Inaudible syntactic markers are especially difficult to spell. This paper examines how 455 fourth graders spell silent French plural markers in a dictation with real and pseudowords after one year of formal French instruction (L2). The Generalized Linear Mixed Model analysis shows first that noun plural spelling (real and pseudo) is a strong…

The effectiveness of English Language Teaching (ELT) materials significantly influences the learning outcomes of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, positioning these resources as cardinal in the acquisition process. Despite this widely acknowledged significance, there remains a notable gap in research concerning the evaluation of key…

The present study examines the mechanisms of lexical case acquisition in Russian by two-to-five-year-old Russian monolingual (n = 54) and Russian-English bilingual children (n = 38). Participants performed a picture-based sentence completion task. Sentences were constructed to elicit production of real Russian words (n = 24) and nonce words (n =…

L3 acquisition is influenced by L1-L3 typology, learners' proficiency in those languages, and metalinguistic knowledge. However, the precise patterns of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in L3 acquisition are still unclear. This study aimed to examine how the abovementioned factors affect learners' sensitivity to subject placement in L3 Italian. We…

This study is an investigation of the effects of linguistic features on quality of second language (L2) writers' essays for writing course placement at Indiana University Bloomington (IUB), and by implication at other universities and colleges. This study addresses the following research questions: (1) To what extent do selected linguistic…

This study presents the first multifactorial corpus-based analysis of verb-particle constructions in a data sample comprising spoken and written productions by intermediate-level learners of English as a second language from 17 language backgrounds. We annotated 4,911 attestations retrieved from native speaker and language learner corpora for 14…

Morphological knowledge has been identified as a significant sub-skill in bilingual listening comprehension, and lexical researchers consider listening comprehension an essential means for language learning. The current research attempted to examine the crucial four derivative word classes (adverb, adjective, verb, and noun) to represent knowledge…

This study aimed to identify second language (L2) developmental indices while controlling for the effects of first language (L1). More specifically, this study investigated the differences in the use of metadiscourse markers among learners from different L1 backgrounds. The following research questions were explored: (1) Which metadiscourse…

Cohesion features were calculated for a corpus of 960 essays by 480 test-takers from the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) in order to examine differences in the use of cohesion devices between integrated (source-based) writing and independent writing samples. Cohesion indices were measured using an automated textual analysis tool, the…

Reading comprehension in L2 has been shown to be correlated to vocabulary and grammatical knowledge. However, little is known about the relative contribution of morphosyntactic knowledge in this language competence. In the present study we investigated the contribution of morphosyntactic knowledge of some particular grammatical elements to the…

Languages differ in their preferences for particular intensifying constructions. While intensifying adjectival compounds (IACs) (e.g. "ijskoud, ice-cold") are productively used to express intensification in Dutch and English, in French this construction is hardly productive. Consequently, French-speaking learners may encounter…

Cross-linguistically, monolingual children produce target-like inflected verbs much earlier than they can reliably distinguish between singular and plural subject-verb agreement morphology in comprehension (i.e. Johnson, V., J. de Villiers, and H. Seymour. 2005. "Agreement Without Understanding? The Case of Third Person Singular /s/."…

Although bilingual individuals know 2 languages, research suggests that the languages are not separate in the mind. This is especially evident when a bilingual individual switches languages midsentence, indicating that mental representations are, to some degree, overlapping or integrated across the 2 languages. In 2 eye-tracking experiments, we…

This study uses a mixed-effects model to examine the acquisition of targetlike patterns of phonological variation by 17 English-speaking learners of French during study abroad in France. Naturalistic speech data provide evidence for the incipient acquisition of a phonological variable showing sociostylistic variation in native speaker speech: the…

Communicative adequacy is a key construct in second language research, as the primary goal of most language learners is to communicate successfully in real-world situations. Nevertheless, little is known about what linguistic features contribute to communicatively adequate speech. This study fills this gap by investigating the extent to which…