A self-paced reading and translation task was used with learners of English as a second language (L2) to explore what sorts of information L2 learners use during online comprehension compared to native speakers, and how task (reading for comprehension vs. translation) and proficiency affect L2 comprehension. Thirty-six Korean native speakers of…

Subtitling is a valuable tool for improving literacy and aiding language learning, but what happens when people are unable to read the subtitles? In a recent study on the reading of second language subtitles, participants were shown a subtitled short film while their eye movements were recorded by an SMI iViewX Hi-Speed eye tracker. It was found…

To investigate potential causes of L2 performance deficits that correlate with age of onset, we use a computational model to explore the individual contributions of L1 entrenchment and aspects of memory development. Since development and L1 entrenchment almost invariably coincide, studying them independently is seldom possible in humans. To avoid…

This dissertation project examined the influence of language typology on the use of segmentation cues by second language (L2) learners of English. Previous research has shown that native English speakers rely more on sentence context and lexical knowledge than segmental (i.e. phonotactics or acoustic-phonetics) or prosodic cues (e.g., word stress)…

The focus of this research is on the nature of lexical cross-linguistic influence (CLI) between non-native languages. Using oral interviews with 157 L1 Italian high-school students studying English and German as non-native languages, the project investigated which kinds of lexis appear to be more susceptible to transfer from German to English and…

Different regions of the world are making increasing demands for educational reform, especially when institutions are dissatisfied with the level of proficiency of their graduates. Since the realization of how important English education is to global success, reform to English education is becoming progressively vital in societies all over the…

Recent literature on language teaching has questioned the established view that a language is most effectively taught monolingually, arguing instead that the student's own language has an important role to play, and this view is now widely accepted. While this literature draws attention to the extremism of some monolingual approaches, and…

Although language experience is a key factor in successful foreign language (FL) learning, many FL learners fail to achieve performance levels that were predicted on the basis of their FL experience. This retrospective study investigated early cognitive and linguistic correlates of learning English as a foreign language (FL) in a group of…

Ethnic identification is closely tied to language. Society's appreciation of one's first language and the opportunity to use it may help strengthen ethnic identification. This research examined the relationship between ethnic identifications and school language and investigated other factors that potentially impact language-minority students'…

In the present study, the comparative effects of comprehensible input, output and corrective feedback on the receptive acquisition of L2 vocabulary items were investigated. Two groups of beginning EFL learners participated in the study. The control group received comprehensible input only, while the experimental group received input and was…

The language of education is crucial to learners' academic success. As a result, nations whose native languages are not the languages of education have promulgated language policies to solve communication problems in their school systems. Most multilingual nations have adopted bilingual education systems that recognize the child's native language…

This article begins with a critique of dominant approaches to language policy in education that are based on the notion of "rights" and "peoples." It makes the case for an approach that is based on the tripartite view of social justice, as articulated by Nancy Fraser. This view of social justice sees a complementary…

This study investigates whether adult second language learners' online processing of "wh"-dependencies is constrained by island constraints on movement. Proficiency-matched Spanish and Korean learners of English completed a grammaticality judgment task and a stop-making-sense task designed to examine their knowledge of the relative…

In the early 1990s, the government of Papua New Guinea (PNG) enacted educational reform. It officially abandoned its English-only policy at elementary school level, in favour of community languages. In response, the Kairak community of East New Britain Province developed a vernacular literacy programme. This paper, based on original fieldwork…

This article reports the preliminary findings of an action research on the effects of autonomy on a group of university students at the post-graduate level taking their first Spanish course through the Content and Language Learning (CLIL) methodology. The participants, whose Spanish was at the low/mid intermediate level (ACTFL, 2012), were exposed…