There has been increasing L3 research on L3 transfer selectivity, especially concerning which factor triggers crosslinguistic influence during L3 acquisition. According to Slabakova's (2016) Scalpel Model, every linguistic property has distinct and unique input factors regarding L3 acquisition such as high/low frequency or positive/negative input.…

If maximal exposure were the key to success in language learning, then adult learners at the university level would be doomed to fail. Not only are they presumably too old to learn additional languages effectively, but target language (TL) input appears to be insufficient, especially when other languages are allowed in class. Nevertheless,…

Chinese has a rich and diverse vocabulary of terms, especially verbs, expressing power relationships. This paper selected 25 power relationship terms from the Chinese Proficiency Scale for International Chinese Education, and used a true-false format to test the differences in acquisition between international students from Confucian cultural…

This research investigated the impact of processing instruction (PI) on the acquisition of the English third-person singular present tense by Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners and whether this effect would extend to the acquisition of other language components. This study featured the pretest-immediate-posttest design and…

In the English "tough" construction (TC), knowledge of "tough" movement is necessary for target performance (the object-interpretation only; e.g. "John is easy to see" e). The acquisition of the English TC raises a learnability problem for first-language (L1) Korean learners of English as a second language (L2): (1)…

This study investigated Thai EFL learners' acquisition of English dative constructions, i.e., Prepositional Dative (PD) and Double Object (DO) constructions employing Radford's (2004) Minimalist accounts as a framework and Acceptability Judgment as a task. Two hypotheses were formulated. Firstly, the English PD would be accepted more readily than…

The English past counterfactuality is difficult for non-native learners to learn and understand due to cross-language discrepancies. Oftentimes, individuals unavoidably develop the interlanguage and this language system becomes fossilized regardless of the amount of exposed time and input. The purpose of the study was twofold: (a) to examine 126…

Grammar competition has been proposed as a model for second language (L2) acquisition. Variational Learning provides a framework within which to investigate the idea of grammar competition as the model requires a marriage of quantitative properties of the input with Universal Grammar. A diachronic variational model of grammar competition is…

This study examines the extent to which extra-linguistic factors such as language dominance, order of acquisition and language of instruction are deterministic for multilingual transfer selection and subsequent development. We test two groups of Catalan-Spanish bilinguals acquiring English as an L3 in a controlled setting. We first examine…

This study examines the effect of enhanced input of lexical chunks on the performance of Arabic-speaking English learners' writings. Lexical chunks, containing their forms, meanings, and functions, stored and recovered as a single component in brains, may alleviate language processing problems and increase language proficiency. The research…

This article shows that first language (L1) transfer may not be effectively maintained in the interlanguage due to confounding factors in the second language (L2). When two factors, "A" and "B," are correlated in the L2, second language learners may only acquire "B," even if "A" is present in the L1.…

Reading-integrated writing is known as an effective approach to teaching and learning vocabulary as it allows students to transfer vocabulary from a source text to writing. This study examines whether vocabulary transfer from an input text to writing varies according to the two types of tasks: essay writing and synchronous text chat. One hundred…

The present study aims to investigate the role of L1 transfer effects on L2 sentence processing strategies during the interpretation of relative clause (RC) attachment ambiguities. The main body of the study is divided into two sections. The first section describes Experiment 1, which is designed to test the resolution of RC attachment ambiguities…

The present study compared the performance of two groups of second language learners processing three linguistic structures in Spanish. The linguistic targets were passives, object pronouns in O[subscript pro]VS sentences, and gender-cued null subjects in subordinate clauses. The primary differences between the two groups were language experience…

The aim of this study was twofold: first, to develop an experimental technique as a tool to investigate learning outcomes of spontaneous, naturalistic second language (L2) learning under controlled laboratory conditions; and second, to explore how this technique can be used to understand the basic conditions and limits of this learning. Two…