Purpose: The finite verb morphology composite (FVMC) is a valid measure for charting children's tense development and for differentiating children with and without language impairment during preschool and early elementary years. However, it is unclear whether FVMC scores vary as a function of language sample elicitation contexts. The current study…

This study investigated how input frequency (i.e., type frequency and token frequency) and proficiency levels enhanced the perception of English nominal suffixes by first language (L1) Thai learners. Based on the Usage-based Account (Tomasello, 2003), it was hypothesized that input frequency, i.e., token frequency (frequency of derived forms…

The present study investigated the second language processing of grammatical mood in Spanish. Eye-movement data from a group of advanced proficiency second language users revealed nativelike processing with irregular verb stimuli but not with regular verb stimuli. A comparison group of native speakers showed the expected effect with both types of…

The research on language acquisition and retention has primarily focused on monolinguals and bilinguals, with comparatively few studies including trilinguals. To address this gap, the current study compares the acquisition and retention of a novel morphosyntactic rule in Spanish in twelve monolinguals, twelve bilinguals, and twelve trilinguals.…

Grounded in the biopsychosocial models of expressive language in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and fragile X syndrome (FXS), this dissertation included two novel studies that examined the role of biological (i.e., physiology), psychological (i.e., autistic traits, anxiety symptoms, and child affect) and social (i.e., communication partner…

This study investigates the effectiveness of a computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) system on second language learners' acquisition of three grammatical features. It presents a CAPT system on top of a phoneme-based, fine-tuned speech recognition model, and is intended to deliver explicit, corrective feedback on the pronunciation of the…

The paper presents the results of a quasi-experimental study which was conducted with a view to determining the effect of an intervention in the form of the application of teacher-designed Internet-based resources (i.e., websites, podcasts, movie clips) that students could use autonomously on the development of pronunciation of the English regular…

This study examines the learning patterns of intermediate and advanced Korean learners in the acquisition of causative expressions according to their proficiency and the causative sentence type. We measured their grammatical knowledge using three types of grammaticality judgment tasks (GJTs) and self-paced reading tasks (SPRTs) differing in time…

This study investigated the interactions among different cognitive abilities, linguistic structures, and the efficacy of different corrective feedback (CF) types. The cognitive abilities examined were declarative and procedural memory. The target linguistic structures were English regular and irregular past tense forms. In terms of the…

This mixed methods study draws upon theoretical perspectives from usage-based linguistics (UBL) and variationist sociolinguistics to explore four learners' use of second language (L2) Spanish present tense indicative verbal inflectional morphology (i.e., simple present conjugations). The study compares the frequency and distribution of students'…

Previous studies show that infants store functional morphemes for inferring syntactic categories of adjacent words, and they generally perform better with nouns than with verbs. In this study, we tested whether toddlers can exploit phrasal groupings for syntactic categorization in the face of noisy co-occurrence patterns. Using a visual fixation…

The present study examined the relative effects of discourse-based and sentence-level grammar instruction on the learning of English present perfect in academic writing, using a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design. Participants were 37 multilingual graduate students enrolled in different sections of an ESL-writing course at a U.S.…

This study is a replication and extension of Morgan-Short et al.'s (2018) investigation into the role of attention in input processing by L1-Polish learners of L2-Spanish, with proficiency and language of assessment explored as two key methodological factors. Our aims were twofold: to investigate learners' comprehension in different conditions…

Regardless of the brain's limited storage capacity, teachers must exercise caution and vigilance in the classroom to prevent overwhelming students with excessive information, as this can impede their learning ability. This study aims to compare the effectiveness of traditional PowerPoint slides and Assertion-Evidence designs in improving…

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…