purpose of…

This study introduces photomontage as a task to facilitate talking in English as a Foreign Language classrooms. Thirty-three undergraduate English major students studying at the University of Guilan were assigned to design a composite photographic image by combining images from separate photographic sources, and use it as the stimulus to initiate…

So far, the comprehension and production language modes have typically been studied separately in generative second language acquisition research, with the focus shifting from one to the other. This article revisits the asymmetric relationship between comprehension and production by examining the second language (L2) acquisition of the noun phrase…

This study surveyed the problems 213 university students confronted while viewing an online video-based English program. Data were collected through self-reports and one-to-one interviews. The content analysis approach was used. Totally, 18 problems were identified and categorized into three cognitive-processing stages: perception, parsing, and…

Along with language teaching purposes, coursebooks also convey different kinds of cultural and social messages through both written texts and visualization. Therefore, studying coursebooks in terms of such qualities is necessary in foreign language education. In the learning process, visualization plays a pivotal role since visuals cater for…