This dissertation investigates the morphological and morphosyntactic processing of case-marking by native and nonnative speakers of Turkish, through behavioral and electrophysiological responses. The study explores the locus of case processing costs during first (L1) and second language (L2) word recognition both in isolation and in sentences. It…

An important component of academic writing in English is the word combinations or collocations writers use while expressing meaning and performing various rhetorical functions. It is essential for second language (L2) writers to gain command of these lexico-grammatical combinations (Cortes, 2004; Hyland, 2008a, 2008b) as they develop their L2…

A surprising conversation with her young daughter inspired author Brandie Bohney to incorporate mentor texts to help students make sense of convention rules. Since struggling and reluctant readers tend to also be struggling and reluctant writers, the author designed activities that would concentrate on the conventions students most needed to…

'Grammar is the business of taking a language to pieces, to see how it works' (Crystal, 1996, p. 6). The study of grammar has fascinated people for many years, especially in the field of second language acquisition (SLA). However, in recent years people became uncertain about its value. Consequently, some educational institutions ceased to teach…

This paper shows the need to triangulate different approaches in Bilingualism and Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research to fully understand late bilinguals' interlanguage grammars. Methodologically, we show how experimental and corpus data can be (and should be) triangulated by reporting on a corpus study (Lozano and Mendikoetxea in…

The variable success in learning a second language (L2) may be best explained by varying degrees of motivation. This study investigated whether individual differences in appraisal dimensions of motivation explained explicit and implicit syntactic knowledge. Participants learned three syntactic structures under implicit and explicit training…

This article has two main goals. The first is to summarize and comment on the current state of affairs of generative approaches to SLA (GenSLA), 35 years into its history. This discussion brings the readership of SSLA up to date on the questions driving GenSLA agendas and clears up misconceptions about what GenSLA does and does not endeavor to…

While the present perfect is difficult for English Language Learners (ELLs) to master, this study seeks to provide evidence of its integral pragmatic function in the social task of initiating and developing relationships. Through analysis of the Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English, the frequency of the present perfect, the pragmatic…

We present a self-organizing approach to sentence processing that sheds new light on notional plurality effects in agreement attraction, using pseudopartitive subject noun phrases (e.g., "a bottle of pills"). We first show that notional plurality ratings (numerosity judgments for subject noun phrases) predict verb agreement choices in…

Purpose: Modeling of grammatical forms has been used in conjunction with conversational recast treatment in various forms. This study tests the relative effect of providing bombardment prior to or after recast treatment. Method: Twenty-eight children with developmental language disorder participated in daily conversational recast treatment for…

The last 15 years has seen a tremendous growth in research on structural priming among second language (L2) speakers. Structural priming is the phenomenon whereby speakers are more likely to repeat a structure they have recently heard or produced. Research on L2 structural priming speaks to key issues regarding the underlying linguistic and…

One area of writing that may be particularly problematic, causing both academic and behavioral challenges for writers with learning disabilities, is constructing sentences. Sentences are the building blocks of coherent and effective writing and constructing syntactically correct and complex sentences is a critical skill characterizing expert…

What teachers write about students has enormous potential to affect their lives. Lauren Porosoff encourages teachers to use their words to empower students to take an active role in their own learning. When teachers use adjectives to describe students, they may be attaching certain fixed characteristics to those students. Verbs, on the other hand,…

Purpose: This study aims to seek to demonstrate how explicit teaching of SFL metalinguistic and multimodal "grammars" enhanced 8-9-year-old children's deeper understanding and production of multimodal texts through critique of the construction of mini-documentaries about animals: the information, language of narration, composition of…

Nearly all first-year composition learning objectives state that writing instructors will help each student to improve their knowledge of written conventions, like punctuation, spelling, and grammar. Historically, it has been difficult to achieve significant learning gains in writing mechanics. This teaching failure disproportionately damages the…