Featural approaches to second language phonetic acquisition posit that the development of new phonetic norms relies on sub-phonemic features, expressed through a constellation of articulatory gestures and their corresponding acoustic cues, which may be shared across multiple phonemes. Within featural approaches, largely supported by research in…

Previous studies on bilingual children have shown a significant correlation between first language (L1) and second language (L2) morphological awareness and a unique contribution of morphological awareness in one language to reading performance in the other language, suggesting cross-linguistic influence. However, few studies have compared…

Considering the contradictions in the structured and static approaches to the nation and national identity observed world-wide and fluid "trans-" approaches to language in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, the paper explores how national identity is constructed and sustained nowadays, specifically in digital spaces both…

The YN vocabulary test (YN test) is a vocabulary size test that presents test takers with a list of words and asks them to answer yes to the words they know. This test may include nonwords, i.e., imaginary words added to the test to check for guessing. However, there have been no conclusive guidelines about nonword construction. One way of…

This study problematises the folk theories of ELT practitioners, and critically views the limits of their monolingual idealism and guilty multilingualism in the context of Pakistan. Drawing on interviews of 18 English teachers and classroom observations in a provincial capital of Pakistan, the study analyses their 'two solitudes' assumptions, in…

Montrul's (2008) onset age hypothesis predicts that, if attrition occurs in early bilingualism, it will be more severe in simultaneous than in sequential bilinguals. This study tested that prediction in an eye-tracking experiment focused on the processing of Spanish gender agreement during sentence reading. Heritage Spanish speakers exposed to…

The aim of the paper is to present the results of a research project called 'Tell Me', conducted from October 2018 to March 2020. The project focused on Bengali children living in Venice, Italy, and aimed to describe (1) children's languages in the home environment and at school; (2) the quality and quantity of input they receive in every language…

The study examines the effects of using computer delivered Processing Instruction (PI) to teach English reflexives. Thirty intermediate ESL learners participated in the pretest-treatment-posttest study. Participants received the input-based PI activities. Gains were assessed by traditional offline tasks such as sentence interpretation and…

This exploratory research study analyzed the relationships between attitude, preference, and achievement of English Language Learner (ELL) students in high school from Brazil. The study presented what relationships exist between attitude, preference and achievement in reading for both L1 Portuguese, and L2 English. The Middle and Secondary Reading…

This study is about student writers' development of their own approaches to using formulaic phrases from a compendium (Academic Phrasebank). While the essential role of formulaic phrases in academic texts has been well established in research, teaching about the effective use of these phrases is not widely available, and little attention has been…

Background/Context: There is a growing need for schools to examine the best ways of working with immigrant and multilingual families, as it is ever more likely that all teachers will work with multilingual newcomers and their children during their career. However, teachers often view multilingual families in deficit ways, and many teachers lack…

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…

Within the last two decades, researchers have begun to investigate how L2 learners process syntactic, morpho-syntactic, and lexical information during the comprehension of L2 sentences. The present study aimed to add to research by investigating how L1 influences L2 processing of sentences indicating plurality in constructions involving numerals.…

Second language acquisition (SLA) is complex and multidimensional. Using the framework of the unified competition model (UCM), the current study explores how robust learning and testing of Chinese Pinyin are fostered by optimal integration of different kinds of feedback in an intelligent computer-assisted language learning (CALL) environment…

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.…