English orthographic learning, among Chinese-L1 children who were beginning to learn English as a foreign language, was documented when: (1) "only" visual memory was at their disposal, (2) visual memory and either "some" letter-sound knowledge or "some" semantic information was available, and (3) visual memory,…

Teaching technical vocabulary in ESP context is a vital part of English language teaching at a university level. EFL teachers almost use traditional techniques for teaching new medical vocabulary. This study aimed at examining the impact of teaching medical vocabulary through collocations on vocabulary learning of medical students. This…

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) programmes are mushrooming in many different contexts. However, research has mainly focused on their impact on foreign language learning and to a lesser extent on L1 development, whereas the number of studies undertaken in multilingual contexts in which more than two languages coexist is negligible.…

This study launched an investigation into the extent to which textual enhancement in captions can promote learner attention to and subsequent development in second language (L2) grammar. Using eye-tracking, it also intended to extend research on the relationship between attention and L2 learning. A pretest-posttest experimental design was…

Background: The detection of specific language impairment (SLI) in children growing up bilingually presents particular challenges for clinicians. Non-word repetition (NWR) and sentence repetition (SR) tasks have proven to be the most accurate diagnostic tools for monolingual populations, raising the question of the extent of their usefulness in…

The present study aimed at investigating the effect of using collaborative translation tasks (CTTs) for teaching figurative language. The study also sought to explore the perceptions of the learners toward the efficacy of CTTs for learning figurative language through conducting interviews. The participants of the study included 60 English as a…

Recent years have witnessed a strong and increasing interest in the incidental learning of second language grammar. While much of this research has focused on the acquisition of second language word order or noun-determiner systems, relatively fewer studies have examined the learning of second language morphology. Results of studies that have…

Language aptitude remains one of the most understudied predictor variables in L1 attrition research. The current study seeks to address this gap by investigating the effects of language aptitude on L1 retention in late attriters. Forty L1 Spanish-L2 Swedish bilinguals living in Sweden participated in the study, along with 20 functionally…

We investigated the effects of instruction method and cross-language similarity during second language (L2) grammar learning. English speakers learned a subset of Swedish using contrast and color highlighting (Salience Group), contrast and highlighting with grammatical explanations (Rule & Salience Group), or neither (Control Group with…

Purpose: In this study, we aimed to evaluate the efficacy of sentence-combining (SC) and narrative-based (NAR) intervention approaches to syntax intervention using a randomized-controlled-trial design. Method: Fifty-two Cantonese-speaking, school-age children with language impairment were assigned randomly to either the SC or the NAR treatment…

Because reading for meaning only can lead to low rates of second language (L2) vocabulary learning and because previous research has demonstrated the benefits of word retrieval opportunities for intentional L2 vocabulary learning (Barcroft, 2007; McNamara & Healy, 1995a, Experiment 2; Royer, 1973), the present study assessed the effect of…

This study investigated the effects of two modes of corrective feedback, namely, face-to-face recasts and computer-mediated recasts during video-conferencing on Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' second language (L2) development. Moreover, the accuracy of the learners' interpretations of recasts in the two modalities was…

Pragmatic competence is essential for oral fluency and listening comprehension, allowing speakers to use and interpret language appropriately in varied contexts. The use of technological applications for teaching pragmatics is on the rise (Taguchi & Sykes, 2013), in part because they are well-suited to the types of awareness-raising tasks…

This paper reports the findings of a study that investigated the effect of giving and receiving marginal L1 glosses on L2 vocabulary learning. To that end, forty nine Iranian learners of English were assigned to three different experimental conditions including marginal L1 glosses Giver (n = 17), marginal L1 glosses Receiver (n = 17), and no…

Our study aimed at finding out the effectiveness of corpus-based vocabulary teaching activities as well as students' attitudes towards concordance-based materials when corpus-based tasks in English vocabulary learning are used. The study was conducted in a preparatory school in a private university. The participants were 28 intermediate level…