University classrooms are increasingly populated by students with diverse nationalities and native languages (L1). The growing number of students in English-led classrooms who speak English as a second or lower language (L2) may face added difficulties in understanding the specific task objectives or directions, as explained by native-…

How online interactants advance their talk in written interactions has been extensively investigated in different areas, including language learning. Applying a conversation analysis technique, this study examined how second language (L2) learners managed topics in L2 task-based text-chat interactions and the effects of L2 proficiency on their…

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.…

In L2 pragmatics, only a few studies have examined task complexity. Furthermore, the existing studies have predominantly focused on the cognitive dimension and have lacked consistent findings. González-Lloret and Ortega (2018) and Pallotti (2019) have thereby contended that socio-interactional features be incorporated into task design. Along this…

This study explored how the first language (L1) influences discourse marker use in second language (L2) speech. Some studies (e.g., Liu, 2013; Sankoff et al., 1997) have addressed the issue of L1 transfer of discourse markers in L2 speech, suggesting that non-native speakers' L1 use may influence the frequency and usage of English discourse…

There has been much debate in assessment research about the inclusion of Global English accents in high-stakes listening tests. This study explored test-takers' attitudes toward the inclusion of different English accents in the Duolingo English Test (DET) 2021 test version and their associations with listening test scores. One hundred sixty…

This study examined the impact of the manipulated task complexity (Robinson 2001a, 2001b, 2007, 2011; Robinson & Gilabert, 2007) on second language (L2) speech comprehensibility. I examined whether manipulated task complexity (a) impacts L2 speech comprehensibility, (b) aligns with L2 speakers' perception of task difficulty (cognitive…

The present study examined the use of prosody in semantic and syntactic disambiguation by means of comparison between Japanese and Chinese speakers' production of English sentences. In Chinese and Japanese, lexical prosody is more prominent than sentence prosody, and the sentential meaning contrast is usually realized through particles or a change…