The paper discusses the interpretation of adversative clauses introduced by "pero" and concessive clauses introduced by "aunque" in Spanish. Specifically, the discussion centers around structures that exhibit the forms: (i) "A, pero B," (ii) "A, aunque B-INDICATIVE," and (iii) "A, aunque…

Technological advances have made the ability to translate no longer exclusively belong to humans. Today, machine translation has turned into a tool with superior performance to convert text between languages without the need for human intervention. One of the translation research foci is the studies of causative translation, especially from…

To avoid plagiarism, students have to learn the appropriate and effective ways of source text use, such as paraphrasing, summarizing, and citation. However, few studies have investigated how learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) employ copy and paraphrase as source text use strategies in completing writing tasks involving reading…

Despite the widely used word lists in English as a second or foreign language learning, few attempts have been made to create an academic spoken collocation list, which holds significant potential for enhancing learners' aural and oral abilities in academic communication. This study created a list of the most frequently used and pedagogically…

When teaching Mandarin Chinese classifiers, teachers usually ask students to memorize 'classifier + noun', phrases as collocations. Given that Mandarin Chinese has a vast and complicated system of classifiers, the rote memorization of 'classifier + noun' collocations is challenging and monotonous. Therefore, the present study aims to improve that…

In second language (L2) vocabulary studies there is continuing interest in tests of depth of vocabulary knowledge, measuring various aspects of word knowledge other than just the form--meaning link that is the focus of breadth (or size) tests. This study aimed to explore new formats that could be used as diagnostic tools for assessing depth of…

The adjustment of syntactic and phraseological complexity is a key consideration in text adaptation. However, research on this topic in the context of Chinese as a second language (CSL) remains limited. Using 700 CSL reading texts graded following the newly issued Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education,…

This study aims to provide a comprehensive profile of collocational competence, a key component of one's overall linguistic competence. For the maximum of ecological validity, we elicited naturalistic oral/written production data from 84 Chinese intermediate EFL learners and performed a 2×2 fashion of analysis on their performance in each of the…

"A Dictionary of Contemporary Figurative Language" is meant to be an appendix to an earlier, more comprehensive work: ED648945, "A Dictionary and Thesaurus of Contemporary Figurative Language and Metaphor 2024." This appendix simply updates the dictionary of that previous work to better reflect the language used during the 2024…

Collocations, a crucial component of language competence, remain a challenge for L2 learners across all proficiency levels. While the data-driven learning (DDL) approach has shown great potential for collocation learning from a shorter-term perspective, this study investigates its effectiveness in the long term, examining both linguistic gains and…

Multi-word expressions are formulaic language universals with arbitrary and idiosyncratic collocations. Their usage and mastery are required of learners of a second language in achieving naturalness. However, despite the importance of multi-word expressions to mastering a second language, their syntactic architecture and colligational…

Despite the growing interest in AI for language assessment, there remains a significant research gap regarding its usefulness for assessing less proficient language skills, particularly those of learners of English as a second or foreign language (S/FL). AI models often prioritize proficient writing, neglecting the intricacies of learner language.…

Chunking, the process of breaking texts into meaningful units, is a fundamental skill in interpreting. This study investigates the potential benefits of a computer-assisted chunking method, visual-syntactic text formatting (VSTF) to improve translators' performance. In the study, three passages with similar readability were randomly presented to…

The present study investigates L1 and L2 English speakers' knowledge of the "wh"-clausal construction along the parameters of (a) conventionality, distinguishing between high-frequency conventional and low-frequency unconventional formulations ("I asked him why they agreed/why did they agree"), and (b) proposition type,…

This study investigates the effectiveness of a computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) system on second language learners' acquisition of three grammatical features. It presents a CAPT system on top of a phoneme-based, fine-tuned speech recognition model, and is intended to deliver explicit, corrective feedback on the pronunciation of the…