Recent studies suggest that developing L2 receptive knowledge of single words is associated with increased receptive knowledge of collocations. However, no study to date has directly examined the interrelationship between productive word knowledge and productive collocation knowledge. To address this gap, the present study administered a…

Lexical items that are encountered more frequently and in varying contexts have important effects on second language (L2) development because frequent and contextually diverse words are learned faster and become more entrenched in a learner's lexicon (Ellis 2002a, b). Despite evidence that L2 learners are generally exposed to non-native input,…

Cognitive factors have been recognised as important in the interpreting process, but whether they could serve as valid components of interpreting aptitude still awaits further investigation. This study explores the predictive value of cognitive fluency in the simultaneous interpreting (SI) performance of trainee interpreters. Cognitive fluency…

This study compares the performance of native speakers and adult second language (L2) learners on tasks tapping proficiency in grammar, vocabulary, and collocations. In addition, data were collected on several predictors of individual differences in linguistic attainment, including some related to language experience (print exposure, education,…

This study investigates the multicomponential nature of L2 Arabic writing by adapting a number of direct measures of linguistic "complexity," "accuracy," and "fluency" (CAF) to the measurement of written Arabic texts produced by L2 Arabic learners and Arabic Native Speakers (NSs). Previous studies of L2 writing have…

As a result of the fact that judgments of non-native speech are closely tied to social biases, oral proficiency ratings are susceptible to error because of rater background and social attitudes. In the present study we seek first to estimate the variance attributable to rater background and attitudinal variables on novice raters' assessments of L2…

Second language (L2) learners of tone languages do not perceive and produce the different tones of the target language with equal ease. The most common explanation for these asymmetries is that acoustically salient tones are the easiest to learn. An alternative explanation is that tones are easiest to learn when they are highly frequent in the…

This paper presents the results of a study that compared the French as a second official achievement of three groups of students: (1) Canadian-born English speaking (CBE), (2) Canadian-born multilingual (CBM), and (3) immigrant multilinguals (IMM) as determined by multiskills test results. ANOVAs and subsequent post hoc tests revealed that the…

Oral fluency and foreign accent distinguish L2 from L1 speech production. In language testing practices, both fluency and accent are usually assessed by raters. This study investigates what exactly native raters of fluency and accent take into account when judging L2. Our aim is to explore the relationship between objectively measured temporal,…

This study investigated the effects of English and Chinese phonological awareness (PA) and naming speed (NS) on English reading achievement and the evidence for cross-linguistic transfer in Chinese English-immersion students. English PA was a significant predictor of English reading achievement for immersion students in Grades 2 and 4. There was…

This article examines the nature of confidence in relation to abilities, personality, and metacognition. Confidence scores were collected during the administration of Reading and Listening sections of the Test of English as a Foreign Language Internet-Based Test (TOEFL iBT) to 824 native speakers of English. Those confidence scores were correlated…

The present study is a continuation of the work presented in the 2001 article by Greidanus and Nienhuis. In the current study, we also examine the quality of word knowledge among advanced learners of French as a second language (L2) by means of a word associates test. We studied the development of word knowledge among six groups of…

Minnesota is one of many states that began development of an English proficiency test before federal requirements were in place to do so. It had decided to put into place a test that would provide the state with a better and more uniform gauge of how its population of English language learners (ELLs) was doing in their acquisition of academic…