The use of subordination enables language users to achieve syntactic efficiency by allowing them to connect ideas in temporal/logical relation. Although the importance of subordination has been recognized in previous research on second language (L2) writing, it has been typically assessed with global indices that measure overall ratio of…

Learner corpus research has expanded from focusing primarily on English as a second language (L2) to include languages such as L2 Spanish, reflecting the growing importance of corpus linguistics in second language acquisition (SLA) research. In this context, and because prompts are the means by which learner corpora gather their texts, it has…

This study examines the referential context effect on second-language relative clause ambiguity resolution by proficient L1 Chinese learners who learn English as a foreign language (EFL) and investigates whether the ambiguity resolution process is constrained by individuals' working memory capacity (WMC). It presents a self-paced reading study and…

This study investigated the relationship of a set of word-combination-based measures of phraseological diversity, sophistication, and complexity to second language (L2) Chinese proficiency and writing quality in comparison to that of a set of large-grained topic-comment-unit-based measures. Our dataset consisted of 101 assessed narratives produced…

In this study, we investigated the accuracy of first language (L1) and second language (L2) speakers' intuitive judgments of phrasal frequency and collocation strength, and examined the linguistic influences that give rise to these judgments. L1 and L2 speakers of English judged 180 adjective-noun collocations as (a) high frequency, medium…

Referential expressions (REs) have been investigated in L2 English but to date there is no single study that systematically and simultaneously analyzes the development and acquisition of the multiple factors that constrain the choice of REs in natural discourse production. We investigate L1 Spanish-L2 English learners across three proficiency…

Given the lack of computational tools available for assessing second language (L2) production in Korean, this study introduces a novel automated tool called the Korean Syntactic Complexity Analyzer (KOSCA) for measuring syntactic complexity in L2 Korean production. As an open-source graphic user interface (GUI) developed in Python, KOSCA provides…

In successful writing development, English as a foreign language (EFL) learners not only need to acquire grammatical complexity (GC) features but also know when and how to use them flexibly across communicative contexts, known as register flexibility. The present study, guided by the sociocultural theory of language learning, examines descriptive…

This study examined structural priming during online second language (L2) comprehension. In two self-paced reading experiments, 64 intermediate to advanced Chinese learners of English as a foreign language read coordinated noun phrases where the conjuncts had either the same structure or different structures. Experiment 1 showed that the second…

The aim of this study is to shed light on the learnability regarding usages of three English articles ("a," "the" and zero) among Chinese EFL learners. To this end, three tasks were administered in a pool of 107 participants to examine the extent to which learners can accurately use articles across different semantic contexts…

Implicit causality (IC) is a well-known phenomenon whereby certain verbs appear to create biases to remention either their subject or object in a causal dependent clause. This study investigated to what extent Korean learners of English made use of IC information for predictive processing at a discourse level, and whether L2 proficiency played a…

We investigate effects of prosodic cues on interpretation of ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses (RCs) in English by Spanish-speaking learners. English and Spanish differ in default preference for RC attachment: English has a weak low attachment (LA) preference (RC modifies NP2); Spanish has a stronger high attachment (HA) preference…

The language features of the second language (L2) English academic texts written by Indonesian graduate students enrolled in Hungarian higher education are employed in the present study. The study focuses on the level of abstraction and informational density in student assignments in particular. Seven high-stakes essays were collected from seven…

L3 acquisition is influenced by L1-L3 typology, learners' proficiency in those languages, and metalinguistic knowledge. However, the precise patterns of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in L3 acquisition are still unclear. This study aimed to examine how the abovementioned factors affect learners' sensitivity to subject placement in L3 Italian. We…

Appropriate use of cohesive devices is an important writing skill. Recently, there has been growing research on cohesiveness in ESL students' texts at university level. However, research into secondary school students' writing and learners' perceptions of cohesive devices has remained underexplored. This case study investigated the use of…