This study expands on previous research into filler-gap dependency processing in second language (L2) English, by means of a replication of Canales's (2012) self-paced reading study. Canales, among others, found that advanced L2-English speakers exhibited the same processing behavior that Stowe (1986) found for native English processing: On…

Many studies evidence the flexibility of speech perception in the first language (L1), which allows rapid adaptation to unfamiliar foreign accents. Two influential studies by Bradlow and Bent (2008) and a follow-up study by Baese-Berk et al. (2013) found that increased variability as a function of the number of talkers and accents facilitated the…

This paper investigates the attitudes of 246 English teachers from Outer and Expanding Circles (EC and OC) towards the global spread of English and the challenges underpinning international proficiency tests. Using a questionnaire, supplemented with interviews with a smaller group of teachers, this study explores how EC and OC teachers perceive…

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…

While most empirical studies have investigated the improvement of learners' L2 spoken proficiency via speaking-related interventions, the present study examined the same topic through a different modality: listening. Ninety-five first-year tertiary-level students of English as a second language (ESL) in Hong Kong participated in this three-month…

This research project sought to explore the influence of English L2 on Spanish L1 in an environment where the L1 (Spanish) is the dominant language. Participants were recruited through voluntary response sampling at the University of Puerto Rico Secondary School (UHS). They completed a language survey on Google Forms that collected general…

Variability in the form of article (i.e., a and the) omissions and stressing has been attributed to a mismatch between first (L1) and second language (L2) prosodic and syntactic structures. An overlap between the L1 and L2 systems, on the other hand, is expected to contribute to native-like article productions. This case study aims to explore the…

Over the past decades, various teaching methods adopted from time to time have placed pronunciation teaching in the forefront or in the backend. This has resulted in second language facilitators to completely disregard or relentlessly correct pronunciation depending on their intuition due to the lack of research on pronunciation teaching or proper…

The wide use of English has given rise to the World Englishes (WE) paradigm, within which there has been a growing interest in the pedagogical implications of the varieties of English. A frequently documented rationale for the marriage between second language education and WE is that WE users should be aware of the potential problems in WE…

Monolithic views of languages predominate in linguistics, applied linguistics, and everyday discourse. The World Englishes, English as a Lingua Franca, and Critical Applied Linguistics frameworks have gone some way to counter the myth, highlighting the iniquities it gives rise to for global users and learners of English. Here, I propose that…

This study examined the linguistic competence in Korean of Korean heritage language learners (HLLs), compared to English-speaking non-heritage language learners (NHLLs) of Korean. It is unclear and controversial as to whether heritage languages learners are exposed to early but are interrupted manifest as L1 competence or share more…

Suggests that the variety of English spoken in Brunei (BNE), sometimes called nonstandard, is still at an early stage of development and there is little awareness among its speakers of some differences from standard English (STE). Results of a grammaticality judgment test administered to 106 university students, designed to find nonstandard verb…

Research described oral texts produced by second- and third- generation bilingual Chicano Spanish speakers when required to carry out a set of functions in only one of their available codes. Analysis focuses on characteristics of planned, noninteractive spoken language produced in Spanish by university students in a classroom setting, compared…

Papers on linguistics and language teaching in this volume are the following: "Language in Education: Hard Choices for Hong Kong" (Jo Lewkowicz); "EL2--Medium Education in a Largely Monolingual Society: The Case of Hong Kong" (Nigel Bruce); "A Programme for Semantics" (Laurence Goldstein); "Semantics and Its…