This study examined why current university learners of French, Spanish, Russian, and Japanese, and, for comparative purposes, actual university learners of German, believe that others and why they themselves would study German. Responses were compared against current motivation theories, narratives promoted by academic language programs, research…

Language skills depend on the meaning of words and the knowledge of the subject/context. The meanings of words that shape the true understanding of contexts are needed to experience language as a real-life activity. College students in Saudi Arabia struggle to develop desired proficiency in the English language that is required to further advance…

Multiple Intelligences (MI) theory assumes that people have a full range of intelligences, and individuals differ. Although there have been many studies conducted related to MI, there are still questions that need answers in the context of students who are learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in China. Many teachers believe that…

Eye tracking has become an increasingly popular research methodology among language researchers to examine online cognitive processing of second-language (L2) speakers and bilinguals. As the scope of eye-tracking research expands, there is a need to ensure that the methodology is used properly, so as to safeguard the validity of research findings…

The literature on using scoring rubrics in writing assessment denotes the significance of rubrics as practical and useful means to assess the quality of writing tasks. This study tries to investigate the agreement among rubrics endorsed and used for assessing the essay writing tasks by the internationally recognized tests of English language…

Nowadays the consideration of culture in second/foreign language (L2) teaching is considered quite necessary. The ability of the readers in comprehending texts may be influenced by their familiarity or lack of familiarity with the culture the text is based on. So, the present study tried to find the difference between Iranian university students'…

This paper discusses the emergence of a new student figure as a result of the Anglophone (We use the term 'Anglophone' here with no intention that native-speakerism and native-culturism are exclusively related to the English language, but only to describe the current situation in a context in which English is the dominant language) neoliberal…

Several studies have investigated how the TESOL program influenced the construction of Non-Native English Speaker Teachers' identities, yet few literature concerns about the negotiation of NNESTs' identity as legitimate speakers and teachers of English. This paper was an auto-ethnographic investigation of my personal experience as one of…

Although major advances have been made in research on language learning strategies (LLS), there are some areas that have been somewhat surprisingly neglected by specialists. This applies without doubt to the strategies that learners draw on to better understand and learn grammar rules but also to employ grammar structures in real-time processing,…

Internal error monitoring as reflected by the error-related negativity (ERN) component can give insight into the process of learning a second language (L2). Yet, early stages of learning are characterized by high levels of uncertainty, which obscures the process of error detection. We examine how uncertainty about L2 syntactic representations,…

This study explored the influence of speech rate (normal vs. fast), sentence length (short vs. long), and second language (L2) oral proficiency on listening comprehension in L2 Spanish. Thirty-one native English-speaking learners enrolled in upper-level Spanish courses were aurally exposed to 8 sentences of each type of speed--length matrix, for a…

In recent years, English as a second language (ESL) educators have developed a variety of online resources for addressing legal issues. The problem is that the authors' understanding of laws and police procedures varies greatly, and so does their familiarity with relevant research, the breadth of topical coverage, and the quality of police-themed…

This study explored the initial stages of adult second language (L2) learning with a special focus on the acquisition of the target language sound system. The aim was to analyze the longitudinal development of Spanish stop voicing contrasts in an immersion learning context. Native English-speaking late learners of Spanish provided production data…

Word forms such as "walked" or "walker" are decomposed into their morphological constituents (walk + -ed/-er) during language comprehension. Yet, the efficiency of morphological decomposition seems to vary for different languages and morphological types, as well as for first and second language speakers. The current study…

The purpose of this study is to investigate EFL university students' learning strategies used in a digital English learning environment, and to analyze the interrelations between their use of learning strategies and individual learner factors, such as gender, English proficiency levels, learning experiences, and the duration of using the digital…