The goal of this study was to examine to what extent the conditions of restricted input of L2 and SLI have an additive impact on language acquisition. Therefore, the Dutch language achievement of 6-, 7-, and 8-year-old bilingual children with SLI was compared with that of typically developing monolingual Dutch children, typically developing…

The current investigation tested two predictions regarding second language (L2) processing at the syntax-discourse interface: (1) that L2 performance on measures of interface phenomena can differ from that of native speakers; and (2) that cross-linguistic influence can be a source of such divergence. Specifically, we examined the offline…

The present study aims to sensitize SLA researchers to the importance of documenting and controlling for their participants' proficiency in the target language, with the goal of establishing more robust proficiency assessment standards in experimental research. First, this article presents a survey of recent (2000-2008) foreign and second-language…

"Un Buen Comienzo" [A Good Start] was a professional development program implemented with prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers in Chilean public schools serving low-income families. In a randomized trial, the program showed moderate to large impacts on classroom quality but no impacts on targeted child outcomes. To unpack these…

This small-scale mixed method research focuses on investigating the way Preparatory Year English Program (PYEP) female students in a Saudi tertiary level institution context are assessed and how they are advanced from level three (Pre-intermediate) and level four (Intermediate). A four-point agreement scale survey was conducted with fifteen…

This experimental study examined how the reading and writing development of sixth-grade L2 students was affected by syntactic enhancement. Visual-syntactic text formatting (VSTF) technology, which visualizes syntactic structures, was used to convert a textbook to the one with syntactic enhancement. The sample (n = 282), which was drawn from a…

Social-emotional development, psychosocial functioning, and relational experiences have been shown to impact academic achievement and psychological well-being. Social skills have been identified as being particularly critical in promoting mental health and life-long success. Children with well-developed social skills (e.g., sharing, being…

This volume represents the first collection of empirical studies focusing on peer interaction for L2 learning. These studies aim to unveil the impact of mediating variables such as task type, mode of interaction, and social relationships on learners' interactional behaviors and language development in this unique and pedagogically powerful…

A vast array of studies has demonstrated that stimulating activities within the family (e.g., reading to child, singing together) positively affect children's development in various domains. However, this influence is less established for children of immigrants. This paper analyses the impact of familial activities on non-verbal cognitive skills…

This article is focused on the different Home Language Surveys (HLS) used across U.S. states as a means of identifying students who, with further assessment, may prove eligible for language-support services. The majority of states mandate some form of HLS, be it state- or district-created. However, there is great variation in the number and the…

This article deals with university language teaching in the perspective of its shift from linguistic competence towards communicative competence, and presents some aspects of the underlying process. It analyses the findings from a survey conducted within the Leonardo project "Transparency in the Acquired Language Competences" (TALC;…

Learning opportunities offered by digital games have become an important research topic in recent years. Language learning is one of the areas in which games could prosper but the question then is whether these should be specialized language-learning games or commercial off-the-shelf games for entertainment. The goal of this paper is to compare…

The present study investigated the effect of input enhancement on the acquisition of English politeness strategies by intermediate EFL learners. Two groups of freshman English majors were randomly assigned to the experimental (enhanced input) group and the control (mere exposure) group. Initially, a TOEFL test and a discourse completion test (DCT)…

Learning to use English articles appropriately has been considered a challenging task for L2 learners of English, especially when their L1s do not have a similar article system. Much research has been conducted in this area, but little has been studied about the effects of discourse types (i.e., spoken discourse versus written discourse) on the…

Adult learners have persistent difficulty processing second language (L2) inflectional morphology. We investigate associative learning explanations that involve the blocking of later experienced cues by earlier learned ones in the first language (L1; i.e., transfer) and the L2 (i.e., proficiency). Sagarra (2008) and Ellis and Sagarra (2010b) found…