The present study investigates the effects of two subsequent learning contexts, formal instruction (FI) at home and a 3-month stay abroad (SA), on vocabulary acquisition in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing and speaking. Data were collected from 30 Catalan/Spanish learners of English before and after each learning period using a written…

Familiarity with learning contexts is important in the field of mobile-assisted language learning (MALL). Several review studies on MALL have been published to date. However, scholars have not covered certain aspects of familiar contexts in their reviews, such as which learning/instructional methodologies support learning in familiar contexts or…

With use of self-assessment (SA) of young language learners on the rise, educators of young learners often want to know what SA captures and how best to use it in order to assist their students' learning. This study focuses on understanding how young learners' processes for responding to SA items differ by age and by context of implementation…

The use of English-origin spontaneous loanwords (e.g., "la babysitter," "el counter," etc.) in otherwise Spanish discourse is criticized by many as a strategy that bilinguals use to compensate for a lack of lexical knowledge in Spanish. The purpose of the current research is to examine the question of lexical proficiency as a…

Emotions are a fleeting experience, sometimes lasting only moments before dissipating. Prior research in SLA has either ignored emotions, underestimated their relevance, or has studied them as a relatively stable individual difference variable. In contrast, the present study takes an idiodynamic approach to examine the rapidly changing…

This paper explores the role that translation may play in developing the symbolic competence of advanced-level bilingual learners. To this end, it examines how a group of bilingual learners engaged with a translation task that was assigned to them as part of their study in an advanced-level Japanese language class at an Australian university.…

An Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) may be evaluated either during the interview procedure (direct-method) or from a tape-made oral interaction (semi-direct method). Such variety in methods of assessment can influence test takers' scores extensively. However, it is not conclusive whether such differences are due to test format or something else.…

This mixed-methods study investigates writers' task representation and the factors affecting it in test-like and non-test-like conditions. Five advanced-level L2 writers wrote two argumentative essays each, one in test-like conditions and the other in non-test-like conditions where the participants were allowed to use all the time and online…

This study aims to examine refusal strategies of Turkish learners of English and explore their perceptions of social factors that are influential in their strategy use. The study was conducted at a private university in the west of Turkey, and eighty Turkish L2 learners enrolled at an English language preparatory program participated in the study.…

Exploring opportunities by which learners can internalize new knowledge and consolidate existing knowledge has long been a point of interest in English as a foreign language research. This study investigated how meta-talk opportunities on discourse markers created by four task types including text reconstruction, dictogloss, translation and jigsaw…

The present mixed-methods study examined the role of learner appraisals of speech tasks in second language (L2) French fluency. Forty adult learners in a Canadian immersion program participated in the study that compared four sources of data: (1) objectively measured utterance fluency in participants' performances of three narrative tasks…

The role of self-regulation in general learning has been investigated for some time now. Its significance and contribution to second language (L2) listening, however, has yet to be discussed extensively with empirical support. This article reports a case study involving four college EFL students in China over a six-month period of self-regulated…

This study extends the evidence for implicit second language (L2) learning, which comes largely from (semi-)artificial language research, to German. Upper-intermediate L2 German learners were flooded with spoken exemplars of a difficult morphological structure, namely strong, vowel-changing verbs. Toward the end of exposure, the mandatory vowel…

In an increasingly multi-territorialized and interdependent world, people are getting more in touch with each other than ever before through many mass media services. This provides the possibility to overcome geographical boarders in order to build new relationships that foster mutual interests in economical and socio-cultural aspects from…

This case study aimed to explore best practice in applying task-based language teaching (TBLT) via a Web-conferencing tool, Blackboard Collaborate, in a beginners' online Chinese course by evaluating the pedagogical values and limitations of the software and the tasks designed. Chapelle's (2001) criteria for computer-assisted language learning…