Codeswitching is a common feature of bilingual language practices, yet its impact on word learning is poorly understood. Critically, processing costs associated with codeswitching may extend to learning. Moreover, verbs tend to be more difficult to learn than nouns, and the challenges of learning verbs could compound with processing costs…

This study examined the influence of cognate status and language distance on simultaneous bilingual children's vocabulary acquisition. It aimed to tease apart effects of word-level similarities and language-level similarities, while also exploring the role of individual-level variation in age, exposure, and nontarget language proficiency. Children…

This study investigates the developmental trajectory of progressive construction among Chinese and Japanese EFL learners through a usage-based approach. A total of 600 written essays, produced by EFL learners from China and Japan with proficiency levels ranging from elementary to upper-intermediate, were analyzed. The findings reveal that advanced…

This article presents a theoretical review of and methodological guidelines for the study of two key notions in second language acquisition research, complexity and difficulty. The term "complexity" has gained considerable currency over the past decades and has taken on a wide range of meanings. We argue for a more restricted…

People use different communication patterns based on the context and who they are addressing. These differences, known as linguistic register, are common across human speech and recognized early in development. Here, we examine 4-11-year-old American children's (N = 227) ability to use linguistic registers to determine a speaker's addressee as…

This study analyzed linguistic errors as part of the Differentiated Distance Education of Turkish as a Foreign Language Project, which pursues the development of an adaptive MOOC for Turkish as a second language. Therefore, the Turkish CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) A1-level writing exam papers of 177 learners were…

This paper provides fresh insights on how PIs (Polarity Items) in non-veridical contexts (questions and conditionals) are represented in the grammar of multilingual learners of Catalan at different stages of development. It explores how this non-native grammatical system interacts with other previously acquired systems of negation and the implicit…

While it is widely accepted that language teachers require knowledge of second language acquisition (SLA) (Richards, 2010), what about content teachers, who are increasingly required to help develop their learners' academic language proficiency? How much do they need to know about SLA theories and how can they acquire such knowledge and expertise?…

Numerous studies indicate that the language and literacy development of young children is highly contingent upon the construction of an enriching home literacy environment. Using sociocultural theory as a framework, in this article I explore how a bilingual child's language and literacy acquisition is embedded as a social practice within the home…

Second language acquisition (SLA) researchers have long searched for patterning in the development of linguistic elements (e.g., grammar and morphology). However, little attention has been given to the examination of systematicity in vocabulary acquisition, limiting our understanding about how overall vocabulary is learnt. The current study…

This study explores the perspectives of the two authors, who have very different language backgrounds, reflecting the subtleties of first and additional language development. We distinguish between a 'literacy-track' (i.e. starting from written language) and an oracy track (starting from spoken language). We draw on duoethnography for our dialogic…

Despite the unique status of English as a super-power among foreign languages in Korea, and researchers' increasing interest in Korean parents' zeal for achieving their children's early bilingualism and willingness to invest heavily in private English education outside of school, insufficient attention has been paid to the role of parental…

Background: The article critiques the monoglossic ideologies that dominate current educational practices in South Africa, which often marginalise indigenous African languages and fail to facilitate the dynamic multilingual realities of learners. It examines the impact of English language pedagogies in multilingual settings, particularly in South…

The research report describes the ability of Kazakh preschool children to tell narratives relating to mental states, and the connection with theory of mind tasks about false beliefs. Three groups of preschool children (N = 29; 3-, 4-, and 5- year-olds) from the city of Almaty were tested in the Kazakh language. The results show very high…

The practices of sorting things out and bringing things together, which I summarise under the term relanguaging, sit between fluid, situated languaging practices and the administrative standard grid in education that relies on bounded, named languages. Relanguaging, I argue, was invisible to socio- and applied linguists' analytical vision because…