This paper investigated how production task combined with teacher feedback (in the form of recasts) affects child second language development, and the effects of task complexity on their production performance. 92 child learners of English in three intact classes were assigned to three tasks of different complexity (simple, +complex, ++complex).…

This study explored the effects of learning activities which encouraged positive crosslinguistic influence from L2 Spanish to L1 English grammar in young learners. The learners (N = 82) were studying Spanish as their compulsory foreign language at an English state primary school in the UK. As part of ten timetabled Spanish classes over a period of…

When linguistic input contains inconsistent use of grammatical forms, children produce these forms more consistently, a process called "regularization." Deaf children learning American Sign Language from parents who are non-native users of the language regularize their parents' inconsistent usages. In studies of artificial languages…

Traditional L1 grammar teaching focuses on students' learning the correct grammar rules rather than learning how to deal with grammatical issues in real life. This is mainly due to the fact that traditional grammar education suggests that language consists of sentences which are well-formed according to a fixed prescriptive norm. However, language…

Purpose: The aims of this study were to investigate the occurrence of stuttering behavior across time and to evaluate the relationship between stuttering behavior and language ability in children with Down syndrome. Method: A national age cohort of Norwegian first graders with Down syndrome (N = 75) participated in the study. Speech samples from a…

This paper presents an experimental study of the rarely explored question of how input through instruction interacts with L2 acquisition at the level of modular linguistic knowledge. The investigation focuses on L2 knowledge of the English polarity item "any," whose properties are only partially covered by typical language-teaching…

Purpose: This study aims to examine the associations of phonological, lexical, and grammatical skills within and between languages in Mandarin-English bilingual preschoolers. Method: Sixty-three Singaporean Mandarin-English bilingual children aged 3-5 years were assessed for articulation, receptive vocabulary, and receptive grammar using…

Bilingualism is associated with lifelong cognitive benefits that correlate with facilitated achievements in subsequent language learning. Second language (L2) instruction as well can promote the development of cognitive abilities involved in language learning, and among these, L2 input processing. Crucial to L2 acquisition, input processing is the…

Language-analytic ability, or the ability to treat language as an object of analysis and arrive at linguistic generalizations, is at the core of the constructs of language learning aptitude and metalinguistic awareness, which are implicated in our ability to learn explicitly. In the context of child second language (L2) learning, it has been…

The present study aimed at investigating whether L2 learning affects phonological short-term and working memory and first language (L1) development. The performance of a group of 31 4- to-5-year-old sequential bilinguals attending an International School on tasks assessing phonological short-term and working memory and linguistic performance in L1…

Writing skills are one of the determining factors for law students' success, but it is their biggest problem. This problem stems from the lack of grammar mastery and learning barriers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, this study aims to describe cognitive strategies for law students in writing opinion texts during the COVID-19 pandemic and…

Purpose: This study investigates the heritability of language, speech, and nonverbal cognitive development of twins at 4 and 6 years of age. Possible confounding effects of twinning and zygosity, evident at 2 years, were investigated among other possible predictors of outcomes. Method: The population-based twin sample included 627 twin pairs and 1…

This paper describes the development of preschool literacy education in Slovakia, beginning with the communist era, when the country was isolated from broader international academic discourse and early literacy research, then the period after the fall of the totalitarian regime up to the present day. It describes how the traditional approach to…

The aim of the current study is to determine what language activities Norwegian preschool children took part in, and to examine whether these language activities predict children's language comprehension. We tested children (n = 134) with language measures at age 4/5 and age 5/6 and interviewed their teachers (n = 71) about the kinds of language…

To examine whether children's acquisition of perspective-marking language supports development in their ability to reason about mental states, we conducted a longitudinal study testing whether proficiency with complement clauses around age 3 explained variance in false-belief reasoning 6 months later. Forty-five English-speaking 2- and 3-year-olds…