Cognitive load can be defined as the amount of mental effort that performing a specific task imposes on a learner's cognitive system. It can be measured by the number of new concepts embedded in a learning task. English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, with their limited English proficiency and minimal entry knowledge of a subject matter,…

This article discusses practical considerations in developing tests of listening comprehension in second language learning with a particular emphasis on the choice of listening passages and assessment tasks. The listening construct is defined as the process of receiving, attending to, and assigning meaning to aural stimuli. Questions should be…

Pedagogical grammar is the presentation of grammatical information for teaching purposes. Two important distinctions are relevant here: reference books versus teaching grammars programmed into a course, and generalized versus specialized grammars, (depending on the extent to which they have been designed to meet specific teaching/learning…

Nonverbal context is important in the language acquisition process. The present study compares different amounts and ordering of pictorial context with respect to their effect on learning word-referent relations in a second language. Twenty-five monolingual English-speaking high school students were shown twenty Spanish sentences and pictures of…

The use of mass media as a means of learning a foreign language from the beginning of language study is discussed. Using the media enables many of the features of the natural language acquisition process to be brought into play in a way that much current language teaching material does not. This position is supported by recent research into the…

This study investigates the role of inferencing in cloze test performance and the factors that facilitate that inferencing. Four groups of high school students learning French as a second language completed sets of cloze passages under four treatment conditions. Three conditions provided a potential cue to inferencing, while the fourth was a…