Research has demonstrated that features of lexical and lexicogrammatical use are important predictors of productive second language (L2) proficiency (e.g. Kyle et al. 2018). While some features of lexical use have been studied with L2s other than English (e.g. Tracy-Ventura 2017), multivariate lexical and lexicogrammatical approaches in these L2s…

Second language (L2) research on input manipulation has focused mainly on increasing the salience of target structures, but presentation formats of L2 input can be another important aspect for manipulation. This study compared the horizontal, vertical, and adjacent formats for presenting the characters, pinyin, and English meaning of L2 Chinese…

The current study attempts to explore and analyze errors of word choice made in written language by Saudi undergraduates at King Khalid University. It additionally tries to determine the probable sources of errors and provide remedies to them. The study focuses on word choice errors in four areas, viz., literal translation, collocation, subject…

When inferring the meaning of unknown words in a second language, learners make use of a variety of cues including the cross-linguistic formal similarities of loanwords and cognates. However, because learners do not always recognize these cross-linguistic relationships, cognate strategy training has been recommended. The present study investigated…

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 the current study we used the gaze-contingent moving window paradigm to directly compare the second language (L2) English perceptual span of two groups that speak languages with essentially the same lexicon and grammar but crucially with different writing directions (and scripts): Hindi (read left to right) and Urdu (read right to left). This…

Previous research in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has revealed that deviations in lexicogrammar are not always random, but a result of underlying communicative processes (Cogo & Dewey, 2012; Guziurová, 2020; Jafari, 2021; Ranta, 2013, 2022). Most previous studies relied upon spoken interactions, particularly in business and academic…

This article discusses the features, reasons, and values of the mushrooming Chinese English neologisms (CENs). Generally speaking, CENs are a variety of English words, namely Chinese English words, some of which have entered Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Based on data from Web Corp Live, the author finds that: (1) CENs take on the grammatical…

The current study aimed to explore the effect of first language (L1) orthography on second language (L2) Chinese morphological awareness. One hundred and twenty-nine students (61 L1 English readers and 68 L1 Thai readers) who studied Chinese as a second language participated in this study. They completed four tasks of morphological awareness…

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…

Demand for second-language (L2) Chinese education for kindergarteners has grown rapidly, but little is known about these kindergarteners' L2 skills, with existing studies focusing on school-age populations and alphabetic languages. Accordingly, we developed a six-subtest Chinese character acquisition assessment to measure L2 kindergarteners'…

This article contributes to the scarcity of research on the interface between task-modality and the use of previously known languages (PKL) in young learners. It examines the use of Basque/Spanish by CLIL learners (aged 10-11) during oral interaction while completing two collaborative tasks in English: a speaking task and a speaking + writing…

A collection of cognitive, linguistic, and spelling measures were administered to third-grade English L1 and L2 learners. To capture formative assessments of children's developing mental graphemic representations (MGRs), spelling errors in isolation were subjected to analysis across three metrics: (1) Phonological constrained; (2)…

This plenary paper showcases current corpus-based research on written academic English, illustrating the tight links that exist between corpus research and pedagogic applications. I first explicate Sinclair's concept of the "lexical approach", which underpins much corpus research and pedagogy. I then discuss studies which focus on…

Native speakers of alphabetic languages, which use letters governed by grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules, often find it particularly challenging to learn a logographic language whose writing system employs symbols with no direct sound-to-spelling connection but links to the visual and semantic information. The visuospatial properties of…