The relationship between second language (L2) learners' orthographic vocabulary knowledge and extensive reading is quite well researched. However, the way phonological vocabulary knowledge and extensive listening/viewing interacts remains not so well investigated. The current study examines the effect of extensive viewing of English movies…

This study explored the impact of preexisting vocabulary knowledge (PVK) and listening proficiency on the vocabulary learning through listening of 137 Chinese learners of English, when provided with three types of oral vocabulary explanations--second language (L2), codeswitching (CS), and contrastive focus-on-form (CFoF)--and when no explanations…

This study examined how L2 listeners' proficiency levels interacted with the two major process-based listening instruction methods of (1) strategy training and (2) interactive training (which involved training in strategies and bottom-up skills), to influence the listeners' development. In a mixed-methods design, the quantitative component of the…

For many language learners, listening represents a major source of anguish, with apparent success in the confines of the classroom failing to be mirrored in the ordinary interactions of daily life. One contributing factor may be the continued reliance on listening texts and activities that position the learner as a bystander rather than a…

This study investigated L2 Korean speakers' self-assessment of speech comprehensibility and accentedness, including a conceptual replication of Trofimovich, Isaacs, Kennedy, Saito, and Crowther (2016, Experiment 1) and exploratory analyses of individual differences in self-assessment. L2 Korean speakers (N = 198) self-assessed their…

Reading has the power and potential to facilitate language learning process and it also plays a critical role in enhancing learners' way of thinking. With reference to the crucial place of reading in the process of language learning, the present study was guided by two concepts, namely reciprocal teaching, and global reading strategies, and it was…

Drawing on sociocultural theory, and multiple empirical studies conducted on the effectiveness of scaffolding on second or foreign language learning, the authors investigated the application of various forms of scaffolding (i.e., teacher versus peer-scaffolding) on EFL learners' incidental vocabulary learning and reading comprehension performance…

The present study examined the components of oral reading fluency (ORF) via various indices and their relationships with comprehension and learner-perceived difficulty of oral reading among Chinese second language (L2) learners. One hundred participants read aloud paragraphs, completed the comprehension test, and rated the difficulty of the oral…

The present study is an attempt to explore the relationship between the breadth (the number of words known) and the depth of vocabulary knowledge (the richness of word knowledge) (the richness of word knowledge), and reading comprehension of EFL learners in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context. Furthermore, it tries to find the effect of…

Using a habituation paradigm with a three-switch design, the present study investigated whether 20-month-old French-learning infants use noun and verb morphosyntactic cues to learn novel words in dynamic events differentially when both the agent and the action interpretations are possible. Of particular interest was whether infants' initial…

This paper investigates the implementation of a reading program designed for third grade elementary school classrooms in Austria. Using a mixed-methods approach, lesson types were identified, respective class compositions analyzed, and the effects on students' reading gains examined. The results show that the lesson types seem to reflect learner…

This study examines four learner engagement dimensions (behavioural, cognitive, emotional and social) in pedagogical task performance and provides insights into the effects of two task types (information-seeking and direction-giving) and topic familiarity on learner engagement in a semester-long English course. A total of 28 foreign language…

The present dissertation intends to investigate the syntactic nature and L2-acquisition of passive sentence structure in two Romance varieties, Italian and Spanish. First, I will present an analytic proposal couched within the Generative Approach (Chomsky, 1957, and subsequent work); from there, and following Perlmutter and Postal's (1977)…

Previous research has documented that students' reading comprehension performance in learning English as a foreign language (EFL) differs greatly between mobile-assisted and paper-based reading. The present study extends previous work by investigating whether reading cognitive load differs between mobile-assisted and paper-based EFL reading…

Gamification is an increasingly popular approach to engage learners in educational contexts. Although many studies have examined the effects of gamification in comparison to a non-gamification approach, less attention has been paid to the impact of different ways of implementing gamification on students' learning and engagement. In this study, we…