This paper examines the implications of the association patterns in our understanding of the mental lexicon. By applying the principles of graph theory to word association data, we intend to explore which measures tap better into lexical knowledge. To that end, we had different groups of English as Foreign language learners complete a lexical…

Research suggests that heterogeneous life experiences (e.g. multilingualism) might facilitate the development of mental flexibility. The current paper presents the conceptual replication of a study originally presented by Greve and colleagues [Greve, W., Koch, M., Rasche, V., and Kersten, K. (2021). Extending the Scope of the 'Cognitive Advantage'…

The present study tested whether the switch costs of production-based language switching tasks by trilinguals are due to competition from outside language schemas or from within language systems. We recruited 90 Tibetan-Chinese-English trilinguals in 10th grade in a Tibetan middle school in China to name digits and number words using different…

Despite the worldwide prevalence of multilingualism, the knowledge of the relationship between domain-general cognitive control and multilingual language control remains scant. Here we provide new insights into this issue by examining systematically how different components of inhibitory control (i.e., response inhibition and interference…

By adopting a usage-based approach to language acquisition, this study investigated the emergence and development of L2 constructional knowledge. A total of 19 English verb-argument constructions (VACs) and their associated verbs were extracted from a learner corpus and three verbal fluency tasks, each conducted in L1 and L2 English and L1 Korean.…

This study investigated whether German learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) acquire additional recoding strategies that they do not need for recoding in the consistent German orthography. Based on the psycholinguistic grain size theory (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005) we expected students with little experience in EFL to use the same…

Mother tongue acquisition starts with words and grammar acquired spontaneously by means of communication, while at school foreign language learning takes place based on grammar. Vocabulary learning is very often neglected or rather it turns into an individual activity. The present study, which is considered to be unique on its own, is to reveal…

A list number recall test in English (L2) was administered to both Japanese (L1) students with beginning-level English proficiency who attended evening high school and Japanese college students with intermediate-level English proficiency. The major findings were that, only for the high school group, the small numbers 1 and 2 in middle positions of…

This study demonstrates the utility of applying a causal indicator modeling framework to investigate important predictors of reading comprehension in third, seventh, and tenth grade students. The results indicated that a 4-factor multiple indicator multiple indicator cause (MIMIC) model of reading comprehension provided adequate fit at each grade…

This study uses a moving windows self-paced reading task to assess both text comprehension and processing time of authentic texts and these same texts simplified to beginning and intermediate levels. Forty-eight second language learners each read 9 texts (3 different authentic, beginning, and intermediate level texts). Repeated measures ANOVAs…

Extensive studies have been conducted regarding mother tongue (L1) interference and developing English writing skills. This study, however, aims to investigate the influence of the Spanish language on second language (L2) writing skills at several Ecuadorian senior high schools in Loja. To achieve this, 351 students and 42 teachers from second…

This paper compares explicit instruction in second-language Spanish with a control treatment on a written picture description task and a timed auditory grammaticality judgment task. Participants came from two intact, third-year US high school classes, with one experiencing a week of communicative lessons on the Spanish clitic "se"…

This meta-analysis examines the effectiveness of a group of instructional approaches (i.e., cooperative, collaborative, and peer tutoring) at improving literacy outcomes for English language learners. Main effects analyses of a sample of 28 experimental and quasi-experimental studies reveal that peer-mediation is more effective for ELLs than…

This study investigates the effects of weekly heritage language (HL) classes on first language (L1) proficiency in speakers who arrived in the second language (L2)-dominant setting before the onset of puberty. Two groups of L1 Spanish--L2 Swedish bilingual high school students living in Sweden participated in the study. One group currently…

Lexical competence is now regarded to be at the heart of communicative competence. This is endorsed by psycholinguistic research and corpus linguistics which show more use of prefabricated chunks than rule-based constructions. The change has been embraced in ELT. But lexical needs are unique to the individuals, personally, professionally and…