In this article, we present our vision of a transformed second language acquisition and teaching (SLA/T) disciplinary community that approaches second language (L2) education through four pillars. The first pillar is praxeology (i.e., the study of human action) to highlight the sociocontextually emergent nature of L2 competence. It locates the…

If maximal exposure were the key to success in language learning, then adult learners at the university level would be doomed to fail. Not only are they presumably too old to learn additional languages effectively, but target language (TL) input appears to be insufficient, especially when other languages are allowed in class. Nevertheless,…

The chapter reports on a study that explored the affordances and challenges of the flipped classroom model for self-regulated learning, involving the implementation of a four-skill integration approach and the use of various digital tools. Twenty-two intermediate Spanish language students from a large public university in the Northeast of the…

The present study examines the language- and culture-learning perceptions of domestic and international students from a Canadian university who participated in an intensive four-week-long Spanish language and cultural immersion program in Spain. The study draws on quantitative and qualitative data to explore the ways in which the participants'…

Answering calls to map college-level proficiency development (Modern Language Association, 2007) and longitudinally chart language learning (Barkaoui, 2014; Ortega & Byrnes, 2008), we mapped the oral proficiency growth of 1,922 lower-division college students of Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish (in the second, third, or fourth semester of…

The goal of the present study was to examine the efficacy of learning a text structure strategy (TSS) for improving reading comprehension and recall for second language (L2) learners, as well as to test for transfer of the strategy to the native language (L1). University L2 learners of English completed a five-session course on using the TSS to…

This dissertation explores seven second language (L2) undergraduates' learning experiences in a First-Year Writing (FYW) course at an American university. While the FYW course is designed from the perspective of first-language (L1) composition scholarship and focuses, broadly speaking, on analytical writing and the related development of critical…

This study considered true beginners and false beginners in first-semester university French and Spanish classes to: (a) determine whether true beginners and false beginners differ in anxiety, grades, and plans to continue language study; and (b) identify classroom factors that foster anxiety or comfort. Students completed a questionnaire that…

A study investigated what conscious listening strategies second language learners use when listening to authentic texts. Subjects were six college students of intermediate Spanish. They listened to three authentic audio and three authentic video texts. The introspective commentaries of the subjects on one of the video texts are discussed here.…