Ten beginning- and intermediate-level French textbooks were examined to determine which factors most influence authors' selection of vocabulary to be learned explicitly. Word frequency, imageability, concreteness, and use of lexical sets were examined, as these factors were shown in previous research to either facilitate or inhibit lexical…

Around twenty thousand adult learners enrol onto Welsh language classes each year, but many do not progress beyond "Mynediad level" (= Entry, CEFR A1). The study reported here explored techniques to maintain early learning momentum, maximise learners' returns for their learning efforts, and accelerate initial vocabulary acquisition.…

The present study complemented the extant second language (L2) Age of Acquisition (AoA) normative database by providing over 3500 English L2 words on objective AoA and over 2600 English L2 words on subjective AoA. The correlation between the objective and subjective L2 AoA confirmed the validity of the present database. The objective L2 AoA was…

This study explores lexical bundles in vehicular accident news with the goal to provide a lexical bundle list for students learning to write this genre of news in English. A corpus of accident news is constructed from vehicular news articles from four English news sources over a period of one year. The lexical bundles are extracted from using the…

Several studies have examined the content of Japanese junior high school textbooks in relation to various frequency-based word lists such as the New General Service List (NGSL) (Browne et al., 2013) (e.g, Nakayama, 2022a,b) and the British National Corpus (BNC) (e.g, Wongsarnpigoon, 2018), and have identified potential issues in terms of lexical…

In assessment contexts, the domain definition inference requires accurate documentation of linguistic demands in a specific target domain for precise measurement. The present study examines several aspects of repetitions in academic lecture settings to offer the domain definition inference for academic listening tests. To do this, I analyzed the…

Learning vocabulary is a central and time-consuming endeavour for a language learner and it has thus been suggested that the foreign language classroom has to supply explicit support for students' vocabulary development. A major source of explicit word focus is vocabulary exercises in teaching materials and students' learning can be facilitated if…

First (L1) and second (L2) language speakers process information differently. The current study explores whether L1 and L2 English language speakers process the emotional connotations of high and low-frequency words using the emotional Stroop task. With this task, we measure the reaction time required to name the color of words with positive,…

Background/purpose: The phenomenon of multiple verbal nouns for the triliteral bare verb in Arabic represents a distinctive linguistic feature shaped by social and linguistic factors across historical periods. This study pursues two primary objectives: (1) to reassess the phenomenon from the perspectives of classical Arabic linguistic heritage and…

A text recommendation system helps language learners find suitable reading materials. Similar to graded readers, most systems assign difficulty levels or school grades to the documents in their database, and then identify the documents that best match the language proficiency of the learner. This graded approach has two main limitations. First,…

Knowledge of derivational affixes makes an important contribution to second language learners' success when reading. Yet while the effects of some learner variables (L2 proficiency, L1 background) have been investigated, there has been little research addressing the effects of varying characteristics of affixes on their acquisition. The goal of…

Vocabulary knowledge has been recognized as a crucial component in learning and teaching of both native and non-native learners, text understanding, and educational success (Coxhead, 2018; Saeedi et al., 2023; Schmitt et al., 2021), leading to the development of word lists for different purposes. Hence, this study aimed at developing a newspaper…

High frequency words, which are key to a text, must be mastered to achieve minimum levels of reading proficiency. However, knowledge about the frequency of items in a language is very limited. Given this consideration, WordSift (www.wordsift.org), a word cloud tool based on high frequency and key words can assist English as a Foreign Language…

The binge-watching phenomenon on college campuses in Taiwan inspired this study. The researcher often overhears her students chatting about which Mandarin TV series they have been binge-watching recently. Given this drama fever, which may provide an impetus for sustained reading of on-screen text, the researcher is concerned with English…

Learning vocabulary is a central but yet complex aspect of learning a language. Hence, researchers stress the importance of facilitating vocabulary development via a structured approach to target words and recycling. While teaching materials have the potential to provide this structure to all students in a classroom, few studies have investigated…