The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) is a widely used test of receptive vocabulary, but no researchers to date have examined the performance of low-educated, low-literate L2 adults, or compared these individuals' performances to their more highly educated peers. In this study, we used many-facet Rasch analysis and mixed-effects linear…

The present study examined the effects of different types of written input on the learning and retention of collocational knowledge. Eighty-three second language (L2) learners from four intact classes were divided into a control group and three treatment groups. The treatment groups were provided with infrequent grammatical collocations embedded…

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has a dual focus both on content and language teaching in which students learn through and about language and provides contextualized and meaningful situations. Although studies on the impact of CLIL on learners' vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension have mostly positive results, related…

This article examines factors that promote active multilingualism. For this purpose, the "Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test" was used with 48 children. Their results were linked to a parental questionnaire designed to evaluate the children's linguistic input in their immediate environment. The study shows that, besides a minimum amount of…

Languages differ in their preferences for particular intensifying constructions. While intensifying adjectival compounds (IACs) (e.g. "ijskoud, ice-cold") are productively used to express intensification in Dutch and English, in French this construction is hardly productive. Consequently, French-speaking learners may encounter…

Corpus-based data-driven learning (DDL) is an innovation in teaching and learning new vocabulary for EFL students. Using teacher-prepared materials obtained from COCA corpus, the goal of the present study is to compare DDL and traditional methods of teaching vocabulary like consultation of dictionary or a grammar book. As such, two intact classes…

The study offers a glimpse of the current situation of foreign language education in the Costa Rican context from the perspective of vocabulary knowledge, particularly passive vocabulary size. Students from two institutions participated: one school implements Content Based Teaching while the other follows traditional, Foreign Language Teaching…

This study examines young English readers' ability to infer word meanings in context and to use metacognitive knowledge for constructing word meanings in relation to their reading performance. The participants were 61 fourth-grade students in the United States, comprising 24 monolingual English-speaking (ME) students and 37…

This article reports on the results of two studies on receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge of first-year English majors in an English-medium degree programme. The aim of the study is to answer these research questions: (1) to what extent do the receptive and productive vocabulary sizes of English majors increase after a year of…

This study examines the English vocabulary development of 43 very young child English as a foreign language (FL) learners (age 3.2-6.2) in China. They were tested twice for vocabulary breadth (reception and production) and semantic depth (paradigmatic and syntagmatic vocabulary knowledge). The development of the English vocabulary knowledge…

Working memory (WM) is a recognised component of executive function and has undergone scrutiny in terms of bilingual and monolingual performance comparisons. Research to date, however, has not consistently replicated the presence of bilingual advantage. The present study examined short-term (STM) and WM in immersion-educated children and a matched…

In this thesis, I present three related papers that collectively investigate the instructional supports on screen and in the media viewing context that influenced English and heritage language vocabulary knowledge in DLLs. In study 1, I examine how specific pedagogical approaches used in educational media might benefit DLLs. In study 2, I…

In this exploratory study we examine the value of exposure to the spelling and pronunciation of word forms when introducing the meanings of new and difficult vocabulary words. Kindergarten English learners were randomly assigned to one of two types of storybook reading delivered by tutors. Students in both treatments listened to short stories…

One of the most significant current discussions in L2 classroom research has been related to the necessity of vocabulary in language learning.Undoubtedly, EFL learners with high levels of lexical knowledge perform better in writing and oral tasks. Accordingly, the present study sought to investigate the efficacy of Task-induced Involvement in…

Using a nationally representative sample of dual language learners (DLLs) attending Head Start, this study investigated how the language used for instruction and the proportion of DLLs in the class was associated with English and Spanish receptive vocabulary development between the fall and spring (n = 531). Based on teacher report of the language…