This study examines the proposition that second language learners tend to map second language (L2) lexical forms onto the existing semantic content of their first language (L1) translations rather than creating a separate semantic network for the second language. To test this, the participants (n=9) responded to three semantic judgement tasks. In…

This study evaluated the development of vocabulary knowledge over the course of two academic years, beginning in preschool, in a large sample (N = 944) of language-minority children using scores from single-language vocabulary assessments and conceptual scores. Results indicated that although children began the study with higher raw scores for…

In minority language revitalisation contexts, the determination of proficiency in the minoritised language is a sensitive social issue that affects citizens regardless of their linguistic background. From a psychometric perspective, since the target population is heterogeneous, competence assessment instruments must ensure score validity for each…

This article attempts to explore the use of first language (Arabic) in the Libyan EFL classrooms as well as teachers' and students' attitudes towards using it. To this end, 5 Libyan EFL teachers and 143 Libyan EFL undergraduate students from the English department of Sebha University took part in the study. Data were gathered through…

Investigating the L2 temporality, most previous studies within the Aspect Hypothesis framework focused on the basic meanings or prototypical uses of past morphology. The present study, however, including other less prototypical uses of past morphology, addresses 2 questions: (i) how the uses of simple past and past progressive morphology change as…

The language of school is very often an obstacle to the successful education of indigenous, migrant, and minority children. One such group in Europe, the Romani, constitutes an ideal case of educational injustice meeting linguistic difference, racism, social marginalization, and poverty. Notwithstanding its virtues, rights-based advocacy for…

It is important to determine whether the school attitude of secondary school students has an influence on the reading attitude. For this purpose, such a study was conducted at secondary school level. In addition, the extent to which such variables as mother tongue are determinative in this context has been examined.The objective of this study is…

This study investigated the predictions of two approaches to second language acquisition. According to the usage-based approach, learner knowledge results from the strengths and weaknesses of input-driven statistical learning. According to the learner-varieties approach, pragmatic communication principles and language-internal constraints play…

This study investigated characteristics of classroom interaction of English language teachers in Indonesia and Malaysia, focusing on language accuracy and classroom discourse. A qualitative method was employed in this study while the data was gathered through observation of six teaching sessions of English language teaching in secondary schools,…

Sociocognitive theory views learning, including second language acquisition, as the progressive "alignment" of individuals vis-à-vis their ecosocial environments. In this article we first update sociocognitive theory in light of recent evolutionary/ecological research on learning/teaching: (a) Humans are evolutionarily "adapted to…

During sentence processing, comprehenders form expectations regarding upcoming material, and may even predict a specific word. Previous event-related potential (ERP) studies have shown that disconfirmed predictions elicit a post-N400-positivity (PNP) with two distinct distributions. A frontal-PNP (f-PNP) is elicited when an unexpected but…

Mid-20th-century scholars argued that second language (L2) instruction should be rooted in a comparison of the structural characteristics of the first language (L1) and L2. Their enthusiasm for a "scientific" approach to errors reflected the view, based on the contrastive analysis hypothesis (CAH), that learners' difficulties could be…

This study systematically examines the moderating effects of task type and L2 proficiency on the relationship between L1 and L2 simultaneously across reading and writing tasks with different levels of cognitive complexity. Main and moderating effects were evaluated through structural equation modeling analyses. First, both L1 skills and L2…

Loosely attached to other syntactic elements in an utterance, pragmatic markers (PM) are one of the most frequented pragmatic elements that fulfill various functions. Among a great number of PMs encountered in daily conversations, I think is one of the most prevalent PMs in native speaker and non-native speaker discourse. Thus, the purpose of this…

Providing English language instruction has important implications for millions of children nationwide. This Statistics in Brief first discusses differences in the student and school characteristics of kindergartners who participated in instructional programs designed to teach English language skills and students who did not participate in such…