This study examines how the genre of input text influences Chinese young EFL learners' performance on continuation tasks. Participants were 30 students in Grade 9 and repeated-measures design was adopted to compare their performance on narrative and argumentative continuation tasks, in terms of writing quality, CAF indicators as well as alignment.…

This study is a replication and extension of Morgan-Short et al.'s (2018) investigation into the role of attention in input processing by L1-Polish learners of L2-Spanish, with proficiency and language of assessment explored as two key methodological factors. Our aims were twofold: to investigate learners' comprehension in different conditions…

We investigate whether second language (L2) learners of English rely on first language (L1) transfer and atomicity in the acquisition of the count/mass distinction by examining L1-French and L1-Chinese learners of English. Atomicity encodes whether a noun contains 'atoms' or minimal elements that retain the property of the noun. As a semantic…

Semantic variables enable L2 researchers and materials creators to quantify and control the effects of meaning on cognition. However, in recent years, many variables have been normed and published. Parsing the methods employed in norming this myriad of variables and which disparate theories informed their creation can be an opaque and arduous…

Previous studies using artificial languages suggest that sentence production can be guided by verb-specific as well as verb-general statistics present in the language input. Here we investigated whether the statistical properties of ongoing input in the speakers' native language systematically affected their sentence production. Three experiments…

In a masked morphological priming experiment, we compared the processing of derived and inflected morphologically complex Turkish words in heritage speakers of Turkish living in Berlin and in native speakers of Turkish raised and living in Turkey. The results show significant derivational and inflectional priming effects of a similar magnitude in…

This study examines whether semantic relatedness facilitates or impedes the acquisition of English collocations by conducting two experiments respectively on Chinese undergraduates. Each experiment was composed of a reading session, a productive test, and a receptive test. Experiment 1 began with the reading session of 28 paired-up words and their…

This study builds on prior research on second language (L2) Spanish psych verbs, which has centered on morphosyntactic properties, by examining their syntactic distribution, which relies on lexical semantic knowledge. The fact that certain forms are licensed for some verbs, but not others, is the result of an underlying lexical semantic difference…

Interface properties have been found to exhibit protracted instability in advanced bilingualism and L2 learning (Sorace, 2000, 2005; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006). This study examines the role of learning context in modulating this instability in an interface property, namely the interpretation of definite plurals in L2 Arabic. Generic readings in…

In this study, 92 Iranian intermediate EFL learners (17 to 22 years) took part in 14 sessions in which they were taught L2 vocabulary through three input enhancements, i.e., visual input enhancement, semantic input enhancement, and input flooding. In fact, the selected participants were divided into three experimental groups and one control group.…

Cognitive organizers (COs) are text aids which represent objects, concepts, and their relations by the use of symbols and spatial arrangements without adding to semantic content. The present study examines language learners' text comprehension through outlines, a popular CO, compared with text-only condition, and further investigates the effect of…

This article focuses on the acquisition of mood in early complement clauses of European Portuguese (EP). Two semantic features are involved in the EP mood system--epistemicity and veridicality. An elicited production task administered to 80 children aged 4 to 9 showed that, even though children use the subjunctive in [-- epistemic] contexts, the…

This study compared second language vocabulary acquisition from engagement with two different online media: written blog posts and video blogs. It also explored whether there were differences between which aspects of vocabulary knowledge (i.e., orthography, semantics, and grammatical function) were best learned from these media. The results showed…

Adult learners know that language is for communicating and that there are patterns in the language that need to be learned. This affects the way they engage with language input; they search for form-meaning linkages, and this effortful engagement could interfere with their learning, especially for things like grammatical gender that often have at…

This article investigates near-native grammars at the syntax--discourse interface by examining the second language (L2) acquisition of two different domains of object movement in Dutch, which exhibit syntax-discourse or syntax-semantics level properties. English and German near-native speakers of Dutch, where German but not English allows the same…