Children begin to learn abstract rules at an early age, in an implicit way, without access to rule descriptions. They rely on specific rule instances that they encounter. However, rule instances often co-occur with rule-inconsistent instances. One kind of inconsistent input, non-application instances, constitutes a learnability problem. For…

One of the characteristics of a Dynamic Usage-Based (DUB) approach to the second language is that schematic patterns emerge through use and interaction where the intense focus is in input. Video or movie as an example of authentic input often provides a natural context for conversations to emerge among the students and teacher in class since…

Television is considered an important source of comprehensible input for second language learners of English and there is some evidence that L2 words can be learned incidentally by watching television. Few studies have looked at the role of TV viewing for learning formulaic sequences, despite the ubiquity of formulaic sequences in spoken English,…

This study investigated the long-term effects of structural priming on children's use of indirect speech clauses in a narrative context. Forty-two monolingual English-speaking 5-year-olds in two primary classrooms took part in a story-retelling task including reported speech. Testing took place in three individual sessions (pre-test, post-test 1,…

Expanding on the studies of Hernandez (2008) and de la Fuente (2009), this investigation examines the combined effect of explicit instruction (EI) and input flood (IF) vs. IF alone on students' use of discourse markers to narrate a past event. Participants included 91 English-speaking adults enrolled in fourth-semester college Spanish courses,…