Knowledge of derivational affixes makes an important contribution to second language learners' success when reading. Yet while the effects of some learner variables (L2 proficiency, L1 background) have been investigated, there has been little research addressing the effects of varying characteristics of affixes on their acquisition. The goal of…

The study compares three synonymous nouns, "disadvantage," "downside," and "drawback," in terms of their frequency, distribution patterns, and collocations, using data from the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). The findings show that the frequency of "disadvantage" is the highest, followed by…

Inaudible syntactic markers are especially difficult to spell. This paper examines how 455 fourth graders spell silent French plural markers in a dictation with real and pseudowords after one year of formal French instruction (L2). The Generalized Linear Mixed Model analysis shows first that noun plural spelling (real and pseudo) is a strong…

Arabic orthography is mainly presented either in shallow orthography (with all diacritics) for novice students or in deep orthography (without diacritics) for superior readers. However, the shallow orthography is heavily loaded with diacritics which may burden the reading process, whereas deep orthography can cause ambiguity (heterophonic…

This study examined how Chinese native speakers (NSs) and second language (L2) learners process compound words. The findings showed that they used the hybrid model of coexistence for whole word and morphemes; and were influenced by word frequency, semantic transparency, and word structure. The results revealed that two groups of participants used…

The study explored the impact of proficiency, frequency, L1-L2 congruency, and semantic transparency on the knowledge of multi-word units (MWUs) among Iranian L2 learners (N = 256). A gap-filling test was used to assess learners' productive knowledge, employing a high-frequency MWU list created with the lemmatised concgramming method. The list,…

The present study aims to reveal the use of high-frequency verbs "make" and "do" when they occur in a verb+noun combination in the argumentative essays of Turkish learners of English. In this context, the present study investigated the grammatical and semantic patterns and erroneous productions in the learner corpus. The…

This research explored the effectiveness of using the word network technique to teach English vocabulary to first graders in Thai Primary schools. The 150 top-frequency words used in three nationally-used textbooks were inventoried. The list of the words then was compared with the list proposed by the Ministry of Education, Thailand. The combined…

Due to the large number of near-synonyms present in the English language, English learners frequently struggle to use near-synonyms in different contexts, as these words, despite similar meanings, are not always interchangeable. This study examines the distribution and collocation of three synonyms, "important," "significant,"…

For English language learners, mastering the use of near-synonyms can be challenging. Despite the semantic similarities of English synonyms, they are not interchangeable in all contexts. The objectives of this corpus-based study are to examine differences between the near-synonymous adjectives "blank," "empty" and…

Synonyms can be problematic for EFL learners since each synonym has distinct meanings to be used in different context. The purposes of this corpus-based study are to investigate distinctions of the synonymous nouns purpose, goal and objective based on the distribution across genres in which the degree of formality is determined and to examine…

This study used an eye-tracking method to examine whether Chinese translation equivalents activated by English prime words can continue to activate their Chinese homophones. With 30 English prime words, and 60 Chinese target words as materials, the experiment used a Tobii eye-tracking device to collect data from 30 university students while…

This study explored second language (L2) competence in discontinuous discursive formulaic sequences, namely Chinese correlative connectives (CCCs; e.g. yinwei . . . suy 'because . . . so'), in relation to the determinants of formulaic sequence acquisition by scrutinizing L2 Chinese learners' performance on two controlled tasks. Mixed-effects…

This research was prompted by the phenomenon of binge-watching Korean television series (K-drama) amongst college students in Taiwan, where English as a foreign language (EFL) is a required course. The researcher-teacher sought to create a pedagogically useful list of the frequent semantically non-compositional multi-word expressions (MWEs) for…

Aural vocabulary knowledge (AVK) of high-frequency words is critical for second language listening comprehension. However, learners of English as a foreign language (EFL), despite considerable periods of language study, often do not have the AVK needed for basic communicative competence. A mixed methods approach is applied to determine whether…