This study tests the Bottleneck Hypothesis (BH) that functional morphology presents the greatest difficulty in second language acquisition by examining Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' knowledge of both functional morphological properties and core syntactic properties across three language proficiency levels. Specifically,…

Reading is one of the fundamental aspects underlying students' achievement yet becomes an activity abstained by students. In fact, EFL learners demand more enjoyable and diverse reading activities. Most EFL students perceive that they are continuously exposed to prevalent reading activities. This qualitative study aims to scrutinize the…

Promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) has become a unifying cause within applied linguistics. Whether highlighting the experiences of linguistically diverse learners across the social class spectrum or advocating for the inclusion of marginalized populations in research, researchers within the subfields of applied linguistics have…

Online education has significantly gained popularity due to new technology and more importantly, the growing impact of the digitalization of the economy. Despite its prominent advantages such as accessibility, affordability and flexibility, the effectiveness of online education is still a constant debate and needs extensive investigations in…

Previous studies have shown that prior linguistic knowledge affects semantic implicit learning when stimuli are presented in the first language. We report an experiment that investigated whether such crosslinguistic influence from the first language would still emerge in the second language for semantic implicit learning of novel articles and…

Positive emotions (pleasant or desirable situational responses) are proliferated in recent years and their effect on academic achievement has been documented in the literature, while their effect in the specific domain of second language learning (L2) remains underexplored. Since successful mastery of an L2 is highly dependent on learners'…

The study investigates how the test modality (spoken or written) of classroom weekly quizzes influences vocabulary learning strategies and facilitates learning the spoken and written knowledge of form-meaning connection in L2 words. Japanese university students in academic English courses were assigned to two experimental conditions (spoken test…

Many different elements have a significant impact on the effectiveness of both teaching and assessment. The ever-expanding body of research on assessment has provided an overview of several cognitive, social, and emotional aspects that impact the academic accomplishment of learners in either a direct or indirect manner. In spite of the promising…

Writing skills are not easy to develop in English language learning, especially when online learning is being implemented amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to improve students' writing skills, as well as increase students' autonomy, peer assessment is often adopted. The article presents findings of the research conducted in late 2021 on…

This study examined whether the linguistic distance between the first (L1) and second (L2) language is a significant determinant of L2 writing skills of 292 adult immigrants from 39 different source countries, who were beginner learners of Spanish L2. Gender, age, length of residence in Spain, education level as a proxy for literacy skills in L1,…

According to the IELTS official website, IELTS candidates usually score lower in the IELTS Writing test than in the other language skills. This is disappointing for the many IELTS candidates who fail to get the overall band score they need. Surprisingly enough, few studies have addressed this issue. The present study, then, is aimed at shedding…

Although studies on peer feedback have identified several advantages for second language writing classes, the benefits of peer feedback to low-proficiency students have not been thoroughly investigated. This current study aims to determine how low-proficiency second-language students of English can improve their writing by giving and receiving…

In a context in which opportunities for oral interaction are limited (English as a foreign language courses at a Saudi tertiary institution), we carried out an action research project evaluating the introduction of computer-mediated spoken language tasks with a group of intermediate learners. Although the students were confronted with multiple…

The present study investigated the second language processing of grammatical mood in Spanish. Eye-movement data from a group of advanced proficiency second language users revealed nativelike processing with irregular verb stimuli but not with regular verb stimuli. A comparison group of native speakers showed the expected effect with both types of…

There has been a growing call for listening to test-takers' voices across diverse assessment contexts. Within classroom assessment (CA), however, test-takers' voices on ethics are under-researched in the high school context of Iran. Hence, this study purported to disclose Iranian high school test-takers' (n = 15) perceptions of the ethical…