Given the exponential growth in the popularity of early foreign language programs, coupled with an emphasis of evidence-based instruction, assessing young learners' (YLs) foreign language abilities has moved to center stage. This article canvasses how the field of assessing young learners of foreign languages has evolved over the past two decades.…

Spanish native speakers are known to pronounce onset /sC/ clusters in English with a prothetic vowel, as in "esport" for sport, due to their native language phonotactic constraints. We assessed whether accurate production of e.g. "spi" instead of "espi" was related to accurate perceptual discrimination of this…

A high-stakes Portfolio-Based Language Assessment (PBLA) protocol that was fully implemented in all Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) programs in 2019 requires instructors and students to set language-learning goals and complete, compile, and reflect on numerous authentic language tasks. Due to the language barriers incurred when…

The present study investigates the effects of two subsequent learning contexts, formal instruction (FI) at home and a 3-month stay abroad (SA), on vocabulary acquisition in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing and speaking. Data were collected from 30 Catalan/Spanish learners of English before and after each learning period using a written…

This study examined learner perspectives of the benefits of communication strategy training by analysing strategy diaries written by low English proficiency learners enrolled in an English for Occupational Purposes programme. The communication strategy instruction involved 23 students who were taught 13 lexical, negotiation, and discourse-based…

L2 pragmatics have explored the effects of different factors on different aspects of learners' pragmatic performance, but often not simultaneously. In addition, syntactic complexity is rarely examined in L2 pragmatics. This cross-sectional study aimed to conduct a multidimensional analysis to explore the effects of proficiency and study-abroad…

Linking research on task-based collaborative L2 writing and computer-mediated writing, this study investigates the relationship between patterns of collaboration and the linguistic features of texts written during a computer-supported collaborative writing task using Google Docs. Qualitative analyses provide insights into the writing process of…

This article explores the applications of research on native spoken language into second language learning in the concept of subordination. Second language (L2) learners' ability to integrate subordinate clauses is considered an indication of higher proficiency (e.g., Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005; Tarone & Swierzbin, 2009). However, the notion…

Orthographic forms (spellings) can affect pronunciation in a second language (L2); however, it is not known whether the same orthographic form can affect both L2 pronunciation and metalinguistic awareness. To test this, we asked 260 speakers of English--first-language (L1) English speakers, L1 Italian and L2 English sequential bilinguals, and L1…

Following the call in Sandlund, Sundqvist, and Nyroos (2016) for incorporating discursive approaches into the field of oral second language (L2) testing, this paper proposes an interactional usage-based approach to the analysis of oral L2 performance. Based on Eskildsen (2018a), we combine analytic tools from usage-based linguistics and…

Given that words from the academic layer of English typically carry bound roots ("min" in "diminish") rather than free-standing base words ("small" in "smaller"), there is a need to understand the factors that make bound roots more or less accessible for morphological problem-solving unfamiliar words. We…

Usage-based approaches to language acquisition explain language development as a gradual process of generalizing constructions through language experience. This study investigated second language learners' development of constructional knowledge from the perspective of usage-based language development. A total of 169 Korean EFL students at five…

The differences and similarities in the word recognition and reading comprehension skills of monoliterate Albanian-Greek (ML2), biliterate Albanian-Greek (BL2) and monolingual (L1) children in grades 3-6 were examined in two cross-sectional studies. Participants completed standardized and experimental tasks measuring cognitive, oral language and…

The reform of National College Entrance Examination in Zhejiang Province, China has aroused widespread attention since it was released in 2014. It is notable that new English writing test types were adopted in the English subtest. The continuation task and summary writing become a challenge as well as a promoter for English writing teaching and…

This study adds to the literature on computer-mediated communication (CMC) by examining the impact of online voice recording (VR) activities and peer-to-peer videoconferencing (VC) conversations on the development of beginning Spanish learners' speaking performance. Specifically, this paper explores (1) whether VR and VC activities promote oral…