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…

The current study contributes to the argument regarding whether L2 learners up to advanced levels make agreement errors on grammatical gender. It reports gender agreement accuracy on a written Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) and an Elicited Oral Production Task (PDT) on known nouns assigned the correct gender by participants on a vocabulary…

Considering the acquisition of past tense uses by L2 Spanish advanced learners with closely related L1s (French, Portuguese), this study attempts to identify factors associated with variability, such as negative transfer or interface integration. We report data on the acquisition, by adult L1 French and Portuguese learners at B2 and C1 CEFR…

The present study intended to examine the effectiveness of the Vaughan method for the development of EFL learners' speaking skill. The Vaughan method was compared with two other methods, namely the Audiolingual method and communicative language teaching with regard to the development of learners' speaking skill. In a quasi-experimental design,…

The current study investigated the influence of oral reproduction and summary writing vocabulary tasks on English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' learning and retention of new foreign language (L2) words. To this end, 66 advanced EFL learners were randomly selected and assigned to two experimental and one control conditions. The participants…

The current study analyzes the oral production of advanced learners of English who have Catalan and Spanish as their first languages. Subjects participated in study abroad (SA) programmes in English-speaking countries as part of their undergraduate studies. A role-play task was used to elicit speech from learners prior to SA and upon arrival from…

While disagreements are often considered dispreferred choices and potentially face-threatening acts due to their oppositional nature, this perception does not adequately reflect the importance of disagreeing for many types of interaction, such as problem-solving and decision-making. Developing ability in performing this speech act therefore…

Learning to use English articles appropriately has been considered a challenging task for L2 learners of English, especially when their L1s do not have a similar article system. Much research has been conducted in this area, but little has been studied about the effects of discourse types (i.e., spoken discourse versus written discourse) on the…

This study investigated the use of discourse markers (DMs) by college learners of English in China. It compared the use of DMs for four discourse functions by students at different proficiency levels. An audio-video instrument called Video Oral Communication Instrument was conducted to elicit ratable speech samples. Fraser's (1999) taxonomy was…

The article discusses the results of a longitudinal study of how the use of conjunctions, as an aspect of spoken discourse competence of 13 selected advanced students of English, developed throughout their 3-year English as a foreign language (EFL) tertiary education. The analysis was carried out in relation to a number of variables, including 2…