Acquisition of the perfective marker "-le" in Mandarin Chinese is a daunting task for second language learners. To date, there has been no consensus on what it is about "-le" that makes it such a challenge to learners. This study investigates the acquisition of "-le" from both a lexical perspective and a discourse…

"A Dictionary and Thesaurus of Contemporary Figurative Language and Metaphor" (2024) upgrades ED628218 (ERIC) with labels and analysis and brings the work up to date to reflect language change at the speed of the internet, ChatGPT, social discord, and bloody wars. The dictionary identifies language used figuratively in everyday…

This study investigates the distribution and challenges of verb inflection usage among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students at Tadulako University, focusing on regular verb inflection namely the use of suffixes such as -ed, -s, -ing, and -en suffixes as well as irregular verbs such as ablaut, suppletion, and zero modification in tenses and…

"A Dictionary and Thesaurus of Contemporary Figurative Language and Metaphor" (2023) upgrades ED619049 (ERIC) and finishes its work. The dictionary identifies language used figuratively in everyday contemporary English--to include the language of "inclusion & exclusion" and "contempo-speak"--along with its…

As an important practice for researchers, citing sources is a challenging task for undergraduate students as they deal with the types of citation forms, the variety of reporting verbs and their tenses, and the writer stances through reporting verbs. Therefore, the current research is aimed at investigating the surface forms, reporting verb tenses,…

Modifying and hedging one's claims appropriately is an important characteristic of academic writing. This study focuses on the three main English modal verbs used to express "epistemic possibility" to avoid making strong statements, viz., "may", "might", and "could". The purpose of this corpus-based study is…

In order to facilitate the instruction and acquisition of EFL writing, this paper compares the uses of the light verb "get" in English writing by Chinese and L1 undergraduates by drawing on insights from the theory of norms and exploitations (TNE). Corpus pattern analysis (CPA) is conducted to analyze the data taken from two comparable…

Purpose: Audio-visual translation (AVT) is recognized as the most vibrant type of translation. While AVT plays a vital function in the field of translation, its significance within cultural studies hasn't been thoroughly investigated. This research aims to uncover the predominant techniques employed in translating idiomatic expressions found in…

Due to the typological differences between Korean's aspect system and English's aspect system in terms of progressive construction "-ko iss," learners can no doubt have difficulty acquiring and using the "-ko iss" construction in learner Korean. This dissertation investigates two main points: (i) how is the "-ko iss"…

Usage-based theory has proposed that learning of linguistic constructions is facilitated by input that contains few high-frequency exemplars, in what is known as a skewed (or Zipfian) input distribution. Early empirical work provided support to this idea, but subsequent L2 research has provided mixed findings. However, previous approaches have not…

The purpose of this article is to help ESL (English as a Second Language) students or English language learners (ELLs) how to express or use moods correctly when they study English. The expression of moods was summarized and illustrated from various examples cited or given, on the basis of the writer's more than twenty years' teaching experience…

The third and latest (2022) edition of this dictionary and thesaurus of contemporary figurative language and metaphor has been updated to better reflect the language of groups, social media, and social change. The work seeks to identify language used figuratively in everyday contemporary English, along with its distinguishing collocates. The first…

Natural languages contain systematic relationships between verb meaning and verb argument structure. Artificial language learning studies typically remove those relationships and instead pair verb meanings randomly with structures. Adult participants in such studies can detect statistical regularities associated with words in these languages and…

The translanguaging theory encourages language teachers to view their learners' linguistic backgrounds as a resource for creative expression. This article proposes an autoethnographically oriented application of the translanguging approach to studying emergent bilingual creativity in online communication. It includes three steps--storytelling,…

"Call to Action 93" requests revision of the Canadian citizenship materials to include more information about treaties and residential schools. Although the citizenship materials have been analyzed in terms of how they present the concepts of citizenship, multiculturalism, and Canadian values, little work has been done on how…