This article reports on the academic performance and experiences of non-native university students, specifically German students in a Dutch academic environment. These students have a substantial dropout rate. In an earlier study, we found correlations between results on language tests and study results. In this study, we used semi-structured…

This article investigates 2 questions: (1) does the presence of background noise lead to a differential increase in the number of simultaneously activated candidate words in native and nonnative listening? And (2) do individual differences in listeners' cognitive and linguistic abilities explain the differential effect of background noise on…

Although most second language learning studies involve high-educated participants, addressing low-educated participants seems important as research suggests that education background impacts second language (L2) learning efficiency. A controversial point in the L2 learning literature is the role of corrective feedback (CF). Research on CF in…

Although corrective feedback (CF) has received much interest in the second language acquisition literature, relatively little research has investigated the relationship between CF and learner affect in concrete practice situations. The present study investigates learners' affective states and practice behaviour in a novel context: oral grammar…

This article reports on an investigation of the challenges and benefits of university students taking a degree course in a language other than their mother tongue. Our study was conducted from the point of view of the non-native students themselves, and our primary concern was the role of language. We investigated the academic achievement of…

Speaking practice is important for learners of a second language. Computer assisted language learning (CALL) systems can provide attractive opportunities for speaking practice when combined with automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology. In this paper, we present a CALL system that offers spoken practice of word order, an important aspect of…

This article presents the results of experimental data on language production and comprehension. These show that adult learners of Dutch as an additional language, with different language backgrounds, and a L2 proficiency below level A2 (Waystage) of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR; Council of Europe, 2001), use…

Purpose: To establish whether the predictions of the extended optional infinitive (EOI) hypothesis (Rice, Wexler, & Cleave, 1995) hold for the language of Afrikaans-speaking children with specific language impairment (SLI) and whether tense marking is a possible clinical marker of SLI in Afrikaans. Method: Production of tense morphology was…

In this paper a series of studies of standard Dutch pronunciation in Belgium and the Netherlands is presented. The research is based on two speech corpora: a diachronic corpus of radio speech (1935-1995) and a synchronic corpus of Belgian and Netherlandic standard Dutch from different regions at the turn of the millennium. It is shown that two…

This study examines an interlanguage in which Moroccan learners of Dutch use non-thematic verbs in combination with thematic verbs that can be inflected as well. These non-thematic verbs are real dummy auxiliaries because they are deprived of semantic content and primarily have a syntactic function. Whereas in earlier second language (L2) research…

The results of two self-paced reading experiments are reported, which investigated the online processing of subject-object ambiguities in Dutch relative clause constructions like "Dat is de vrouw die de meisjes heeft/hebben gezien" by German advanced second language (L2) learners of Dutch. Native speakers of both Dutch and German have been shown…

The language development of two deaf girls and four deaf boys in Sign Language of the Netherlands (SLN) and spoken Dutch was investigated longitudinally. At the start, the mean age of the children was 3;5. All data were collected in video-recorded semistructured conversations between individual children and deaf and hearing adults. We investigated…