Bilingualism is a multi-faceted experience and bilinguals differ in how they use their languages in daily life. Therefore, assessments of bilingualism that consider the role of (social) context are needed when describing bilinguals. In this study, we evaluated how (reliably) the Language and Social Background Questionnaire (LSBQ; Anderson et al.…

This research explores how Internet-based video-conferencing technology can be used to deliver and conduct a speaking test, and what similarities and differences can be discerned between the standard and computer-mediated face-to-face modes. The context of the study is a high-stakes speaking test, and the motivation for the research is the need…

Adults demonstrate difficulty and pronounced variability when developing second language (L2) grammatical knowledge and reading skills. We examine explanations in terms of individual differences in working memory (WM). Despite numerous studies, the association between WM and adult second language (L2) acquisition remains unclear, and longitudinal…

Relative clause is one of the most important language points in College English Examination. Teachers have been attaching great importance to the teaching of relative clause, but the outcomes are not satisfactory. Based on Error Analysis theory, this article aims to explore the reasons why senior high school students find it difficult to choose…

This study compares focus on form in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and mainstream English as a Foreign Language (EFL) contexts in the production of a specific morphological feature, the English 3rd person singular present tense marker "-s." Research conducted in CLIL contexts to date examining morphosyntactic features…

This article reports on an investigation of the role raters' language background plays in raters' assessment of test takers' speaking ability. Specifically, this article examines differences between American and Indian raters in their scores and scoring processes when rating Indian test takers' responses to the Test of English as a Foreign…

This study examines the lexical representation and recall of abstract words by beginning L2 learners of Spanish in the light of the predictions of the dual coding theory (Paivio 1971; Paivio and Desrochers 1980). Ninety-seven learners (forty-four males and fifty-three females) were randomly placed in the picture or non-picture group and taught…

The current study, with 409 fourth graders in two-way immersion programs, explored the writing self-perceptions of native English and native Spanish speakers and the relationship between self-perceptions and writing performance. An adapted version of the Writer Self-Perception Scale (WSPS) was administered along with a writing task. Native English…

Krashen (2004) has advocated that narrow reading, i.e., reading a series of texts addressing one specific topic, is an effective method to grow vocabulary. While narrow reading has been championed to have many advantages for L2 vocabulary learning, there remains a relative dearth of empirical studies that test the impact of narrow reading on L2…

Implicit and explicit knowledge of the second language (L2) are two central constructs in the field of second language acquisition (SLA). In recent years, there has been a renewed interest in obtaining valid and reliable measures of L2 learners' implicit and explicit knowledge (e.g., Bowles, 2011; R. Ellis, 2005). The purpose of the present study…

The relationship between multiple intelligences and learning of L2 language skills is a burgeoning area of research. This study aimed at finding the relationship between Multiple Intelligences (MI) and the writing ability of EFL learners. For this purpose, the body of female BA sophomores in TEFL at Urmia University (N = 47), within the age range…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine sentence-recognition performance for a large, diverse group of nonnative speakers of English on the recently developed Basic English Lexicon (BEL) sentence materials and to determine whether BEL sentence lists are equated in difficulty for this population. Method: The BEL sentences were presented…

This study investigated whether raters' second language (L2) background and the first language (L1) of test takers taking the TOEFL iBT® Speaking test were related through scoring. After an initial 4-hour training period, a group of 107 raters (mostly of learners of Chinese, Korean, and Spanish), listened to a selection of 432 speech samples that…

What do we do when we read in another language? How do we make sense of the lexical and syntactic structures on the page? This study's development and use of the Miscue Coding for Metacognitive Strategies (MCMS), a foreign language assessment tool, offers language students and instructors a holistic approach to considering these questions. In this…

Motivated by cognitive theories of graph comprehension, this study systematically manipulated characteristics of a line graph description task in a speaking test in ways to mitigate the influence of graph familiarity, a potential source of construct-irrelevant variance. It extends Xi (2005), which found that the differences in holistic scores on…