Guided by both the interactionist and sociocultural learning theories, this study investigates the interactive communications in text-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) and face-to-face (FTF) oral communication environments and the impacts they bring to subsequent L2 Chinese speaking. Learners' perspectives on using…

This article reports on an empirical study of L3 Mandarin, aiming to shed light on transfer effects and their interaction with other factors throughout the L3 acquisition trajectory. A fill-in-the-blank task was employed to examine L2 and L3 acquisition of three types of Mandarin sentence-final particle clusters. Participants in the study were…

Acquisition of the perfective marker "-le" in Mandarin Chinese is a daunting task for second language learners. To date, there has been no consensus on what it is about "-le" that makes it such a challenge to learners. This study investigates the acquisition of "-le" from both a lexical perspective and a discourse…

This study intends to examine the reading process in Chinese of two young heritage language learners through the use of retrospective miscue analysis (RMA). Retrospective miscue analysis involves both the author and the reader in reflectively discussing the reader's oral reading miscues--responses that differ from the actual text. This study…

This study investigates the evolution of reading comprehension abilities in Indonesian learners of the Chinese Heritage Language (CHL), by comparing their scores on the Chinese Proficiency Test, a test specifically designed for CHL learners. A total of 275 candidates, divided into early adolescent (M[subscript age] = 13.56), late adolescent…

This study examined word class effects on Yi students' L2 Chinese word associations. 108 stimulus words, consisting of 36 nouns, 36 verbs, and 36 adjectives, were chosen from Corpus of Modern Chinese, with their frequencies and concreteness being strictly controlled. 80 students from grade 4 and 85 students from grade 10 finished the word…

The reported study highlights the importance of an L2 curriculum integrating authentic linguistic and cultural input to promote learners' linguistic, communicative, and cultural competencies. Through content analysis, the researchers evaluated the linguistic and cultural authenticity of the Grades K-6 "Mandarin Matrix Curriculum"…

We aimed to tackle the question about the time course of plausibility effect in on-line processing of Chinese nouns in temporarily ambiguous structures, and whether L2ers can immediately use the plausibility information generated from classifier-noun associations in analyzing ambiguous structures. Two eye-tracking experiments were conducted to…

The adjustment of syntactic and phraseological complexity is a key consideration in text adaptation. However, research on this topic in the context of Chinese as a second language (CSL) remains limited. Using 700 CSL reading texts graded following the newly issued Chinese Proficiency Grading Standards for International Chinese Language Education,…

The first part of this dissertation conducts a large-scale study comparing general and usage-based indices of syntactic complexity in L2 Mandarin writing samples across a wide range of proficiency levels. To do this, the Tool for the Automated Analysis of Syntactic Sophistication and Complexity (TAASSC; Kyle, 2016) was adapted for Mandarin by…

For Chinese students, studying in a country with different cultural components and language structures is challenging. Compared to English, the Chinese prefers shorter and simple sentence structure and allows for two sentences to be stated side by side. Different sentence structures in Chinese may influence native-Chinese readers' understanding of…

In order to better understand the role of syntactic similarity in a code-switched sentence, the current study explored the effect of similar and different syntactic structures on Chinese-English bilinguals' intra-sentential switching costs. L2 proficiency and switching directions as factors that potentially intervene in bilingual performance were…

This project examined the acquisition of third person accusative clitics in Spanish by Chinese-speaking learners. Specifically, it focused on the role of cross-linguistic influence and patterns of language exposure and use in the acquisition of the syntactic and semantic properties constraining the production and intuition of overt and null…

Chinese directional complement (DC) constructions, as a subtype of Chinese multiword sequences, are challenging to acquire for second language (L2) learners. However, little is known about L2 Chinese learners' acquisition of figurative DCs and their comprehension of literal and figurative DCs. This study investigated whether the acquisition of…

Typical print formatting provides no information regarding the linguistic features of a text, although texts vary considerably with respect to grammatical complexity and readability. Complex texts may be particularly challenging for individuals with weak language knowledge, such as English language learners. This paper investigates the usefulness…