The functioning of a vocabulary testing instrument rests in part on the test-taking actions made possible for examinees by item format, an aspect of test development that warrants consideration in second-language vocabulary research. For example, although iterations of the written receptive vocabulary levels test (VLT) have integrated improvements…

In recent years, there has been increasing debate and research regarding which modality of vocabulary knowledge has the strongest correlation to reading, with particular focus on distinctions between testing L2 form and L2 meaning, and between recall of answers from memory and recognition of answers from fixed options. However, relatively little…

This study investigates the effect of teacher's written corrective feedback (WCF) on acquisition of explicit and implicit knowledge of simple past tense by language learners. Eighty-seven Iranian beginner learners of English participated in this study. The participants were randomly assigned to three groups: focused direct WCF, focused indirect…

Sixty-eight undergraduate translation students received direct instruction in the features of news headlines and news stories. A week later, they took a test that required them to identify the syntactic and lexical features of a sample of news headlines and news stories, supply deleted word, and substitute punctuation marks, infinitives, and block…

We examined the role of modality in learning second language (L2) grammar and forming implicit (unconscious) and explicit (conscious) knowledge. To this end, we isolated the effects of the physical medium of input (i.e., aural or visual) from those of the presentation method (i.e., word-by-word or simultaneous). We also explored the role of test…

The focus of this article is on the written feedback that supervisors say they often give their second language (L2) doctoral students. Little is known about the focus of this feedback and about what supervisors consider as priorities in the early draft writing of dissertation chapters. Given the potentially different priorities and foci of…

This is a study with descriptive hypothesis-testing design investigating the true nature of L2 grammatical proficiency via focusing on its component parts. It examines the performance of 60 female EFL learners between 19 and 30 years of age at 2 proficiency levels using 2 types of computerized Grammaticality Judgement tasks in different orders…