The compound Remote Associates Test (RAT) is a classic measure of creativity. Participants are shown three cue words (sore-shoulder-sweat) and asked to generate a word that connects them (cold). Theoretical views of RAT performance differ in the degree to which they conceptualize performance as depending on automatic spreading activation across…

The Imperfect/Preterite aspectual contrast is one of the most studied topics in Spanish as a second language research. However, there are few works focused on describing the acquisition of modal uses of the Imperfect by L2 speakers. This paper investigates the L1 Russian L2 Spanish speakers' mastery of politeness, evidential and nonfactual modal…

Empirical evidence remains sparse about how videos enhanced with first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) subtitles influence cognitive load in L2 learners. To address this point, 25 Korean undergraduate students were exposed to six short videos: baseline, L1-subtitled, and L2-subtitled videos at both high and low difficulty levels (determined…

The aim of this experiment was to investigate how glossing influences second language (L2) reading comprehension in relation to text difficulty and the two local and global meaning representations. Fifty-eight undergraduate students were asked to read three easy, moderate, and difficult texts and, following each passage, answer twenty…

The objective of this study was to validate a bilingual Spanish-English version of the Vocabulary Size Test (VST) considering its potential use as a discriminator between learners in terms of language competence. This version was designed based on the two forms available on one of the creators' websites as well as considering practices recommended…

The present study investigated how Cantonese speakers learning English as a second language (L2) would comprehend English irony and whether their L2 proficiency and use would moderate their irony processing. Thirty Cantonese speakers with differing English proficiency (intermediate vs advanced) were asked to complete an irony comprehension task in…

This study investigates pronoun interpretation by second language (L2) learners of English, focusing on whether first language (L1) transfer and/or processing difficulty affect L2 learners' pronoun resolution. It is hypothesized that L2 learners' non-target performance in L2-pronoun interpretation is attributable to two sources. The first is the…

Listening to academic content in English medium instruction (EMI) classrooms at university can be a demanding task for students who transition from first language (L1) instructed secondary schools. This longitudinal mixed methods study analyzes data from 316 students collected at the beginning, midterm, and the end of their first semester after…

Consequently, the present study sheds light on a very important aspect that is a contrastive analysis of segmental vowel phonemes of both L1 and L2. As one of the problems, that is affecting the teaching/learning process of ELT. Then to clarify the different areas between the segmental vowel phonemes of Arabic and English. It also aims at making a…

In L2 pragmatics, only a few studies have examined task complexity. Furthermore, the existing studies have predominantly focused on the cognitive dimension and have lacked consistent findings. González-Lloret and Ortega (2018) and Pallotti (2019) have thereby contended that socio-interactional features be incorporated into task design. Along this…

Reading in difficult or novel fonts results in slower and less efficient reading (Slattery & Rayner, 2010); however, these fonts may also lead to better learning and memory (Diemand-Yauman, Oppenheimer, & Vaughan, 2011). This effect is consistent with a desirable difficulty effect such that more effort during encoding results in better…

The purpose of this research is to investigate the variable production of English Object-Experiencer (OE) psych predicates among 80 L1 Thai EFL first-year university students. Psych verbs are notable for posing difficulty for learners due to a unique property that violates Grimshaw's (1990) Thematic Hierarchy. The participants were given a cloze…

Word frequency has a long history of being considered the most important predictor of word difficulty and has served as a guideline for several aspects of second language vocabulary teaching, learning, and assessment. However, recent empirical research has challenged the supremacy of frequency as a predictor of word difficulty. Accordingly,…

This article reports on the second language (L2) perception of contrasts among British English monophthongs. This study has two aims: 1) to explore the discriminability of contrasts in L2 British English monophthongs; and 2) to test the perceptual assimilation model-L2 (PAM-L2) towards the ability to discriminate British English contrasts. The…

This study investigates the use of high-frequency cognitive verbs - think and believe - in Turkish L2 learners' interlanguage, both in terms of their verb senses and complementation patterns. In line with this purpose, a Sentence Production Task consisting of context-independent items and a Sentence Completion Task consisting of context-dependent…