Affordance refers to the opportunity available to a learning activity. Taking affordance as a theoretical and analytical construct, this exploratory study investigates learners' attitudes and the opportunities WeChat may provide for Chinese cultural knowledge (CCK) learning. The aim is to find out the potential new affordances and compare learners…

The present study investigates the multiple constraints on the processing of English dative alternation by Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. The intermediate and advanced learners completed an acceptability judgment task which was composed of 30 dative alternations selected from a spoken corpus. The results showed that the…

A writer's L1 is generally believed to influence their L2 English writing significantly. However, the extent to which L1 backgrounds influence Asian learners' L2 English writing has not been wholly elucidated due to the lack of data covering various learners in Asia. Therefore, this study analysed more than one-million-word essays written by 2,318…

Scholars have argued for the inclusion of different spoken varieties of English in high-stakes listening tests to better represent the global use of English. However, doing so may introduce additional construct-irrelevant variance due to accent familiarity and the shared first language (L1) advantage, which could threaten test fairness. However,…

Translanguaging and trans-semiotizing research has problematized the static view of language and argued that meaning making is a dynamic, material, social, and historical process across multiple timescales in complex eco-social systems. The second author proposed the concept of trans-semiotizing as an alternative lens to study language teaching…

This article investigates the effect of different accents on high- and low-proficiency second language (L2) learners. It begins with testing the English listening proficiency of Chinese students and then compares the influence of three accented English (a British accent, an Australian accent and an Indian accent) on their listening scores.…

The present study aims to investigate the effects of gloss use, L2-gloss frequency and learner proficiency on incidental L2 lexical acquisition. A total of 163 university students in China were assigned to one of the three reading conditions: no gloss (NG), higher frequency L2 gloss (HFLG) and lower frequency L2 gloss (LFLG). The participants read…