While previous research has demonstrated the beneficial role of pop music in foreign language learning, there is a lack of studies exploring the potential impact of Chinese folk songs on Mandarin language acquisition. This study aimed to investigate whether a curriculum based on Chinese folk songs enhances the outcomes of Mandarin Chinese learning…

The study aimed to explore the evidence of first language (L1) mediation in second language (L2) word associations and the L2 learner-related factors affecting the extent of L1 mediation with the following approaches. First, different from previous research, word association tests (WATs) embraced both receptive and productive word associations in…

This study examined second language (L2) learning difficulty of 13 Chinese grammatical constructions on the basis of teachers' perceptions and associated the L2 learning difficulty of Chinese grammatical constructions with teacher-perceived learner grammatical competence and with the instructional levels. A total of 77 experienced teachers were…

Second language (L2) research on input manipulation has focused mainly on increasing the salience of target structures, but presentation formats of L2 input can be another important aspect for manipulation. This study compared the horizontal, vertical, and adjacent formats for presenting the characters, pinyin, and English meaning of L2 Chinese…

Frequency and proficiency have been found to play an important role in second language (L2) phrasal processing. However, existing research has largely focused on English and other European languages, with other commonly used languages, such as Chinese, being largely disregarded. To fill this gap, we carried out two experiments to investigate how…

In order to address the needs of the continually growing number of Chinese language learners, the present study developed and presented initial validation of a 100-item Chinese vocabulary proficiency test (CVPT) for learners of Chinese as a second/foreign language (CS/FL) using Item Response Theory among 170 CS/FL learners from Indonesia and 354…

There is a prevailing belief that second language (L2) textbooks should strive for authenticity, aiming to accurately and reliably represent natural language use. However, assessing the authenticity of language textbooks is not a straightforward task, as it requires both a comparison between instructional texts and real-world language use and a…

The present study investigates bilinguals' capacity to rapidly establish memory traces for novel word forms in a second language (L2), as a function of L2 linguistic proficiency. A group of Chinese-English bilinguals with various English proficiency levels were presented with a reading-aloud task, consisting of 16 pseudowords and 16 English words…

The present study explored the processing units of high-proficiency second language (L2) Chinese learners in on-line reading in an eye-tracking experiment. The critical aim was to investigate how learners segment continuous characters into words without the aid of word boundary demarcations. Based on previous studies, the embedded words of 2- and…

Acquisition of the perfective marker "-le" in Mandarin Chinese is a daunting task for second language learners. To date, there has been no consensus on what it is about "-le" that makes it such a challenge to learners. This study investigates the acquisition of "-le" from both a lexical perspective and a discourse…

To explore the washback of the HSK on students learning Chinese as a Second Language (CSL), the study surveyed 1,616 SCL students from 25 different mother tongue backgrounds and interviewed international students studying in China through questionnaire and interview. The following was found in this study: (a) The HSK influenced both the process…

Attaining Advanced proficiency and beyond has been a principal goal for second language learners, practitioners, and researchers. Achieving this level in writing requires producing connected discourse of paragraph-level length and nurturing the ability to arrange various linguistic units to form a unified and cohesive whole. This ability, known as…

This study used a meta-analytic structural equation modeling approach to build extended versions of the simple view of reading (SVR) model in second and foreign language (SFL) learning contexts (i.e., SVR-SFL). Based on the correlation coefficients derived from primary studies, we replicated and integrated two previous extended meta-analytic SVR…

This article aimed to explore which factors caused Thai learners' anxiety in an online Chinese course provided by Chinese universities, how Chinese proficiency affected online learning anxiety, and how online learning anxiety influences learning engagement. The participants, i.e., learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL), completed the…

Research Findings: This study investigated the effectiveness of a home-based intervention in increasing the intrinsic reading motivation and Chinese oral vocabulary of minority South Asian children in Hong Kong. A quasi-experiment was conducted with 78 children (M[subscript age] = 51.54 months; control: 37 children, intervention: 41 children) and…