The ability to speak in a second language (L2) requires a certain level of linguistic proficiency, but the ability to "live" in a second language requires a certain level of "sociolinguistic" proficiency. L2 sociolinguistic variables present acquisitional challenges for language learners, since informal discourse features are…

Feature-based approaches to acquisition principally focus on second language (L2) learners' ability to perceive non-native consonants when the features required are either contrastively present or entirely absent from the first language (L1) grammar. As features may function contrastively or allophonically in the consonant and/or vowel systems of…

This dissertation examines heritage language learners of Spanish enrolled in university Spanish courses, focusing on their strategic use of suprasegmental speech features in two speaking tasks. The research investigates attitudes' influence on heritage language learners' speech production in different task types. Participants engaged in two…

Developing sociolinguistic competence in Arabic can be a complex process given how Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Colloquial Arabic (CA) are used within a changing sociolinguistic environment in Arabic-speaking communities. Findings from empirical research suggest that second language (L2) Arabic learners who receive multidialectal training in…

Language is inherently variable, and learner language is particularly variable. The variationist paradigm considers learner language a heterogeneously variable yet inherently rule-governed system. Specifically, learners' alternation between native-like and nonnative-like variants of a variable or invariable target native speaker (NS) form…

This article reports on an experimental study on the acquisition of prepositional relative clauses in second language European Portuguese by Chinese native speakers. It focuses on the role of resumption, mandatory in prepositional relative clauses in Chinese (the native language of the learners) and non-conventional in European Portuguese (the…

Spoken word recognition depends on variations in fine-grained phonetics as listeners decode speech. However, many models of second language (L2) speech perception focus on units such as isolated syllables, and not on words. In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigated how fine-grained phonetic details (i.e. duration of nasalization on…

Social network analysis (SNA) examines the relationships that an individual speaker creates and maintains with others in order to explain and predict language behavior. Over the past 20 years, SNA has been used by a growing number of researchers to better understand the language learner and the language learning process, especially in the context…

This study investigates whether re-thinking the separation of lexis and grammar in language testing could lead to more valid inferences about proficiency across modes. As argued by Römer, typical scoring rubrics ignore important information about proficiency encoded at the lexis-grammar interface, in particular how the co-selection of lexical and…

The study aimed at identifying the core language skills regarded as most significant in the academe and eventually in the workplace among engineering graduates. The study surveyed tertiary students to identify their perception of the skills needed upon graduation, together with the kind of instruction that would improve and progress the said…

This dissertation explores Spanish copular verbs, "ser" and "estar" (both 'to be' in English), in pre-adjectival contexts within two Spanish varieties: first-language (L1) Chilean speakers from Santiago (N = 29) and second-language (L2) English-speaking learners studying in Chile (N = 31). Bridging sociolinguistics and second…

This paper intends to provide an Optimality-theoretic analysis of word-stress learnability among Moroccan learners of English. Language acquisition, from an Optimality Theory perspective, is a process of reordering the constraints from an initial state of the grammar to the language-specific ranking of the target grammar. To account for stress…

As a branch of artificial intelligence, automated speech recognition (ASR) technology is increasingly used to detect speech, process it to text, and derive the meaning of natural language for various learning and assessment purposes. ASR inaccuracy may pose serious threats to valid score interpretations and fair score use for all when it is…

This article explores the language of bimodal bilinguals (i.e., hearing children of Deaf parents who are exposed to sign language at home and to spoken language in the surrounding community). In similar bilingual contexts involving pairs of spoken languages, the language used at home, which differs from that of the community, is referred to as the…

Global efforts for standards-based linguistic assessment increasingly hold that examinees should be tested in the language with which they are most familiar. Yet, language use still occurs differently from its characterization in exams, even as exams are increasingly developed in historically minoritized languages. Drawing from two years of…