Answering calls to map college-level proficiency development (Modern Language Association, 2007) and longitudinally chart language learning (Barkaoui, 2014; Ortega & Byrnes, 2008), we mapped the oral proficiency growth of 1,922 lower-division college students of Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish (in the second, third, or fourth semester of…

Recent currents in language learning research highlight the social and emergent aspects of second language (L2) development and recognize that learners need opportunities for interaction in meaningful contexts supported by explicit attention to language itself. These perspectives suggest new ways of conceptualizing the challenges faced by children…

Learning context has increasingly been postulated to exert an influence on the dynamics of individual differences in language learning. In a longitudinal design that tested the proficiency gains of 1,682 learners over a 2-year foreign language program, a multilevel modeling approach was deployed in this study to account for variation in second…

Learning the Chinese tone system is a major challenge to students of Chinese as a second or foreign language. Part of the problem is that the spoken Chinese syllable presents a complex perceptual input that overlaps tone with segments. This complexity can be addressed through directing attention to the critical features of a component (tone in…

This article analyzes whether the distribution of the hours of classroom practice has any effect on students' foreign language gains by comparing two types of EFL (English as a foreign language) programs: one in which the hours of instruction are distributed in long sessions over a short period (intensive course) and another in which the students…