This study replicates Felser and Roberts (2007), which used a cross-modal picture priming task to examine indirect-object dependency processing in classroom L2 learners. The replication focuses on early L2 learners with extensive naturalistic L2 exposure (n = 22)--an understudied group in the literature--and investigates whether these learners, in…

Adult first language (L1) English speakers who are advanced second language (L2) learners of Spanish demonstrate near-ceiling levels of accuracy for some features of Spanish, such as [Person] and [Number] for verbs (McCarthy, 2012; Rodgers, 2011). While for other features, such as [Aspect] for copulas (i.e. ser and estar), and [Person] and…

Many empirical findings of previous studies have suggested a connection between motivational factors and L2 writing. Nonetheless, the impact of motivational factors on the genre-based L2 writing has not gained much attention. The present study explored the extent to which the characteristics of two writing tasks involving different genres interact…

This study investigates the impact on L2 oral performance of participatory structure of strategic planning (individual vs. collaborative pair planning) and task complexity (simple vs. complex tasks) defined according to the number of elements involved. It also explores individual and collaborative planners' planning behaviours prior to simple vs.…

Syntactic priming studies in second language (L2) have contributed to understanding how L2 speakers' syntactic knowledge is represented and processed. However, little is known about social influences on L2 speakers' syntactic processing and learning. The present study investigated whether L2 speakers' syntactic priming is influenced by social…

Referential expressions such as pronouns are frequently used in conversations, and native speakers seem to understand who these expressions refer to effortlessly. Although the process of pronoun resolution seems to be easy, interpretations of pronouns are dependent on various sources of information from the discourse including morphosyntax (e.g.,…

Prior research showed that interleaved practice (studying multiple skills at once) is more effective than blocked practice (studying only one skill at a time). This study aims to replicate the benefits of interleaved practice on the proceduralization of second language (L2) syntax and further examines the role of working memory (WM) in different…

This article reports on a study in which stimulated recall data and quantitative measures of complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF) were used to address three interconnected questions in different planning conditions: (1) how learners share their limited attentional capacity with different cognitive processes of 'planner/proposer', 'translator'…

So far, the comprehension and production language modes have typically been studied separately in generative second language acquisition research, with the focus shifting from one to the other. This article revisits the asymmetric relationship between comprehension and production by examining the second language (L2) acquisition of the noun phrase…

Language learners with high working memory capacity have an advantage, all other factors being equal, during the second language acquisition (SLA) process; therefore, identifying a pedagogical intervention that can compensate for low working memory capacity would be advantageous to language learners and instructors. Extensive research on the…

The new developments in syntactic theory under Minimalism reconsiders the relation between the language faculty and general cognitive systems whereby language acquisition is accomplished by the interaction of Chomsky (2005)'s three factors: (F1) a minimally specified UG (Genetic endowment); (F2) Primary Linguistic Data (PLD), i.e., input; and (F3)…

This paper compares explicit instruction in second-language Spanish with a control treatment on a written picture description task and a timed auditory grammaticality judgment task. Participants came from two intact, third-year US high school classes, with one experiencing a week of communicative lessons on the Spanish clitic "se"…

This study aims to investigate the techniques of teaching new lexis which are adopted by non-native teachers of English language. It also aims to investigate the strategies of learning new lexis which are adopted by learners in relation to their level. The work is based on two hypotheses: It is hypothesized that there is a relationship between the…

A sample of elementary school-and high school-age deaf students in special education programs in the Australian state of Queensland using Australasian Signed English (ASE) took the Test of Syntactic Abilities (Quigley, Steinkamp, Power, & Jones, 1978) and wrote a story in response to a wordless picture sequence. Several analyses of the…

The merits of recasts have been widely debated and investigated in and out of the language classroom. This quasi-experimental study examines the impact of recasts in comparison to prompts and no corrective feedback on francophone learners' acquisition of English third person possessive determiners. Sixty-four students from three intact intensive…