Learners who lack the perception of specific sounds or pronunciation can attain a measure of inability to participate in meaningful communication due to their difficulties in understanding and being understood. This article presents lesson plans that provide a framework for addressing the needs of learners as they move from perceiving sounds to…

This study examines the effects of task complexity on second language (L2) pronunciation accuracy and global pronunciation measures in pronunciation-unfocused tasks and assesses the relationship between acoustic and listener-based pronunciation measures. Eighty-two Catalan/Spanish learners of English performed simple and complex versions of a…

This article reports the results of an empirical study designed to determine the degree to which college instructors of Spanish can distinguish between machine translation (MT) and non-MT writing samples produced by second language (L2) learners of Spanish in an intermediate-level writing course. We also investigated relationships between…

This systematic review aims to explore how task complexity and task sequencing affect the complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) of second language performance. Through an analysis of studies conducted between 2012 and 2021, this review investigates the characteristics of the studies, operationalisation of task complexity, measurements of CAF,…

One feature of Spanish that presents some difficulties to second language (L2) learners whose first language (L1) is English concerns lexical stress. This study explores one aspect of the obstacle these learners face, weak phonological processing routines concerning stress inherited from their native language. Participants were L1 English L2…

Language immersion programs seek to develop multilingual, multiliterate individuals able to engage with academic content. Studies of immersion students' language development provide details regarding language proficiency and accuracy, yet they generally do not address how features of written, academic language, for example, syntactic and lexical…

This study examined whether the linguistic distance between the first (L1) and second (L2) language is a significant determinant of L2 writing skills of 292 adult immigrants from 39 different source countries, who were beginner learners of Spanish L2. Gender, age, length of residence in Spain, education level as a proxy for literacy skills in L1,…

This study explores the effect of collaborative writing (CW) and peer feedback (PF) practices on subsequent individual writing assignments. Two groups of university students in a Spanish as a foreign language course experienced both CW and PF (Group 1 CW then PF; Group 2 PF then CW), and pre and posttests were analyzed for syntactic complexity,…

The research on language acquisition and retention has primarily focused on monolinguals and bilinguals, with comparatively few studies including trilinguals. To address this gap, the current study compares the acquisition and retention of a novel morphosyntactic rule in Spanish in twelve monolinguals, twelve bilinguals, and twelve trilinguals.…

Studies analysing the metatalk generated in collaborative writing (CW) tasks have primarily targeted secondary or adult students who wrote either in L1 or L2, and have seldom examined the process of their writing in two languages. Furthermore, these analyses have mostly focused on accuracy discussions and have ignored discussions aimed at making…

Task-based research has investigated the learning opportunities (e.g. language related episodes) that emerge during heritage and second language learner interactions during writing tasks. However, to date, it is unknown how these peer interactions involving heritage language learners contribute to written texts. Further, given the rise of social…

The current study investigated advanced L2 learners' linguistic development before, during, and after a nine-month stay abroad, the extent to which contextual changes (home-abroad-home) influenced the nature and magnitude of development, and the ways in which relationships among different linguistic elements changed over time. Participants were 56…

The field of Heritage Language has experienced a great deal of advancement in the past few decades. Much research effort has been dedicated to analyzing and understanding different aspects of heritage language speakers, but less work has been done in the topic of pedagogical approaches. The few recent studies on pedagogical approaches have focused…

This study examines the impact of explicit and implicit pronunciation instruction on the segmental pronunciation accuracy of phonemes /s/ and /z/ in an EFL classroom of 11th-grade Spanish-speaking students. The research focuses on transparent and non-transparent words containing the grapheme <s> and the phonemes /s/ and /z/ and was conducted…

Even though peer review enjoys sound theoretical support, classroom research has not always provided a clear picture of its effectiveness, particularly when it comes to form-focused editing. In addition to yielding conflicting findings with respect to the number of corrections students make based on peer feedback (Connor & Asenavage, 1994;…