In order to understand variability in second language (L2) acquisition, this study addressed how individual differences in cognitive abilities may contribute to development for learners in different contexts. Specifically, we report the results of two short-term longitudinal studies aimed at examining the role of cognitive abilities in accounting…

Scholars have at various points discussed the needs of second language (L2) writers enrolled in "mainstream" composition courses where they are mixed with native (L1) English speakers. Other researchers have investigated the experiences of L2 writers in mainstream classes and the perceptions of their instructors about their abilities and…

The present trend in developing and using semi-direct speaking tests has been supported by test developers and researchers' claim of their increased practicality, higher reliability and concurrent validity with test scores in direct oral proficiency interviews. However, it is universally agreed within the language testing and assessment community…

This study attempts to tease apart the effect of dominant languages of communication on the acquisition of syntactic properties of L3 French in order to test the current L3 generative theories. Three groups of bilinguals took part in this study: L1 Persian/L2 English, with French as the dominant language of communication, L1 Persian/L2 English,…

The research aimed at 1) To investigate students' linguistic features of Englishes found in writing in the Facebook closed group's posts and comments, and 2) To investigate types of characteristics of localised features of Thai in English writing found in students' writing in the Facebook closed group's posts and comments. The participants were…

This article reports on a study in which stimulated recall data and quantitative measures of complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF) were used to address three interconnected questions in different planning conditions: (1) how learners share their limited attentional capacity with different cognitive processes of 'planner/proposer', 'translator'…

Purpose: The aim of this study was to examine relations between teachers' conversational techniques and language gains made by their deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Specifically, we considered teachers' reformulations of child utterances, language elicitations, explicit vocabulary and syntax instruction, and wait time. Method: This was an…

The general purpose of this study is to increase, in a classroom environment, formal communication by using reading and writing. Our research focuses on reading as a means to develop the writing of a good précis, which in its turn contributes to improve: 1) memory, vocabulary and grammatical-syntactical structures, in brief, the organization of a…

The present study examines whether bilectal Greek Cypriot educators are able to identify dialectal (Cypriot Greek) elements superimposed on the standard language (Standard Modern Greek) in a written variety-judgment task. By doing so, (meta)linguistic skills of bilectal teachers from Cyprus were put to the test and later compared to the results of…

Previously published corpora of two-word utterances by three chimpanzees and three human children were compared to determine whether, as has been claimed, apes possess the same basic syntactic and semantic capacities as 2-year old children. Some similarities were observed in the type of semantic relations expressed by the two groups; however,…

Reading disability in children with dyslexia has been proposed to reflect impairment in auditory timing perception. We investigated one aspect of timing perception--"temporal grouping"--as present in prosodic phrase boundaries of natural speech, in age-matched groups of children, ages 6-8 years, with and without dyslexia. Prosodic phrase…

This article examines current research on the role and importance of lower-level processes in second language (L2) reading. The focus is on word recognition and its subcomponent processes, including various phonological and orthographic processes. Issues related to syntactic and semantic processes and their relationship with word recognition are…

Two studies investigated syntactic productivity in three-year-old Mandarin speakers' use of verbs in the SVO and S"ba"OV constructions. In Study 1, children were taught novel verbs in one construction and assessed for their production in the other construction. Children produced verbs taught in the "ba" constructions in…

To understand how children develop adult argument structure, we must understand the nature of syntactic and semantic representations during development. The present studies compare the performance of children aged 2;6 on the two intransitive alternations in English: patient ("Daddy is cooking the food"/"The food is cooking")…

This study examined the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by focus processing among first language (L1) speakers and second language (L2) learners of French. Participants read wh-questions containing explicit focus marking, followed by responses instantiating contrastive and informational focus. We hypothesized that L2 proficiency would…