Dynamic assessment has been proven to effectively promote EFL learners' speaking proficiency, but its implementation in teaching speaking skills has been limited. One of the main reasons is that, thus far, very few studies have scrutinized the impacts of its two main models, interactionist and interventionist, on the speaking sub-skills of EFL…

Based on theories on vocabulary knowledge, grammar knowledge, and reading comprehension subcomponents, ten attributes/subskills were defined for 50 items from relevant subtests of TEM4 (Band Four of Test for English Majors in China). Cognitive diagnosis was conducted on the TEM4 data of the randomly sampled 2285 examinees (roughly at the B2 level)…

Despite the numerous endeavours made to develop questionnaires to assess learners' strategic behaviour in general and learning/use strategies across different language areas and skills, one can surprisingly find no inventories to address learners' grammar learning /use strategies. This study aims to validate a measure of additional language…

A new technique to teach language grammar is proposed. It consists of the blending of two previously existing techniques--VanPatten's (1996) Processing Instruction (PI) and Adair-Hauck and Donato's (2002) Presentation, Attention, Co-construct, and Extension (PACE) Model. The result is the S-PACE Model, which incorporates the whole-language…

This text critically examines traditional methodologies for teaching grammar in the context of Portuguese as a Foreign Language (PFL). It proposes an alternative, eclectic approach, which can be used in any foreign language. Drawing on evidence from research and pedagogical practices, it highlights areas for improvement in current approaches, such…

This provocative article raises many important issues that need to be addressed and in so doing will advance the fields of second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition in several important ways. Fundamental questions concerning multilingual development persist especially with respect to the role of Universal Grammar in this language…

Adult second language learners arrive at the language learning situation with an already formed first language grammar system in place. The study of cross-language similarity across the first and second languages explores how the similarities and differences in the two languages make learning more or less difficult, particularly for adult…

This study investigates the function and morphosyntax of English Embedded Language (EL) islands in Pashto-English bilingual data, using the Matrix Language Frame model to explore the role of the two languages in codeswitching and the pragmatic force behind the selection of EL islands. A dataset of 14 hours was collected from AVT Khyber, a YouTube…

In her keynote article advocating the Linguistic Proximity Model for third language (L3) acquisition, Westergaard (2021) presents several arguments against 'copying and restructuring' in nonnative language acquisition, mechanisms central to Schwartz and Sprouse's (1996) Full Transfer/Full Access model of second language (L2) acquisition. In this…

This commentary discusses the recent keynote article in "Second Language Research" by Westergaard (2021), which extends the Micro-cue Model to second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition. The commentary comments on such questions as: What makes a given property easy or hard to acquire? How do learners determine similarity?…

The current study compared the model fit indices, skill mastery probabilities, and classification accuracy of six Diagnostic Classification Models (DCMs): a general model (G-DINA) against five specific models (LLM, RRUM, ACDM, DINA, and DINO). To do so, the response data to the grammar and vocabulary sections of a General English Achievement Test,…

In this commentary, I suggest that it may be helpful to think about the formidable problem space that Westergaard's (2021) Linguistic Proximity Model seeks to address at the three levels of analysis that Marr (1982) famously proposed are needed to understand any complex cognitive system. I argue that at the computational level of analysis, where…

Strong correlations between vocabulary and grammar are well attested in language development in monolingual and bilingual children. What is less clear is whether there is any directionality in the relationship between the two constructs, whether it is predictive over time, and the extent to which it is affected by language input. In the present…

This study used eye-tracking to examine changes in how second language (L2) learners process target grammatical exemplars in written L2 input in implicit and explicit instructional conditions and how these changes relate to learning gains. In three separate sessions, 77 L2 learners of English read a story containing seven examples of a grammatical…

This dissertation investigates how bilinguals use their two grammars to comprehend written intra-sentential codeswitches. I focus on adjective/noun constructions in Spanish and English where I manipulate the congruence of grammatical word order in the two languages across the codeswitch boundary. This allows me to test three codeswitching…