Connectives such as "because" and "but" are crucial for signaling coherence relations in discourse. They contribute to a better reading comprehension and, thus, academic performance. The aim of this article is to contribute to our understanding of connective development during teenage years by studying individual differences in…

This study investigated the relative contributions of English morphological and vocabulary knowledge to second language (L2) reading comprehension among 100 adult Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. The study also investigated the extent to which the roles of morphological and vocabulary knowledge in L2 reading comprehension…

Most common words in English have multiple different meanings, but relatively little is known about why children grasp some meanings better than others. This study aimed to examine how variables at the child-level, wordform-level, and meaning-level impact knowledge of words with multiple meanings. In this study, 174 children aged 5- to 9-years-old…

This study investigates the relationships among working memory (WM), syntactic parsing ability (SP), and L2 reading performance across varying proficiency levels. A cohort of 120 L1-Persian EFL learners was categorized into beginner, intermediate, and advanced proficiency groups based on their IELTS scores. Participants completed a reading span…

Although numerous studies show that intelligence, measured by various tests, is a significant predictor of school achievement, this cognitive variable can only explain about 50% of the variance. It is also known that communicative language ability represents an important basis for learning subject content in the early period of formal education.…

Word frequency has a long history of being considered the most important predictor of word difficulty and has served as a guideline for several aspects of second language vocabulary teaching, learning, and assessment. However, recent empirical research has challenged the supremacy of frequency as a predictor of word difficulty. Accordingly,…

In the L2 fluency literature there is considerable debate over how best to operationally define pauses and how different pause measures relate to L2 proficiency. This creates a challenge for researchers interested in L2 fluency, and particularly those who are working with groups that vary in L2 proficiency. This article addresses these issues by…

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…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of word-related factors (i.e. frequency, range, dispersion and cognateness) on first-language English (L1E) readers' (n = 20) and second-language English (L2E) readers' (n = 20) incidental acquisition of vocabulary through the reading of an authentic novel.…

This commentary discusses Westergaard's (2021) keynote article, which presents a comprehensive model of first language (L1), second language (L2), and third language (L3) acquisition. The commentary presents evidence from a previous study of L3 learners that provides support for Westergaard's property-by-property transfer proposal. The commentary…

This study examined whether vocabulary knowledge is sufficient for second language (L2) word-meaning inferencing. Specifically, it investigated the role of the learner's sensitivity to a word's morphological structure (referred to 'morphological awareness' or 'MA' hereafter) as additional support that enhances multi-character word-meaning…

This article examines the relationship between Japanese undergraduate students' English language proficiency and English language-related challenges faced when studying an international business course through English. It also examines English language proficiency thresholds students need to reach in each academic skill (i.e. reading, listening,…

Lexical items that are encountered more frequently and in varying contexts have important effects on second language (L2) development because frequent and contextually diverse words are learned faster and become more entrenched in a learner's lexicon (Ellis 2002a, b). Despite evidence that L2 learners are generally exposed to non-native input,…

Purpose: There is conflicting evidence regarding effects of bilingualism on inhibition, and the mechanisms that might underlie the effects remain unclear. A prominent account views additional demands on structural language use in bilinguals as being at the root of bilingual effects on inhibition. In this study, we tested the novel hypothesis that…

The article presents an empirical study that investigates the single- and cross-modality relationships between different dimensions of receptive vocabulary knowledge and language skills, as well as the importance of academic vocabulary knowledge in academic listening and reading comprehension. An Updated Vocabulary Levels Test (UVLT), a Vietnamese…