The present study employs regulatory focus theory (Higgins, 1997) to investigate the effects of L2 speakers' chronic regulatory focus on their L2 pragmatic versus grammatical awareness. It involved the participation of 121 Chinese students, who are English language learners, at a university in the United States. Haws et al.'s (2010) questionnaire…

Despite the growing body of studies on collocation learning in SLA research, there are hardly any studies taking the perspective of the individual learner or studies that have examined the effect of individual differences. This study--a qualitative component of a mixed-methods longitudinal project--presents an in-depth exploration of the intro-…

Two concepts of multilingualism that relate to the selves aspect of Dörnyei's (2009) L2 motivational self system (L2MSS) are highlighted in this article: Thompson's concept of "perceived positive language interaction" (PPLI) and Henry's notion of the "ideal multilingual self." With the dynamic model of multilingualism informing…

Prior research demonstrates that primary and secondary school teachers often find teaching young learners to write in a second language a slow and effortful process. Moreover, students in this age range lack the motivation to write. Therefore, it is important to explore the EFL writing pedagogy suitable for young learners. The present study…

This article presents a narrative inquiry of a Chinese heritage mother to theorize and explicate how historical, relational, and spatial processes impacted her negotiation with power and agency in relation to her own heritage language (HL) identity development. A narrative approach enables us to draw on participant counter-stories against master…

The present study empirically scrutinizes the fixed natural order of grammatical morphemes relying on a manual analysis of an EFL learner corpus. Specifically, we test whether the accuracy order of L2 grammatical morphemes in the case of L1 Turkish speakers of English deviates from Krashen's (1977) natural order and whether proficiency levels play…

Child peer interaction in English as a foreign language (EFL) settings has recently received increasing attention with respect to age, instruction type and first language (L1) use, but longitudinal studies remain scarce and the effects of proficiency pairing and language choice on meaning negotiation strategies are still rather unexplored. Within…

The present paper describes a contrastive study of interlanguage refusal strategies employed by Korean and Norwegian learners of English as an additional language. The data were collected from multilingual first-year students at an American university in South Korea and in an English-medium program at a Norwegian university by means of an online…

This article contributes to the scarcity of research on the interface between task-modality and the use of previously known languages (PKL) in young learners. It examines the use of Basque/Spanish by CLIL learners (aged 10-11) during oral interaction while completing two collaborative tasks in English: a speaking task and a speaking + writing…

Drawing on the findings of longitudinal studies in uninstructed contexts over the last two decades, this synthesis explores variations in developmental patterns across second language (L2) pragmatic features. Two synthesis questions were addressed: (a) What are the variations in developmental patterns across pragmatic features?, and (b) What are…

"Crossing borders" features prominently as a theme in study abroad, not only in terms of students' physical border crossings but also in their intercultural interactions with second language (L2) speakers whose background (linguistic and otherwise) they may perceive as markedly different from their own. Researchers have had a…

This cross-linguistic and cross-cultural, corpus-based study explores the notion of "writer identity" expressed through self-reference. The study examines how writers from two cultural regions -- Polish and Anglo-American -- construct a credible representation of themselves in writing. That is, it investigates the differences and…

Individual differences researchers have recently begun to investigate the concept of emotions and their role in language learning (MacIntyre, Gregersen, & Mercer, 2016). Our aim is to report on a project exploring English majors' feelings related to their use of foreign languages. Using a qualitative research design, participants were asked to…

The role of corrective feedback in second language classrooms has received considerable research attention in the past few decades. However, most of this research has been conducted in English-teaching settings, either ESL or EFL. This study examined teacher feedback, learner uptake as well as learner and teacher perception of feedback in an adult…

In this paper the incidental language acquisition of 11-year-old Flemish children (n = 30) who have not received any formal English instruction is investigated. The study looks into children's English proficiency and the learner characteristics that can be associated with it. In order to measure the children's English proficiency, a receptive…