The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of explicit corrective feedback (CF) strategies (i.e., metalinguistic feedback and explicit correction) versus implicit CF methods (i.e., recasts and explanation questions) in helping English language learners acquire the that-trace filter. To this end, one hundred twenty intermediate…

Research has investigated how lexical-semantic and participant factors impact word learning in young children and adults. However, limited information pertaining to expressive vocabulary development exists for school-aged bilinguals--particularly those with developmental language disorder (DLD). Cross-linguistic differences in the semantic…

Previous studies on lexical focus on form (FonF) have mostly centred on FonF in reading with a few pre-selected lexical items. This study investigated the contribution of oral incidental FonF to developing learners' lexical knowledge in a free discussion EFL class. Incidental FonF was provided to 15 upper-intermediate learners who participated in…

We examined sources of morphological variability in second language (L2) learners of Spanish whose native language (L1) is English, with a focus on L1-L2 similarity, morphological markedness, and knowledge type (receptive vs. expressive). Experiment 1 uses event-related potentials to examine noun-adjective number (present in L1) and gender…

The DAPPLE (Dynamic Assessment of Preschoolers' Proficiency in Learning English) is currently being developed in response to a clinical need. Children exposed to English as an additional language may be referred to speech and language therapy because their proficiency in English is not the same as their monolingual peers. Some, but not all, of…

Mastery of grammatical gender is difficult to achieve in a second language (L2). This study investigates whether persistent difficulty with grammatical gender often observed in the speech of otherwise highly proficient L2 learners is best characterized as a production-specific performance problem, or as difficulty with the retrieval of gender…