The comprehension of paired wh-questions is examined in child Mandarin, to compare the age of acquisition with that of children speaking European languages like English and German. In Study 1, participants were 734 Mandarin speakers aged 2;6-7;11, drawn from four regions of China. Results reveal a striking parallel between the acquisition of…

The expertise reversal effect occurs when instruction that is effective for novice learners is ineffective or even counterproductive for more expert learners. Four experiments designed to explore the expertise reversal effect in the field of teaching and learning foreign language listening skills were conducted. Three instructional formats…

We sought to test a componential model of Chinese written spelling, including the role of orthographic working memory (OWM), among Hong Kong kindergartners. One hundred seventeen kindergartners were recruited. OWM was measured using a visual orthographic judgment and a delayed copying task. Orthographic knowledge, semantic knowledge, and…

This article reviews studies on teaching Chinese as a second or foreign language (CSL/CFL) inside and outside Mainland China. In the review process, we analyzed a total of 1358 Chinese language articles and 175 English language articles from CNKI [Chinese characters omitted] and Web of Science, respectively, during the period from 2004 to 2016. By…

A hallmark of grammatical knowledge is the ability to parse novel syntactic structures. Previous artificial language studies have examined learning hierarchical structures, but few have involved meaningful language and shown generalization to novel structures. This study addressed this issue using the semiartificial language paradigm. The…

Background: Word reading and linguistic comprehension skills are two crucial components in reading comprehension, according to the Simple View of Reading (SVR). Some researchers have posited that a third component should be involved in reading and understanding texts, namely executive function (EF) skills. Aim: This study was novel in two ways.…

The study examined the role of phonological awareness and morphological awareness in concurrent and subsequent oral vocabulary among Chinese-English bilingual children who learned Chinese as their heritage language and English as their societal language. Ninety-one Chinese-English bilingual children in kindergarten and Grade 1 who were recruited…

Musical expertise and working memory (WM) have been isolated as being the most important predictors of phonetic aptitude -- meaning the ability to imitate unfamiliar speech material. Although the link between language functions and musical expertise has been subject to many investigations, specific languages and their individual link to musical…

The paper examines the development of bilingualism in Hong Kong's linguistic landscape. Digital photo archive of the Hong Kong Year Book collection which illustrated signage was analysed to identify changes in language preferences between 1957 and 2014. The transformation in signage from monolingual Chinese to bilingual Chinese-English in Hong…

This study explores the motivation of five university students who simultaneously studied L2 English and additional L3s (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) in a language specialist major in a Thai university. It aims to start filling the gap in research on the motivation of multiple language learners across their different languages. The findings show…

In light of the consistent PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) data results and other statistics that indicate the high academic achievement of Asian descendant students, this study examines Chinese parenting style and its association with children's academic achievement through parents' experiences and perceptions. A qualitative…

This paper examines whether a web-based training on English discourse intonation leads to better spontaneous speech quality for Mandarin Chinese speakers who reside in the U.S. and in China. The four-week fully online training consisted of meta-instruction videos as well as listening and speaking activities, including instant visual pitch contour…

Contrastive focus, conveyed by prosodic cues, marks important information. Studies have shown that 6-year-olds learning English and Japanese can use contrastive focus during online sentence comprehension: focus used in a "contrastive context" facilitates the identification of a target referent (speeding up processing), whereas focus used…

This study investigated how peer-mediated Dynamic Assessment (DA) unfolded in translation revision competence (TRC) of students of Master's degree of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) in China. Thirty subjects first completed three revision tasks and were then rated as high- or low-level performers according to their average scores across the…

The research on interpreting aptitude has focused on the abilities, skills and personal traits of individuals in order to predict their future interpreting performance. However, an important variable between the personal characteristics and success of trainee interpreters in interpreter training, which is instructional practices, is overlooked.…