CAN and COULD have multiple uses and multiple interpretations, which can be difficult for learners of English to understand. For example, the difference of "Can you help me?" and "Could you help me?" may go unnoticed to an English language learner, but a native speaker of English would recognise a difference in politeness. The…

The issue of phrasal verb learning has caused much discussion and attracted vigorous investigation. Inspired by the theory of conceptual metaphor, a pedagogical experiment was conducted to investigate whether an approach focussing on sense extension of particle "out" in terms of conceptual metaphors can enhance the learning of phrasal…

This study measured the effectiveness of three tasks (cloze, editing and writing) on the learning of phrasal verbs for students learning English as a foreign language (EFL). A total of 72 low-to-intermediate EFL learners were recruited. This study employed pre- and post-test designs. The performance of the learners who completed the three tasks…

The present study examined the interaction effects between teachers' choice of language in lexical explanation and second language (L2) learners' proficiency level on the learning of phrasal verbs and listening comprehension in a meaning-focused listening activity. Undergraduate L2 learners with two different levels of proficiency (intermediate…

There are some English verbs that can be used both intransitively and transitively. Verbs such as "break," "close," and "melt" can appear in intransitive active, transitive active, and passive constructions. Although native English speakers know in what kind of context a target verb is used in a certain construction,…

While educators in South Korea have identified a need to change outdated practices of language pedagogy, continued utilization of the grammar-translation approach has perpetuated communication problems in a South Korean EFL context. To provide clinical analysis needed for effective reform, literal, figurative, and discursive aspects of formulaic…

This paper is an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the grammatical description and advice contained in the new National Curriculum documentation from 2013, focusing on key stages 1 and 2. It builds on previous analyses of deficiencies in the systems of grammar and the materials in earlier incarnations of the National Curriculum. It…

Native speakers of English regularly hear sentences without overt subjects. Nevertheless, they maintain a [[superscript -]pro] grammar that requires sentences to have an overt subject. It is proposed that listeners of English recognize that speakers reduce predictable material and thus attribute null subjects to this process, rather than changing…

This paper studies mood distribution in the complement of Spanish assertive matrices when the matrix subject is modified by the quantifier "poco/a/s". The focus of this study is solely complement clauses, and adjectival and adverbial clauses are not considered. Following Mejías-Bikandi's (1994, 1998) account that the distribution of mood…

Two experiments used eye-tracking during reading to investigate the role of the consistency of the relative markedness alignment of noun phrases (NPs) in the processing of complex sentences in Korean. To do so, the animacy of the first NP was varied in both experiments to manipulate the relative markedness of NPs. In addition, case markings of the…

By their second birthday, children have begun using grammatical cues to decipher the meaning of newly encountered words. By 3 years of age, there is evidence that children are more reliant on grammatical than social cues to decipher verb meaning (Nappa, Wessel, McEldoon, Gleitman, & Trueswell, 2009). Here, we investigate children's reliance on…

The sparse literature on the use of imperatives in research papers suggests that they are relatively common in a small number of disciplines, but rare, if used at all, in others. The present study addresses the use of imperatives in a corpus of upper-level A-graded student papers from 16 disciplines. A total of 822 papers collected within the past…

This study investigates semantic categorization of the meaning of placement verbs by Danish and Spanish native speakers and two groups of intermediate second language (L2) learners (Danish learners of L2 Spanish and Spanish learners of L2 Danish). Participants described 31 video clips picturing different types of placement events. Cluster analyses…

While more Chinese students are going abroad to persue their further academic study, how to help them improve academic writing competence has received wide attention. Modality, as one of the complex areas of English grammar, reflects the writer's attitude and is extremely important in academic written discourse. Therefore, it is necessary to…

This study was designed to examine the differences between two world Englishes in an effort to add to the body of knowledge relative to world Englishes and cross-cultural communication. Specifically, select grammatical differences between a group of Filipino English language teachers and a Standard American English were examined. Differences…