Paradigms with conflicting data patterns can be difficult to learn, resulting in acquisition error. In this dissertation, I look at how paradigms are reanalyzed over time to gain insight into the factors that influence morphophonological learning. Existing models of morphophonology (e.g. Hare & Elman 1995; Albright 2002b,a, 2010) predict…

This dissertation investigates the initial and ongoing motivations of language revitalization practitioners. This study extends our understandings of language revitalization from the programmatic and sociological levels to the level of the individual practitioner. It also extends theory in L2 motivation into a largely unstudied language learning…

This paper suggests six areas of vocabulary research which the author believes would be fruitful for future research. They include (1) developing a practical model of vocabulary acquisition, (2) understanding how vocabulary knowledge develops from receptive to productive mastery, (3) getting lexical teaching/learning principles into vocabulary and…

This dissertation investigates a typologically rare linguistic phenomenon found in Irish from three different perspectives: how it challenges phonological theory, how it is used by contemporary speakers, and how its written representation affects its acquisition. Initial consonant mutation (ICM), as it appears in the Celtic languages, is known to…

With the largest number of English learners in the world, the influence of the English language teaching (ELT) reform in China cannot be underestimated. This article explores the implications of the actual use of English in China's workplace for ELT reform in the context of English as a lingua franca (ELF). On the basis of cross-validated data…

The declarative/procedural (DP) model posits that the learning, storage, and use of language critically depend on two learning and memory systems in the brain: declarative memory and procedural memory. Thus, on the basis of independent research on the memory systems, the model can generate specific and often novel predictions for language. Till…

Although traditional, unitary models of language standardisation have been prominent in minority languages, it is contended that this approach reproduces dominant language hierarchies and hegemonies, diminishes linguistic diversity and marginalises speakers who do not conform to prestige models. The polynomic model has been described as an…

Currently, a growing number of teaching approaches focus on aspects of variation in language (e.g. English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), World Englishes, English for Specific Purposes (ESP), genre theories, etc.); however, each of these approaches tends to focus on particular (specific) aspects of language variation and do not fully account for the…

For the past three decades, momentum has gathered in favour of a multilingual turn in second language acquisition research and teaching. "Multicompetence" has been proposed to replace "nativeness" and "monolingualism" to measure L2 learners' success. This proposed shift has not made its way into L2 teaching settings.…

This research work aimed at making use of Machine Translation to help students avoid some syntactic, semantic and pragmatic common errors in translation from English into Arabic. Participants were a hundred and five freshmen who studied the "Translation Common Errors Remedial Program" prepared by the researchers. A testing kit that…

The present study is a corpus-based comparative investigation of Theme and thematic progression in English and Russian. While monolingual thematic studies have a long history in Linguistics, comparative studies are relatively few, in particular for the given language pair. In addition to filling the existing gap in the field of Translation…

In this article, we reappraise the model of Discourse Analysis developed by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) to analyse classroom talk. We analyse an extract of teacher-student dialogue using this model, then re-analyse the same extract drawing on conventions and concepts developed within the framework of Conversation Analysis. We argue that this…

Numerous second language acquisition (SLA) researchers have tried to define grammatical difficulty in second and foreign language acquisition--often as part of an attempt to relate the efficacy of different types of instruction to the degree of difficulty of grammatical structures. The resulting proliferation of definitions and the lack of a…

This article calls for a rethinking of pure process-based approaches in the teaching of second language writers in the middle school classroom. The author provides evidence from a detailed case study of the writing of a Korean middle school student in a U.S. school setting to make a case for rethinking the efficacy of classic process-based…

Much research on world Englishes (WE) since the 1980s has yet to impact significantly upon recent applied linguistics work in the areas of instruction, curriculum, testing and policy. Much of the received wisdom has been informed by the paradigm established by the earlier study of International English (IE) and its attendant foci in teaching…