Nonverbal behavior can impact language proficiency scores in speaking tests, but there is little empirical information of the size or consistency of its effects or whether language proficiency may be a moderating variable. In this study, 100 novice raters watched and scored 30 recordings of test takers taking an international, high stakes…

Many words are associated with more than a single meaning. Words are sometimes "ambiguous," applying to unrelated meanings, but the majority of frequent words are "polysemous" in that they apply to multiple "related" meanings. In a preregistered design that included 2 tasks, we tested adults' and 4.5- to 7-year-old…

This study revisits the roles of different aspects of phonological vocabulary knowledge in second language (L2) listening. Japanese learners of English (n = 114) completed the TOEIC Listening test and three phonological vocabulary tests assessing (a) ability to recognize the meanings of aural forms (meaning recognition), (b) ability to recall the…

Characteristics of vocabulary lists as well as study and test translation direction may affect the ease of learning second language (L2) vocabulary. We examined immediate and delayed test performance of first language (L1) English speakers learning a fixed set of L2 vocabulary placed on lists formed by crossing semantic relatedness (unrelated vs.…

Vocabulary tests administered on multilingual populations should take into account the unique linguistic and cultural makeup of the population by adopting test development methods that allow responses in several languages. Our aims were to develop a picture-naming test for multilingual Lebanese school-age children (L1: Lebanese, L2: French and/or…

This research explored the effectiveness of using the word network technique to teach English vocabulary to first graders in Thai Primary schools. The 150 top-frequency words used in three nationally-used textbooks were inventoried. The list of the words then was compared with the list proposed by the Ministry of Education, Thailand. The combined…

Vocabulary research provides valuable information on the construct of word knowledge (WK), and suggests ways to develop language learners' lexicon, arguably, the backbone of communication. The present study explores EFL students' vocabulary learning behavior; more specifically, the aspects of WK components they intentionally focus on when learning…

How do learners gather new information during word learning? One possibility is that learners selectively sample items that help them reduce uncertainty about new word meanings. In a series of cross-situational word learning tasks with adults and children, we manipulated the referential ambiguity of label-object pairs experienced during training…

Some words have more than one translation across languages. Such translation-ambiguous words are harder to learn, recognize, and produce for individuals across the language learning spectrum. Past research demonstrates that learning both translations of translation-ambiguous words on consecutive trials confers an accuracy advantage relative to…

Instructional videos for teaching second language (L2) vocabulary often feature an instructor onscreen. The instructor in the video may involuntarily produce beat gestures with their hands, as occurs in real teaching settings. Beat gestures highlight key information in speech by conveying the rhythm of the language, but do not themselves convey…

Word learning in a second language (L2) is a complex process, which is affected by learner-related (e.g., morphological awareness) and language-related (e.g., word semantic transparency) factors. Morphological awareness is learners' sensitivity to the morphological structure of printed words, and semantic transparency is the degree to which…

This study investigates the role of emotional linguistic input in learning novel words with abstract and concrete denotations. It is widely accepted that concrete words are processed more easily than abstract ones. Several theories of vocabulary acquisition additionally propose a critical role of sensorimotor and emotional information during novel…

A previous study has shown that children use recent input to adapt their syntactic predictions and use these adapted predictions to infer the meaning of novel words. In the current study, we investigated whether children could use this mechanism to disambiguate words whose interpretation as a noun or a verb is ambiguous. We tested 2- to 4-year-old…

Toddlerhood is marked by advances in several lexico-semantic skills, including improvements in the size and structure of the lexicon and increased efficiency in lexical processing. This project seeks to delineate how early changes in vocabulary size and vocabulary structure support lexical processing (Experiment 1), and how these three skills…

This study examined the effects of three subtitle conditions on English vocabulary learning, form recognition and meaning recall, from TED Talks videos while controlling for vocabulary size and initial knowledge of the target words. The participants, 105 Libyan students (16 males and 89 females) at intermediate English proficiency level, were…