If maximal exposure were the key to success in language learning, then adult learners at the university level would be doomed to fail. Not only are they presumably too old to learn additional languages effectively, but target language (TL) input appears to be insufficient, especially when other languages are allowed in class. Nevertheless,…

Despite the extensive research on bilingual development, our understanding of how lexical competition unfolds in the bilingual mind remains limited. Previous studies have predominantly focused on crosslinguistic competition, neglecting the examination of the competition process within each language and the influence of diverse bilingual…

Recent research on advanced theory of mind (ToM) has questioned the extent to which existing ToM measures capture a single construct, particularly for groups understudied in developmental research. The present study examined the factor structure of one of the most commonly used advanced ToM measures, the Strange Stories task, in samples of low-…

Controversy about whether English for General Purposes (EGP) or English for Specific Purposes (ESP) should be taught at university courses has attracted the attention of language teachers and researchers in Mexican higher education during the last decade. However, moving towards ESP remains a complex task since EFL instructors and authorities are…

The elicited imitation task (EIT), in which language learners listen to a series of spoken sentences and repeat each one verbatim, is a commonly used measure of language proficiency in second language acquisition research. The "TOEFL® Essentials"™ test includes an EIT as a holistic measure of speaking proficiency, referred to as the…

The aim of this study was to examine the characteristics of teacher education that were more likely, or less likely, to influence teachers' beliefs. The participants were five university English teachers in Mexico, and the study adopted a qualitative "life history" approach in order to elicit a wide range of experiences from each…

This paper examines the strategies used by speakers of Spanish as a second language (L2) for marking Information Focus, a phenomenon found at the syntax-discourse interface. Sorace and colleagues have proposed the Interface Hypothesis, according to which the syntax-discourse interface poses unique challenges for bilinguals (Sorace, 2011). With…

The goal of this paper is to describe a group of adult Mexican English learners' ideologies about different APPRAISAL patterns in English-language scientific texts. APPRAISAL is a descriptive framework of the linguistic resources used to convey feelings and attitudes (Martin & White, 2005). This topic is particularly interesting in EAP…

Despite a growing amount of research on collaborative dialogue during task performance, little attention has been given to the occurrence of collaborative dialogue across task modality and its impact on language development. To expand our current understanding of task modality effects on learning opportunities, we examined the process of engaging…

I examine whether teaching formulaic language raises English as a foreign language learners' awareness of pragmatic resources when expressing requests. To carry out this research I adopt a qualitative self-reflective approach which encourages students to use formulaic language when making requests. By responding to discourse completion tasks,…

In native speakers of gender-marking languages, mechanisms of gender production appear to be affected by the morphophonological cues to gender present in the noun phrase. This influence is manifested in higher levels of production accuracy when more transparent cues to gender are present in comparison to when they are not. The goal of the present…

Due to the growing number of plurilingual learners in the world today (Hammarberg, 2010), the present multiple case study examines four plurilingual participants' beliefs toward first language (L1) and second language (L2) mediation in the acquisition of French as a third language (L3). During a 16-week classroom-based study in a French university…

This study compares Spanish morphosyntax error types and magnitude in monolingual Spanish and Spanish-English bilingual children with typical language development (TD) and language impairment (LI). Performance across groups was compared using cloze tasks that targeted articles, clitics, subjunctives, and derivational morphemes in 57 children.…

The importance of teachers in the success of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) is unquestionable. However, designing a teacher course on TBLT raises many questions concerning "what" and "how" it can be implemented. Can teachers' professional development be promoted through Task-Based Instruction (TBI)? This paper explores…