Although translation is a means of intercultural communication, it represents a challenge when it comes to rendering the intended meaning of some propositions, particularly because every language has its distinctive features and structures that may not be accurately rendered into the target language. This challenge is reinforced when translation…

The procedural deficit hypothesis claims that impaired procedural learning is a causal risk factor for developmental dyslexia and developmental language disorder. We investigated the relationships between measures of basic cognitive processes (declarative learning, procedural learning and attention) and measures of attainment (reading, grammar and…

Learning to write correctly, besides the learning of fluent speaking a foreign language, as two important productive skills had been under a great attention from the beginning of the research over the English language teaching and learning. Errors and mistakes, as inevitable parts of learning a 2nd/FL have also paid much attention, though…

Conversely to plenty of studies describing how L1 transfer affects L2 systems, where the two grammars, L1/L2, often only come to interact later in life, less is known of dominant language transfer in heritage language grammars. Unlike in L2 speakers, the dominant language of the heritage speaker potentially affects its weaker language already from…

Japanese learners of English are often described as having good English grammar but lacking in fluency. However, with the changes to a more communication-focused English curriculum in the last few decades, this is no longer the norm. This paper will first review the reactions to communication-focused English instructions in Japan and other parts…

In this article, I argue that first language (L1), second language (L2) and third language (L3) acquisition are fundamentally the same process, based on learning by parsing. Both child and adult learners are sensitive to fine linguistic distinctions, and language development takes place in small steps. While the bulk of the article focuses on…

Lexical knowledge is complex, multidimensional, and difficult to pin down to a set of defined components. The development, organization, and use of lexical knowledge in the first and additional languages are studied in a number of neighbouring disciplines beyond second language acquisition and applied linguistics, including psycholinguistics,…

Analyzing the writing skill of English language learners emerges from understanding the accuracy, fluency, and complexity of texts and classifying written errors according to syntax, morphology, and lexicon. In this quantitative descriptive-analysis study, the participants included thirty one Spanish-speaking, Mexican English language learners who…

This study reports on how the affordances of the WebEx platform were used as multimodality resources during the negotiation of meaning by participants engaged in an English/Spanish eTandem video-conferencing exchange. The exchange involved five dyads of university students with an intermediate level of language proficiency. A total of seven tasks…

Intercultural pedagogies are increasingly seen as affording opportunities for students to share perspectives, understandings and knowledge. In the shift towards such pedagogies, ways that language is conceptualised and the interrelationship between language, culture and knowing are often underexplored. This paper reports on an auto-ethnographic…

Negation is a universal component of human language; polarity sensitivity (i.e., lexical distributional constraints in relation to negation) is arguably so while being pervasive across languages. Negation has long been a field of inquiry in psychological theories and experiments of reasoning, which inspired many follow-up studies of negation and…

This study aims to explore the pedagogical beliefs of Saudi instructors of English as a foreign language (EFL), and the extent to which they apply the values of the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach in their classroom practice. The study was conducted with 42 Saudi EFL teachers and employed a mixed methods approach. A descriptive…

The present study was exploratory in nature and its aim was threefold. First, it probed the language learning beliefs of Tunisian pre-service primary school teachers. Second, it sought to examine if those language learning beliefs would determine and shape the pre-service teachers' future teaching practices. Third, it investigated the impact of…

At present, genre analysis of various types of texts has gained much attention by the researchers worldwide. The focus of genre analysis in this study is on the examination of thesis abstracts written by Pakistani students in the field of TEFL in connection with move structure, lexico-grammatical features and style of the writer. The corpus of…

English has emerged as an international language. The hegemonic positioning of English is problematic for previously colonized places such as the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The remote coral atoll Pacific Island nation of the Republic of the Marshall Islands has a history of colonization. Critical Literacy supports reflective analysis of…