Although lexical diversity is often used as a measure of productive proficiency (e.g., as an aspect of lexical complexity) in SLA studies involving oral tasks, relatively little research has been conducted to support the reliability and/or validity of these indices in spoken contexts. Furthermore, SLA researchers commonly use indices of lexical…

In the Afro-Colombian community of San Basilio de Palenque, there are school-based efforts to revitalize the once-endangered creole language Palenquero. At present, most Palenquero language classes do not include grammatical instruction, active student production, or corrective feedback, and there is little or no communication in Palenquero…

This study builds upon previous research investigating the construct validity of phraseological complexity as an index of L2 development and proficiency. Whereas previous studies have focused on cross-sectional comparisons of written productions across proficiency levels, the current study compares the "longitudinal" development of…

The present study investigated the effects of exposure to Chinese orthography on learning phonological forms of new words in learners of Chinese as a second language. A total of 30 adult learners of Chinese studied spoken label and picture associations presented either with phonologically accurate characters, characters with partial phonological…

This review examines and integrates studies of second language (L2) vocabulary instruction with adult learners in a laboratory setting, using a framework provided by a modified version of the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994), the Revised Hierarchical Model-Repetition Elaboration Retrieval. By examining how various training…

This study assessed the extent to which captions, textually unenhanced and enhanced, can draw learners' attention to and promote the acquisition of a second language (L2) grammatical construction. A pretest-posttest-delayed posttest experimental design was employed. Seventy-two Korean learners of English were randomly assigned to an enhanced…

We investigated how grapheme familiarity and grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) congruence affect adult learners' ability to make use of orthographic input (OI) during phono-lexical acquisition. Native English speakers, with no Russian experience (naïve) or learners of Russian, heard auditory forms, saw pictured meanings, and saw written input…

Two eye-tracking experiments tested (a) whether L2 learners benefit from the consistency of input modality (auditory instead of written processing instruction [PI] training) and (b) whether they benefit from training using the same voice as the test voice. Results confirmed a robust effect of PI training on picture-selection accuracy, yet the…

This study examines heritage speakers' knowledge of Standard Arabic (SA) and compares their patterns of SA acquisition to those of learners of SA as second/foreign language (L2). In addition, the study examines the influence of previously acquired language varieties, including Colloquial Arabic (QA), on SA acquisition. To this end, the study…

Meta-analytic research suggests an edge of explicit over implicit instruction for the development of complex L2 grammatical structures, but the jury is still out as to which type of explicit instruction--"deductive" or "inductive," where rules are respectively provided or elicited--proves more effective. Avoiding this…

Conducted in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classrooms at the university level in China, this quasi-experimental study compared the effects of three different corrective feedback treatments on 72 Chinese learners' use of regular and irregular English past tense. Three classes were randomly assigned to a prompt group, a recast group, or a…

This article examines whether there is any difference between the effect of oral and written corrective feedback (CF) on learners' accurate use of English articles. To this end, the current research presents the results of a quasi-experimental study with a pretest, immediate-posttest, delayed-posttest design, using 12 intact intermediate…

This study examines the effectiveness of written error corrections versus reformulations of second language learners' writing as two means of improving learners' grammatical accuracy on a three-stage composition-comparison-revision task. Concurrent verbal protocols were employed during the comparison stage in order to study the learners' reported…

This partial replication of an earlier study that found second language (L2) learners of Spanish have trouble simultaneously attending to meaning and form of aural input addresses the effect of modality on attention to meaning and form by including a written mode and using English as a Second Language. Revealed listening was more difficult than…

Investigates the effects of awareness, or lack thereof, on 32 adult second or foreign language learners' subsequent intake and written production of targeted Spanish morphological forms. Think-aloud protocol data were used to measure awareness or lack of it, and morphological learning was assessed by the learners' performances on two postexposure…