The aim of the present paper was to investigate the effects of processing instruction and traditional instruction on Iranian EFL learners' writing ability. Thirty participants who were non-randomly selected out of 63 Intermediate EFL learners, taking English courses in a language institute in Khoy-Iran, participated in this quasi-experimental…

To improve vocabulary learning and teaching in ELT settings, two questionnaires are designed and directed to more than 100 students and teachers in one of China's key universities. The findings suggest that an enhanced awareness of cultural difference, metaphorical competence, and learners' autonomy in vocabulary acquisition will effectively…

This is an experimental study on the relative effects of Van Patten's Processing Instruction (PI) (1996, 2002), a "psycholinguistically-motivated" intervention in teaching second-language (L2) grammar, on young-adult Filipino learners of English. A growing body of research on this methodological alternative, which establishes…

Complement constructions vary significantly in English and Persian. There are more complementation structures in English than in Persian and a complement structure in Persian might have more than one equivalent in English. Producing complement structures (CSs) in English is very difficult for native speakers of Persian, especially in an EFL…

This study investigated the effects of processing instruction (PI) and structured input (SI) on the acquisition of the subjunctive in adjectival clauses by 92 second-semester distance learners of Spanish. Computerized visual input enhancement (VIE) was combined with PI and SI in an attempt to increase the salience of the targeted grammatical form…

Research on incidental second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition through reading has claimed that repeated encounters with unfamiliar words and the relative elaboration of processing these words facilitate word learning. However, so far both variables have been investigated in isolation. To help close this research gap, the current study…

In this essay, I argue for viewing mental representation and skill as distinct components of language acquisition. My claim is that language is not a monolithic entity--not a new concept, but one that is often overlooked by instructors and some scholars. I examine language as being (minimally) composed of mental representation and skill.…

Phrasal verbs (PVs) have recently been the object of interest by linguists given their status as phraseological units whose meaning is non-compositional and opaque. They constitute a perfect case for theories of language processing and language acquisition to be tested. Cognitive linguists have participated in this debate and shown a certain…

Cognitive psychology has gained currency in the study of second language learning with focus on how real-time language use proceeds through two main processing modes: an analytic processing (rule-based) mode and a holistic processing (lexically-based) mode (Skehan, 1998). However, to date there has been little experimental evidence to document the…

This study utilizes a moving window technique to investigate how individual cognitive resources (operationalized in terms of reading span scores) might modulate the extent to which native English speakers and Chinese second language (L2) learners of English utilize plausibility information to recover from an initial misparse in the processing of…

This paper examines the status-unequal requests of 89 advanced mixed-L1 learners and 87 British English native speakers elicited by a written discourse completion task. Significant differences were observed in all three dimensions analysed: internal and external modification, and perspective. The data demonstrate learners' overuse of zero marking…

Previous studies have identified several brain regions that appear to be involved in the acquisition of novel word forms. Standard word-by-word presentation is often used although exposure to a new language normally occurs in a natural, real world situation. In the current experiment we investigated naturalistic language exposure and applied a…

One of the important decisions to be made by English Language Teaching (ELT) material developers or educators in various disciplines concerns the selection of vocabulary items that a learner should learn intentionally or unintentionally. Learning new vocabulary from textbooks or academic texts should begin with the scrutiny of the frequent types…

Bilinguals must focus their attention to control competing languages. In bilingual aphasia, damage to the fronto-subcortical loop may lead to pathological language switching and mixing and the attrition of the more automatic language (usually L1). We present the case of JZ, a bilingual Basque-Spanish 53-year-old man who, after haematoma in the…

This article reviews research on working memory (WM) and its use in second language (L2) acquisition research. Recent developments in the model and issues surrounding the operationalization of the construct itself are presented, followed by a discussion of various methods of measuring WM. These methods include word and digit span tasks, reading,…