This paper investigates grammatical difficulty from the perspective of Saudi university students, of EFL as well as from the perspective of university teachers. It aims to find out which English grammar features are more difficult/less difficult than others. Furthermore, it attempts to determine the reasons and causes that account for such grammar…

This longitudinal case study explored Iranian EFL learners' lexical complexity (LC) through the lenses of Dynamic Systems Theory (DST). Fifty independent essays written by five intermediate to advanced female EFL learners in a TOEFL iBT preparation course over six months constituted the corpus of this study. Three Coh-Metrix indices (Graesser,…

Bilingual therapists may use Spanish to create trust and enhance therapeutic relationships with bilingual clients, but less is known about working with monolingual Spanish-speaking clients. This study explores clinical Spanish language skills and perceived clinical Spanish efficacy of bilingual (Spanish/English) mental health clinicians who…

Pseudowords (words that are not real but resemble real words in a language) have been used increasingly as a technique to reduce contamination due to construct-irrelevant variance in assessments of verbal fluid reasoning (Gf). However, despite pseudowords being researched heavily in other psychology sub-disciplines, they have received little…

This study had two aims. The first was to explain the process of using the Rasch measurement model to validate tests in an easy-to-understand way for those unfamiliar with the Rasch measurement model. The second was to validate two final exams with several shared items. The exams were given to two groups of students with slightly differing English…

The aim of the present study is to compare the writing products of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) university students using accuracy and grammatical complexity as measures. It also aims at examining the development of the morphological, syntactic, lexical, spelling, and punctuation errors committed by these learners when writing in English.…

Dictionary studies have suggested that nearly half of the English lexicon have multiple meanings. It is not yet clear, however, if second language learners reading English texts will encounter words with multiple meanings to the same degree. This study investigates the use of words with multiple meanings in an authentic English novel. Two samples…

According to the Interface Hypothesis (IH) (e.g., Tsimpli & Sorace 2006; Sorace 2011), external interfaces are more challenging for L2 learners than internal interfaces. It is not clear, however, if linguistic phenomena associated with external interfaces are necessarily problematic and if internal interfaces are necessarily unproblematic. In…

One major threat to validity in high-stakes testing is construct-irrelevant variance. In this study we explored whether the transition from a paper-and-pencil to a computer-based test mode in a high-stakes test in China, the College English Test, has brought about variance irrelevant to the construct being assessed in this test. Analyses of the…

The adoption of e-books in the classroom has been a topic of research from different perspectives. While some studies documented the implementation of digital textbooks in K-12 and higher education classrooms, there was no evidence of research related to the introduction and use of e-books in the adult English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom.…

This article draws on an approach that conceptualizes L2 learning difficulty in terms of implicit and explicit knowledge. In a study with first language Mexican Spanish university-level learners (n = 30), their teachers (n = 11), and applied linguistics experts (n = 3), we investigated the relationship between (a) these groups' difficulty…

This study investigated the effects of varying text difficulty on L2 reading attitudes and reading comprehension. To provide the optimal challenge for L2 reading, comprehensible input hypothesis postulates that choosing text slightly harder than the learner's current level will enhance reading comprehension. Fifty-four freshmen from one university…

The Multimedia Principle (Fletcher & Tobias, 2005) states that people learn better and comprehend more when words and pictures are presented together. The potential for English language learners to increase their comprehension of video through the use of captions, which graphically display the same language as the spoken dialogue, has been…

The present descriptive study aimed to get an insight into secondary school students' beliefs regarding English language learning. The survey method was employed for obtaining data from the secondary school students (N = 664). A modified version of "beliefs about language learning inventory" was used to collect data. Five out of nine…

This study aimed to examine the effects of different text difficulty levels on foreign language reading anxiety (FLRA) and reading comprehension of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. To this end, 50 elementary EFL learners were selected from two intact classes (n = 25 each). Each class was assigned to a text difficulty level (i.e.,…