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…

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,…

Construction Grammar has been a prominent framework in linguistic research for nearly three decades, attracting scholars from various disciplines, including language acquisition, corpus linguistics, and psycholinguistics. While considerable progress has been made in understanding the first language (L1) construction learning of various languages,…

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…

The effects of learner- and task-related variables on second language (L2) writing syntactic complexity (SC) have been extensively investigated. However, previous research has rarely assessed the reliability of computational tools for analyzing the SC of L2 spoken production, and we know less about the effects of such variables on L2 speaking SC.…

Language immersion programs seek to develop multilingual, multiliterate individuals able to engage with academic content. Studies of immersion students' language development provide details regarding language proficiency and accuracy, yet they generally do not address how features of written, academic language, for example, syntactic and lexical…

In the past two decades, syntactic complexity measures (e.g. the length or number of words per clause/t-unit/sentences and number of clauses per t-unit/sentence, and types of clauses used) have been widely used to determine and benchmark language proficiency development in speaking and writing. (Norris and Ortega 2009; Lu 2011). However, the…

Among the various challenges that adult and other late language learners face on their journey to achieving nativelike proficiency, chunking has been identified as one of the most difficult tasks to master. Language users are able to derive and utilize chunks during language processing -- both in the first (L1) and the second language (L2) -- yet…

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…

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…

Although several researchers have demonstrated that foreign language (FL) learning experience has a limited effect on the short-term development of second language (L2) fluency, recent studies have suggested that learners can gain long-term (over one year) benefits from FL learning experiences. As a part of the present study, 50 Japanese…

The current study examined the effects of task condition (TC; single vs. dual) and proficiency level (PL) on self-monitoring of second language (L2) speakers. Data were collected from sixty-six female L2 learners of English performing two speaking tasks under two task conditions. While performance in the single-task condition involved only…

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,…

The congruency effect--that is, faster and more accurate processing of congruent multiword units, has been demonstrated in multiple studies. It is still unclear, however, what its underlying mechanism is, and how congruency may interact with other factors. Using an acceptability judgement task, this study examined the congruency effect in…

Form-Focused Instruction (FFI) has been extensively studied, yet past experimental results are often inconsistent or even contradictory. Overly simplistic examinations of grammatical complexity and learner characteristics (e.g., L2 English proficiency) may have fueled the confusion, limiting understanding of how different FFI techniques can be…