This essay illuminates adaptable and multimodal ways of teaching with etymology and idiomatic origin stories in the composition classroom. I model my pedagogical approach with a topic central to my rhetorical research--pigeons in histories of human communication--and the rich etymologically-linked concepts of homing in, pigeonholing, and…

As a corpus-assisted method for language pedagogy, DDL (data-driven learning) may have the potential to enhance language exposure and promote active learner engagement. Concordancing, or KWIC (Key Words in Context), has been the traditional method used in DDL to retrieve numerous language examples, while the method has limitations with…

Vocabulary knowledge is of paramount importance when learning a second language. It requires effective and practical classroom vocabulary learning methods for long-term acquisition. Specific learning aspects helping the learner remember vocabulary such as spaced repetition and retrieval practice have shown efficacy but are often disconnected from…

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,…

Issues of intelligibility may arise amongst English learners when acquiring new words and phrases in North American academic settings, perhaps in part due to limited linguistic data available to the learner for understanding language use patterns. To this end, this paper examines the effects of Data-Driven Learning for Pronunciation (DDLfP) on…

Inasmuch as the fact that writing is a cognitively demanding task and as a step toward overcoming some of the barriers English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners face during writing performance, this study attempted to investigate Iranian EFL learners' perceptions toward the most common writing difficulties. To this end, 120 Iranian EFL learners…

There is controversy in the literature on language acquisition concerning whether L2 learners develop separate systems for the two languages or they construct a unitary system for both (i.e. interlanguage). Here we investigate whether Voice Onset Time (VOT) can provide evidence supporting one of the two perspectives mentioned. To assess the…

This semester-long study was designed to benefit developing Second Language Acquisition (SLA) instructional methods, specifically honing French language instruction, creating a foundation on which to explore the connection between input frequency during instruction and aural comprehension of difficultly acquired forms. Concurrently, five current…

Recent studies on the learning of L2 prosody have suggested that pitch gestures can enhance the learning of the L2 lexical tones. Yet it remains unclear whether the use of these gestures can aid the learning of L2 intonation, especially by tonal-language speakers. Sixty-four Mandarin speakers with basic-level Spanish were asked to learn three…

While there is widespread agreement on the expected benefits of hands-on access to corpora for language learners, reports abound of the difficulties involved in realising those benefits in practice. A particular focus of discussion is the challenge of transferring the skills of the corpus linguist to learners, so that they can explore this type of…

While studies exploring the overall effectiveness of Data Driven Learning activities have been positive, learner participants often seem to report difficulties in deciding what to look up, and how to formulate appropriate queries for a search (Gabel, 2001; Sun, 2003; Yeh, Liou, & Li, 2007). "The Prime Machine" (Jeaco, 2015) was…

Formulaic sequences are found to be processed faster than their matched novel phrases in previous studies. Given the variety of formulaic types, few studies have compared processing on different types of formulaic sequences. The present study explored the processing among idioms, speech formulae and written formulae. It has been found that in…

While it is a well-known fact that speakers of article-less mother tongues, such as Polish, experience problems with articles in English, this study seeks to investigate the problem from a different perspective. Namely, it poses the question of whether the correct use of the article system of the L2 is indeed a purely grammatical task (as it is…

The growth of English into a lingua franca has inevitably created linguistic deviations and innovations in the use of English. These emerging uses that result from the needs and preferences of speakers whose mother tongues are all different can be broadly identified as lexico-grammatical and pronunciation features and they compose one of the main…

This paper reports on an action research study using iPads during the teaching of Chinese idioms to heritage learners. A class of 12 second-year Chinese learners were engaged in a self-generated learning process focused on learning abstract and concrete idioms using iPads. Students' short-term and long-term learning was measured; feedback from a…