The current study reported an empirical investigation that tested the collective and individual effects of morphological awareness and cognate awareness on Japanese word learning among Chinese learners of Japanese. 131 Chinese learners of Japanese participated in this study. They completed morphological awareness measurements (morpheme…

Despite the substantial expansion in vocabulary research since the 1980s, we still know very little about how vocabulary develops over time and what factors influence this development. This methodological overview discusses key issues and considerations in vocabulary breadth growth assessment to help advance research in this area. The report…

Languages differ regarding the depth, structure, and syntactic domains of recursive structures. Even within a single language, some structures allow infinite self-embedding while others are more restricted. For example, when expressing ownership relation, English allows infinite embedding of the prenominal genitive "-s," whereas the…

This study introduces a novel learning management model aimed at enhancing Thai language proficiency in sixth-grade students. Confronting challenges such as inadequate teaching resources and a lack of student-centric, practical activities in current Thai language education, this model integrates six key components: foundational principles and…

The Vocabulary Size Test (VST) measures English learners' decontextualised receptive vocabulary knowledge of written English and has nine bilingual versions with multiple-choice options written in other languages. This study used the English-Japanese version of the VST to investigate the extent to which loanword items were answered correctly by…

Gestures and other bodily movements are frequently used as instructional strategies in second language classrooms. Research has demonstrated that gestures are an effective strategy to improve L2 vocabulary recall. However, previous studies have only used vocabulary items that are known to participants in their native languages. Additionally,…

Testing of previously studied information potentiates subsequent learning of new information, a phenomenon referred to as the "forward testing effect" (FTE). The current study aimed to investigate the developmental trajectory of the FTE and whether the reset-of-encoding process contributes to the FTE. Younger children, older children,…

Purpose: This study builds a new system for automatically assessing learners' speech elicited from an oral discourse completion task (DCT), and evaluates the prediction capability of the system with a view to better understanding factors deemed influential in predicting speaking proficiency scores and the pedagogical implications of the system.…

Measuring learning outcomes on core skills is key to building evidence on which teaching and learning interventions are most effective, and ultimately informing policy that prioritises these skills, amongst early learners. However, developing national or systems-level assessments pose considerable challenges, including implementing an effective…

In this study, we investigated crosslinguistic influence (CLI) at developmental stages of third language (L3) acquisition of English by Russian--Norwegian children (N = 31). We tested seven linguistic properties within three linguistic modules (morphology, syntax and syntax-semantics). We compared the L3 learners to Norwegian (N = 90) and Russian…

This study investigates how learners use a freely available web-based multimodal language learning environment based on videos and newspaper articles with corresponding exercises and learning support in the form of help options, "NedBox," for learning L2 Dutch. In order to measure learners' use, a combination of eye movement and screen…

To this day, there are only a few studies that have used a controlled instructional intervention on specific linguistic structures to investigate if language instruction is beneficial for heritage learners (HLs), in the same way it is for second (L2) language learners, and more research in this area is rapidly needed (Bowles, 2018). The results…

Within the communicative language teaching approach, current instructional materials often lack explicit guidance or fail to provide L2 learners with a wide range of resources in the target language. Conversation analysis (CA), which focuses on authentic talk, has been proposed as a potential resource for language classrooms. This study examines…

This study investigated the acquisition of English "control" and "raising" ("over Experiencer") constructions with three groups of Thai EFL learners (lower intermediate, intermediate, and advanced). Thai and English, with respect to "control," commonly have PRO and infinitive markers, but Thai does not…

Idiomatic expressions like "hit the road" or "turn the tables" are known to be problematic for L2 learners, but research indicates that learning L2 idiomatic language is important. Relatively few studies, most of them focusing on English idioms, have investigated how L2 idioms are actually acquired and how this process is…