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The aim of this paper is two-fold: firstly, to provide an overview of the methods used to elicit metapragmatic data in research with young language learners through a systematic review; and secondly, to present three data collection techniques designed and used in two research projects conducted by the authors, and examine their affordances for eliciting metapragmatic data. The systematic review revealed that data elicitation techniques employed in metapragmatics research with children closely reflected those widely employed in research with (young) adults (Culpeper, Mackey & Taguchi, 2018). Against this backdrop, the paper presents three elicitation techniques, developed based on the literature on the methodological considerations for conducting research with children (e.g. O’Kane, 2008; Pinter, 2014; Punch, 2002a, 2002b): the Emoticon task, the Ranking circle, and Readers Theatre. After describing the techniques and presenting the metapragmatic discussions elicited through them, the paper calls for the inclusion of innovative, participant-friendly methods in interlanguage pragmatics research focusing on children’s metapragmatic awareness.

This paper presents an eye-tracking study using the Visual World Paradigm that tests whether participants are able to access gender information on definite articles and deploy it to facilitate lexical retrieval of subsequent nouns. A comparison of heritage speakers of Spanish with control monolingual speakers of Spanish suggests that the heritage speakers’ performance on this task is qualitatively similar to that of the baseline. This suggests that, despite non-target-like performance in offline tasks targeting gender production and comprehension, heritage speakers of Spanish can use gender in a target-like manner in online tasks. In line with proposals put forth by Grüter et al. (2012) and Montrul et al. (2014), a preliminary comparison with previous work on L2 learners (Lew-Williams & Fernald, 2010; Grüter et al., 2012; Dussias et al., 2013) provides tentative support for the idea that the nature of early language learning is crucial in developing the ability to use grammatical gender to facilitate lexical retrieval (Grüter et al., 2012; Montrul et al., 2014).

This paper discusses the oral pragmatic ability of current and prospective university students (international students) in an English-speaking country by examining how they are differentiated in the assessed levels of this target ability. A total of 67 students, all of whom were second language (L2) speakers of English, completed a set of oral discourse production tasks simulating interpersonal settings encountered at university. Their task performances were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. The results show a substantial gap between the highest performing university students and the prospective students in terms of their measured pragmatic ability. However, some university students scored quite poorly and were actually outperformed by a certain number of prospective students who were preparing to satisfy the English language requirements for university admission. These findings suggest that being a university student is not necessarily an indicator of having sufficiently developed pragmatic ability to participate in interpersonal settings in an academic environment. The findings shed light on the importance of providing students learning and assessment opportunities for pragmatics so they can gain greater awareness of their own developing pragmatic ability in an English-medium university.

This study investigated the effects of teacher and peer corrective feedback on pronunciation development, with a special focus on whether providing or receiving peer feedback on pronunciation is more beneficial for L2 production skills. Participants included 96 L2 learners of German. They were assigned to one of three experimental groups or a control group. After general pronunciation training on a segmental and a suprasegmental feature, the teacher group received feedback from a teacher, the provider group gave feedback to peers, and the receiver group listened to feedback from peers. The control group received neither pronunciation training nor feedback. Results from native speaker comprehensibility ratings of learners’ productions indicated that while all groups outperformed the control group, both the teacher and the provider group improved more than the receiver group. In addition, the provider group had a slight edge over the teacher group. Theoretical and pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed.

Chinese compounds consist of two to four characters but function as single word. If the compounds are semantically opaque and contain unfamiliar characters, learners will resort to learning them individually by rote. However, given the large number of Chinese compounds, rote learning can place an excessive burden on memory. To facilitate L2 learning of opaque Chinese compounds, the present study proposes a method called elaborative encoding. In this study, L2 learners were given a booklet with 26 two-character opaque compounds. With elaborative encoding, participants learned the English meanings of the compounds through short metaphorical explanations. With rote memorization, participants learned the compounds’ English meanings without any explanation. To test the effects of elaborative encoding, a Chinese-to-English translation task was conducted immediately after training, five days later, and 14 days later. The results showed elaborative encoding was superior to rote memorization in retaining the meanings of the opaque compounds.

Levis (2005) named two conflicting approaches to pronunciation teaching, the Nativeness Principle and the Intelligibility Principle. This paper revisits those two principles to argue for the superiority of the Intelligibility Principle in regard to where pronunciation fits within the wider field of language teaching, in how it effectively addresses teaching goals, in how it best addresses all contexts of L2 pronunciation learning, and in how it recognizes the reality of social consequences of pronunciation differences. In contrast, the Nativeness Principle, despite its long pedigree and many defenders, falls short by advocating native pronunciation for L2 learners, which is both unlikely to be achieved and unnecessary for effective communication in the L2.

This study investigated relationships among intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness in the speech of L2 learners of Spanish who completed a prompted response speaking task. Thirty native Spanish listeners from Spain were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk to transcribe and rate extracted utterances, which were also coded for grammatical and phonemic errors, and speaking rate. Descriptively, although most utterances were intelligible, their comprehensibility and accentedness varied substantially. Mixed-effects modeling showed that comprehensibility was significantly associated with intelligibility whereas accentedness was not. Additionally, phonemic and grammatical errors were significant predictors of intelligibility and comprehensibility, but only phonemic errors were significantly related to accentedness. Overall, phonemic errors displayed a stronger negative association with the listener-based dimensions than grammatical errors. These findings suggest that English-speaking learners of Spanish are not as uniformly intelligible and comprehensible as FL instructors might believe and shed light on relationships among speech constructs in an L2 other than English.

The study compares two different graphic marking systems designed to help L2 learners of Swedish notice and realize phonological length. In System A, 22 L2 learners read aloud three /VːC/ words with length marked under long vowels and three /VCː/words with dots under short vowels. Twenty-two other L2 learners read the same words marked by the other system (System B) that underlines long vowels and long consonants. As a control group, 20 native Swedish speakers read the same words without any marking. We measured and compared the temporal realizations of the six words by all the three groups. System B readers realized Swedish phonological length more closely to the way that native speakers did, compared to System A readers. These results suggest that prompting both long vowels and long consonants can be more effective than marking long and short vowels.

Research on tense-aspect phenomena has shown that the type of experimental task can affect the performance of L2 learners. This pilot study on the understudied language combination Dutch-Spanish investigates this issue by focusing on the interaction between known affecting variables (inherent aspect; L1 effects) and different tasks (multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blanks, free production). First findings show that, indeed, both task type and L1 have an influence on the outcome. Generally, Dutch learners seem to prefer the Imperfect over the Preterit. This stands in contrast to previous research but can be explained by the imperfective features of the Dutch Simple Past with which the learners associate the L2 forms. Whereas this L1 effect is not visible in the multiple-choice task where the choice is forced, it manifests itself in tasks where students can choose freely between forms they know. Especially in the free production task, the L1 effect interacts with a high individual variability.

The present study reports a novel case where a simple one-to-one category mapping may develop into a systematic one-to-two mapping over the course of second language acquisition. We examined the split in category mapping of the Mandarin unaspirated stops conditioned by tone by Korean-speaking learners of Mandarin Chinese (e.g. Mandarin /ta35/ to Korean lenis [ta] vs. Mandarin /ta55/ to Korean fortis [t’a]). Korean L2 learners and naïve listeners participated in identification tasks in whichf0contours of Mandarin words containing unaspirated stops with short-lag VOTs were digitally manipulated. In word-initial position, learners showed a near-categorical perception from lenis to fortis asf0increased, while most stimuli were identified as fortis by naïve listeners. The effect off0was much smaller in word-medial position, but the group difference remained the same, confirming the two groups’ differential use of phonetic cues for stop identification. Taken together, a substantial reorganization of perceptual cues, namely the promotion off0concurrent with significant underweighting of VOT cues, seems to have taken place during L2 acquisition. The findings were discussed with reference to PAM-L2 whereby the knowledge of the L2 phonological system along with particular phonetic properties of the L2 sounds may have driven a perceptual regrouping of the L2 stop categories.

Phonological short-term memory (PSTM) capacity is the ability to retain verbal information briefly (Archibald & Gathercole, 2006). Since PSTM facilitates the storage of verbal material, one expects a positive relationship between PSTM and several aspects of second language (L2) learning. Some studies have found a relationship between PSTM and oral production skills, such as fluency (e.g., O’Brien et al., 2006). This paper reports on the results of a study that looked at the inter-relations between complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF), and between these dimensions and PSTM. One hundred and thirty-five L2 learners of Spanish participated in the study. Results showed that performance in one L2 speech dimension did not have a negative impact on performance in another dimension, but that as complexity increased or decreased, there was a better chance of fluency than accuracy also increasing or decreasing. PSTM capacity was related to complexity and fluency, but not to accuracy. These results were interpreted as lending some support to Skehan’s Trade-off Hypothesis (Skehan, 2009).

Based on datasets of L1 Italian and Spanish learner language culled from the Trinity Lancaster Corpus Sample, this paper investigates how verb-argument constructions (VACs) develop in the spoken English of L2 learners across proficiency levels. In addition to proficiency and L1 effects, we focus on the potential influence of native English usage on learner VAC production. Insights into learners’ productive knowledge of five target VACs and the verbs used in those VACs are gained through (1) comparisons of normalized entropy scores for verbs in VACs; (2) correlation analyses comparing for each VAC the verbs produced by groups of learners and by native English speakers; and (3) regression analyses comparing learner verb-VAC associations against indices of VAC usage, including verb-VAC frequency, VAC-verb association strength and contingency. Results indicate that, across L1 backgrounds, more proficient learners are more productive in their VAC use and closer to patterns in L1 English usage than less proficient learners.

This article provides a longitudinal study of L2 learners of German who used a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) system that formed part of their regular classroom instruction. The 42 learners were enrolled in four consecutive university language courses at a beginner and intermediate level. The study compares two different feedback types, metalinguistic feedback and repetition, which were provided for the same exercise type over the course of four semesters. The exercise type required learners to build sentences from a set of predefined, uninflected words. While the grammatical focus of the exercises changed over time, many of the same grammatical constructions were present in all four courses. The study discusses the changes in learner performance and error correction behavior as students became more proficient in their knowledge of the L2 grammar and were exposed to the technology-mediated feedback that remained consistent throughout system use over the four language courses.

Considerable research has examined the effects of task repetition (TR) on second language (L2) performance. While results are still inconclusive, some patterns are emerging. However, limited attention has been paid to L2 learners’ perceptions of TR. This paper reports a study in which 40 English as a foreign language (EFL) learners were asked to repeat a task after a three-day interval; on both occasions they performed the task immediately after receiving instructions. Results indicated that TR triggered more complex and fluent, but less accurate, narratives. In post-task interviews, the majority of learners expressed positive attitudes towards TR, purporting that familiarity increased confidence. This paper will finally discuss the possible pedagogical implications of the study for EFL teaching.

We investigate the cross-linguistic influence and the (longitudinal) impact of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) on the acquisition of intensifying constructions, using corpora of written French, Dutch, and English productions by L1 speakers, and L2 English and L2 Dutch produced by French-speaking learners in CLIL and traditional foreign language education. We hypothesize that learners will benefit from similarities between the L1 and target language (TL) intensifying constructions, and secondly, that more input and use (through CLIL) will lead to a more target-like use of intensifying constructions. The analyses include quantitative measures of frequency and productivity, and covarying analyses (Gries, 2007). Our findings suggest that, as expected, CLIL students produce intensifying constructions in a more target-like manner. The effect of the duration of TL learning, however, is more apparent in English than in Dutch.

This study examines the influence of previously acquired languages – namely, Colloquial Arabic (CA) and English – on the acquisition of Standard Arabic (SA) by L3 and L2 learners. It reports on the role of typological and structural proximity in language transfer and whether transfer patterns change over time. The study involved 105 participants: 41 CA-L1, English-L2 learners of SA, 47 English-L1 learners of SA, and 17 Arabic-L1 speakers. The participants completed three written tasks focusing on: definite article use, verb subcategorization rules, and sentential negation. The results indicate that CA plays a positive role in L3 learners’ acquisition of SA, mainly in forms where SA and CA converge, whereas English seems to play more of a negative role for both L3 and L2 learners. Thus, structural proximity seems to play a positive role in transfer to the L3. Negative transfer, irrespective of proximity/distance, diminishes as learners advance in their study of SA.

The beginning stages of speech segmentation in a second language (L2) have received little attention to date. The literature on L2 phonological acquisition tends to focus on learner populations who have access to discrete (orthographic) forms through exposure to the L2 in a classroom setting. Specifically, the existing literature on L2 acquisition of French liaison holds that the processing of liaison is greatly influenced by orthographic representations and that L1 and L2 phonological learning subsequently follow distinctly different developmental paths. We present data suggesting that more naturalistic L2 learners, who have had little formal L2 instruction and whose exposure is primarily oral, process liaison employing strategies previously observed only in children learning L1 French, calling into question the assumption that L1 and L2 phonological acquisition differ fundamentally and suggesting rather that phonological development depends on both the quality and quantity of the input to which the L2 learner is exposed.

Studies on the acquisition of Frenchliaisonhave primarily focused on monolingual children or adult second language (L2) learners in a university context. To bridge the gap between these two populations, the present article focuses on child L2 (cL2) learners – a particularly interesting group, since they are L2 learners who, unlike adults, do not have access to writing. How doesliaisondevelop in cL2 French? Is the development more similar to L1 or L2 acquisition? These questions are explored through longitudinal data from cL2 learners (age of onset: 3;0–3;5,n = 3), with monolingual (n = 2) and bilingual (n = 3) L1 controls. The cL2 data present certain similarities with adult L2 learners, but also with L1 controls. However, productions vary greatly within the L2 group: whereas one of the three learners shows clear development over time, behaving similarly to the L1 children at the end of the observation period, another learner hardly produces anyliaisonsat all.

Previous research in Chinese L2 learning has shown that video learning is an effective way to engage students, especially for learning social realities such as cultural values (e.g., dating practices). Chinese L2 learners commonly have experience with learning social realities from videos, including textbook videos, television dramas, music clips and talk shows Using the lens of internalization, this qualitative study provides a detailed interpretation of what video offered its Chinese L2 participants and what challenges the participants experienced learning about social realities. This article discusses three focused cases with 12 interviews, 30 observations, 3 clip-elicitation conversations, and documents (including memos and field notes). Use of a three-phase Constant Comparative Method (CCM) revealed that the learning processes of Chinese L2 learners displayed similarities and differences. Participants had distinctive trajectories in their learning of social realities. Implications for Chinese L2 research and education are discussed.

Research (e.g., Wood, 2010a) suggests that study abroad (SA) and the use of formulaic language (FL), or sequences of words that tend to go together, aid L2 oral fluency. Nonetheless, there is conflicting evidence regarding whether quantity of L2 use abroad is a predictor of language outcomes. This article examines the acquisition of FL by US L2 learners of Spanish (n = 11) who studied abroad in Spain. The study measures the temporal fluency variables and the formula/run ratio of narrative retell tasks pre- and post-SA by L2 learners and native Spanish speakers. The findings indicate that regardless of program type and length, learners produce more FL post-SA, but they are still far from target-like usage. Moreover, participants’ mean length of run is directly related to the formula/run ratio. Lastly, an analysis of language use shows no direct relationship between L2 use abroad and oral fluency outcomes.

One dimension of knowing a word is recognizing its structure. Previous research, mostly on L2 English, has revealed a close link between derivational knowledge (DK) and vocabulary size. Nevertheless, the degree of the relationship as well as the effect of the learner’s L1 vary among these studies. The present study analyzes the development of DK in L1 English learners of L2 Spanish (n = 209) taking university level courses from second to seventh semester at a US institution. The measurements explore the complex nature of DK – i.e., relational, syntactic and distributional knowledge – in both receptive and productive mode. Results showed that proficiency rather than vocabulary size, i.e., knowledge of monomorphemic words, contributes to DK. While a full receptive knowledge of some suffixes can be acquired relatively early, this is not the case for productive knowledge. This study also provides some tools to measure DK without resorting to metalanguage.

Previous studies have shown that nonnative phonemic contrasts pose perceptual difficulties for L2 learners, but less is known about how these contrasts affect speech production in L2 learners. In the present study, we elicited speech errors in a tongue twister task investigating L1 Arabic speakers producing L2 English words. Two sets of word productions were contrasted: words with phonemic contrasts existing in both L1 Arabic and L2 English (e.g.tipvsdip, singvszing) or words with phonemic contrasts existing in English alone (pitvsbit, fatvsvat). Results showed that phonemic contrasts that do not exist in Arabic induced significantly more speech errors in L2 Arabic speakers of English compared to native English speakers than did phonemic contrasts found in both languages. Implications of these findings for representations in L2 learners are discussed.

This study explores the uses of the present perfect (PP) and simple past (SP) by French learners of English and assesses how those uses differ from those in native English and those of the passé composé (PC) in native French which, semantically, overlaps with PP and SP. Methodologically, the study is based on over 3,000 contextualized occurrences of PP, SP and PC, and includes cluster and collostructional analyses. Overall, relatively native-like form-function mappings in interlanguage emerge from the analyses, suggesting that, semantically, advanced learners have integrated the uses of past tenses and that the influence of the PC is relatively weak. Further, at an upper-intermediate to advanced proficiency level, learners have integrated the fine-grained contextual information characteristic of the use of English past tenses. Ultimately, the study shows how different methodological designs can lead to varying conclusions on the (non-)nativelike usage patterns of PP in interlanguage.

Any discipline requires precision in critical issues while tolerating and perhaps even welcoming imprecision in other respects. This editorial discusses areas in second language pronunciation research in which precision is required (the use of terminology such as intelligibility and comprehensibility), where it is not always required to the same extent (the use of phonetic and phonemic symbols), and where it is rarely required (in how L2 learners are given explanations or ways to pronounce more accurately). The article then describes the content of the full-length articles, commentary and reviews.

This study examines the acquisition of the Spanish spirantization of /b/, /d/ and /g/ by a group of very advanced L2 learners who immigrated to Spain from the United States and have lived in central Spain for many years. While spirantization has received considerable attention in previous L2 research on Spanish, the participants in previous studies have typically been newer learners of Spanish, typically studying at the university level. By examining the production of immigrants to Spain, the present study provides insight into ultimate attainment, and whether this results in a native-like pronunciation in the case of spirantization. Productions are examined both categorically to determine the manner of articulation employed (i.e., approximant, fricative, stop) and also gradiently, using intensity measurements to determine the degree of spirantization when approximants are produced. The comparisons for manner of articulation show significant differences between native Spanish speakers and L2 learners, although when approximants are produced the intensity measurements often do not differ significantly between the two groups. The degree to which individual learners approach native-like pronunciation, both in terms of manner of articulation and intensity measurements of produced approximants, varies considerably.

Recent findings indicate that native speakers (L1) use grammatical gender marking on articles to facilitate the processing of upcoming nouns (e.g., Lew-Williams & Fernald, 2007; Dussias, Valdés Kroff, Guzzardo Tamargo, & Gerfen, 2013). Conversely, adult second language (L2) learners for whom grammatical gender is absent in their first language appear to need near-native proficiency to behave like native speakers (Dussias et al., 2013; Hopp, 2013). The question addressed here is whether sensitivity to grammatical gender in L2 learners of Spanish is modulated by the cognate status of nouns due to their heightened parallel orthographic, phonological, morpho-syntactic and semantic activation. Additionally, the role of transparent and non-transparent word-final gender marking cues was examined because past studies have shown that native speakers of Spanish are sensitive to differences in gender transparency (Caffarra, Janssen, & Barber, 2014). Participants were English learners of Spanish and Spanish monolingual speakers. Data were collected using the visual world paradigm. Participants saw 2-picture visual scenes in which objects either matched in gender (same-gender trials) or mismatched (different-gender trials). Targets were embedded in the preamble Encuentra el/la ___ ‘Find the ___’. The monolingual group displayed an anticipatory effect on different gender trials, replicating past studies that show that native speakers use grammatical gender information encoded in prenominal modifiers predictively. The learners were able to use gender information on the articles to facilitate processing, but only when the nouns had gender endings that were transparent. Cognate status did not confer an advantage during grammatical gender processing.

Our study investigates the second language (L2) acquisition of scalar implicatures some and all. We set out to answer two research questions based on three theoretical accounts, the lexical, pragmatic and syntactic accounts. In an experiment we include English and Japanese native speakers, and intermediate and advanced Japanese L2 learners of English. We used quantifiers some and all in ‘Yes/No’ questions in a context with sets of toy fruits, where pragmatic answers are expected, e.g., a ‘No’ response to the question ‘Are some of the strawberries in the red circle?’ (when a set of 14/14 strawberries are placed inside a red circle). Our individual results indicate that L2 learners are generally more pragmatic in their responses than native English speakers. But, there are neither significant differences between groups nor significant differences between L2 proficiency levels. We consider the implications of our findings for the acquisition of L2 semantics and pragmatics.

The experimental literature on the pragmatic abilities of bilinguals is rather sparse. The only study investigating adult second language (L2) learners (Slabakova, 2010) found an increase of pragmatic responses in that population relative to monolinguals. The results of studies on early bilingual children are unclear, some finding a significant increase in pragmatic responses in early bilingual children (preschoolers) relative to monolinguals (Siegal et al., 2007), while another (Antoniou and Katsos, 2017), testing school children, does not. We tested adult French L2 learners of English and Spanish (in their two languages) as well as French monolingual controls in Experiment 1 and Italian-Slovenian early bilingual children (in both languages) and Slovenian monolingual controls in Experiment 2. Our results were similar to those of Antoniou and Katsos (2017) in early bilingual children, but different from those of Siegal et al. (2007). We found no pragmatic bias in adult L2 leaners relative to adult monolinguals.

Interactive tasks are valuable tools for L2 learners and have long made their way into language lessons. Among the different task conditions, only few studies have dealt with procedural repetition, which consists of repeating the same task type with different contents and which is frequently used in schools. In this study we explore the effects of procedural repetition on the oral interactions of ten pairs of English learners (age 11) who had to repeat a task three times. Their negotiation strategies and general performance (accuracy, fluency and complexity) were analysed. Results show that, in the third repetition, the amount of confirmation checks and repetitions decreased significantly and accuracy timidly improved. All other aspects remained unaffected. The pedagogical implications of these results are also discussed.

Key accounts of morphological variability in L2 acquisition posit either deficits in the representation of abstract morphosyntactic features or the mapping between morpho-phonological forms and syntactic features due to computational limitations. This study extends previous research to L2 Italian, a richly inflected language. The production and grammatical intuitions of suppletive and affixal verb inflection were elicited from a cross-section of instructed adult L2 learners with L1 Spanish and L1 English. Although a clear production-intuition gap was found, supporting computational views, a strong regularity in the degree of variability across test conditions, L1s, and proficiency levels was also attested, supporting representational accounts. The findings suggest morphological development in L2 Italian is consistent with structure-building models that assume no L1 transfer of functional features. Imperative verb forms in L2 Italian are proposed as defaults equivalent to the bare verb forms of L2 English and non-finite defaults of L2 French and German.

This study investigated factors associated with and strategies used by advanced Chinese L2 learners in accessing the meanings of commonly used polysemous words (lexically ambiguous words) in sentential reading. The participants included 26 learners of Chinese from a Midwest university in the US. The results showed that word frequency, meaning frequency of polysemous words, and learners’ knowledge of polysemous words affected successful lexical access in sentential contexts. Learners mainly used five types of strategies to solve lexical ambiguity problems, of which three were more frequently used: contextual cues, the intra-word analysis method, and the dominant meaning cue. Contextual cues were the most frequently used strategy.

This study investigates the effects of Spanish L2 learners’ proficiency levels on their use of communication strategies in face-to-face interactions. Spoken data was elicited by means of a task-based methodology from different level learners in interaction with other learners and Spanish NSs. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted to investigate a possible association between the learners’ proficiency levels and their communication strategy use. The analysis drew on Dӧrnyei & Kӧrmos’ (1998) taxonomy. Findings indicate a higher strategy use in beginner levels, and their tendency to tackle lexis-related problems, as well as less complex grammatical features of the language. Higher level learners, however, focused more on grammar-related problems, as well as on more complex aspects of the target language.

This study investigates the relationship between language learning achievement and the use of language learning strategy among intermediate Chinese as a second language (L2) learners. A total of 62 students from an intermediate Chinese course participated in this study.Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL)(Oxford, 1989) was used to assess participants’ strategy use frequency. Correlation, one-way ANOVA, and ANOVA post hoc tests were performed for data analysis. Key findings suggest that: (1) initiative, communicative orientation, and risk taking are good behavioral predictors of Chinese L2 achievement; (2) medium-achieving learners are more active in using strategies, especially cognitive and memory strategies. These investigations of strategy use within and across achievement groups revealed both Chinese L2 learners’ characteristics in strategy use, and also the problems and challenges that learners with different achievement levels encounter. Multiple pedagogical implications are provided at the end of this article.

For native speakers, congruent gender marking on determiners and adjectives facilitates recognition of subsequent nouns, while incongruent marking inhibits recognition (e.g., Bates et al., 1996). However, there is conflicting evidence regarding whether second language learners demonstrate this effect. We investigated this issue in Swahili. Native speakers and English-speaking L2 learners of Swahili in their 3rd-5th semester completed two word repetition tasks, one examining gender and one number. Participants heard verb-noun phrases in Swahili with verbal marking that was congruent, incongruent or neutral with respect to gender or number. The time to repeat each noun was recorded. Both language groups appeared sensitive to number marking; however, only native speakers appeared sensitive to gender marking. The findings suggest the lack of a feature in the L1 may impede online processing in the L2, while the presence of a feature may mean that native-like processing is possible, even at early levels of proficiency.

Previous research has shown that English-speaking learners of Russian, even those with advanced proficiency, often have not acquired the contrast between palatalized and unpalatalized consonants, which is a central feature of the Russian consonant system. The present study examined whether training utilizing electropalatography (EPG) could help a group of Russian learners achieve more native-like productions of this contrast. Although not all subjects showed significant improvements, on average, the Russian learners showed an increase from pre- to post-training in the second formant frequency of vowels preceding palatalized consonants, thus enhancing their contrast between palatalized and unpalatalized consonants. To determine whether these acoustic differences were associated with increased identification accuracy, three native Russian speakers listened to all pre- and post-training productions. A modest increase in identification accuracy was observed. These results suggest that even short-term EPG training can be an effective intervention with adult L2 learners.

This study compared the effectiveness of two teaching methods on the production of Mandarin Tone 3 by English-speaking students. The control group (n=12) received pitch direction-focused instruction in which Tone 3 was introduced as a falling-rising contour tone while the experimental group (n=12) received pitch height-focused instruction in which Tone 3 was introduced as a low level tone. The ability to produce this tone in monosyllabic words, disyllabic words and sentences was assessed after 1 month, 2 months, and 3 months of instruction. The results showed that the pitch height-focused teaching method improved Tone 3 production in connected tonal environments at the sentence level, whereas the pitch direction-focused teaching method was more effective in training students to produce this tone in isolation. More importantly, unlike the pitch direction-focused method, the effectiveness of the pitch height-focused teaching method generalized to new words. It helped L2 learners to develop a self-learning skill for pronouncing unfamiliar words.

This paper investigates the efficacy of articulatory training and acoustic feedback on Persian L2 learners’ production of English segmental (/ɒ/). A sample of 30 Persian ESL learners was recruited- 10 learners were randomly assigned to the experimental group 1, 10 to the experimental group 2, and 10 to the control group. Over a five-week period, the experimental group 1 received training on the manner of articulation of the segment, the experimental group 2 received acoustic-articulatory training and was exposed to CALL software for receiving feedback, and the control group was only exposed to auditory input. The groups were given a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a generalization test. The results of the study showed a significant improvement in the performance of the participants in both the posttest and the generalization test in the experimental group 2. These findings suggest the inefficiency of the mere knowledge of the manner of articulation of the segment and lend support to the feasibility of using acoustic features of sounds and computer-based, learner-centred programs for second language segmental acquisition.

In this study, we analyze the kind of actions L1 and L2 speakers of Italian perform by prefacing their responsive turns with the discourse marker be’. As a baseline, the article begins with an analysis of how native speakers of Italian use be’. We then carry out quantitative and qualitative analyses of the use of be’ in a number of L2 learners at different proficiency levels from three data sets of different types of interactions between students and native speakers of Italian. In the qualitative analysis, we adopt a conversation analytic perspective. The results suggest that both native speakers and L2 speakers, from intermediate to advanced level, perform a variety of social actions by be’-prefacing their responsive turns.

This exploratory study intends to investigate the use of discourse markers (DM) in Italian L2 by learners with different L1s and different levels of competence (three at A2/B1 level and two at B2/C1 level). The analysis aims to describe the functions, the distribution, and some acoustic features of three DMs (però‘but’, allora‘then’, quindi ‘therefore’) in semi-spontaneous conversations between the learners and two native speakers. The purpose is to determine the possible uses and the relationship between the forms and functions of the DMs in native and non-native speakers distinguishing three main macro-functions (interactional, cognitive and metadiscursive) activated by speakers on the basis of the characteristics of the cotext (acoustic profiles), the context and the communicative situation. Such an analysis suggests a possible sequence in the emergence of DMs in the speech of L2 learners with different levels of competence in the target language. This exploratory study adopts a functional approach (Bazzanella 1995a, b; 2006; Fisher 2006). The outcomes of the analysis show that learners use a variety of DM forms and functions, and that some functions only emerge in more proficient speakers. The structural context and, to a lesser degree, the acoustic profile prove to be reliable indicators of the spectrum of functions performed by DMs in verbal interaction.

The present study investigates to what extent morphological priming varies across different groups of native speakers of a language. In two masked-priming experiments, we investigate the processing of morphologically complex Turkish words in Turkish heritage speakers raised and living in Germany. Materials and experimental design were based on Kırkıcı and Clahsen’s (2013) study on morphological processing in Turkish native speakers and L2 learners, allowing for direct comparisons between the three groups. Experiment 1 investigated priming effects for morphologically related prime-target pairs. Heritage speakers showed a similar pattern of results as the L1 comparison group, with significant priming effects for prime-target pairs with inflected primes (e.g. ‘sorar-sor’ asks-ask) as well as for prime-target pairs with derived primes (e.g. ‘sağlık-sağ’ health-healthy). In Experiment 2, we measured priming effects for prime-target pairs which were semantically and morphologically unrelated, but only related with regard to orthographic overlap (e.g. ‘devre-dev’ period-giant). Unlike both L1 speakers raised in Turkey and highly proficient L2 learners, heritage speakers also showed significant priming effects in this condition. Our results suggest that heritage speakers differ from both native speakers and L2 learners in that they rely more on (orthographic) surface form properties of the stimulus during early stages of word recognition, at the expense of morphological decomposition.

Findings from corpus-based and psycholinguistic research have highlighted the importance of acquiring productive knowledge of English phraseology for L2 learners. Many studies exploring this facet of language learning have investigated the use of predominantly fixed multi-word sequences by advanced learners in academic settings and compared their use against that of native-speaking writers. More recent studies have attempted to explore the differences between learners’ use of multi-word sequences across proficiency levels. The current study aims to add to this growing body of literature. It examines the use of phrase-frames by L1 German learners of English as a Foreign Language at five different proficiency levels represented in the EF-Cambridge Open Language Database (EFCAMDAT). The most frequent phrase-frames in each level are analyzed according to both quantitative and qualitative characteristics. The results revealed that, at higher proficiency levels, p-frames in learner texts are more variable, less predictable, and more functionally complex.

Developing comprehensible speech is an important goal for L2 learners. At present, there is clear evidence indicating that pronunciation instruction can help develop comprehensibility compared to no instruction at all (see Thomson & Derwing, 2015, for a review). However, it is unclear whether rapid improvements can be obtained through explicit pronunciation instruction. This study investigated the effects of explicit and nonexplicit instruction in the development of comprehensible speech in ESL learners. Three groups (n = 12) received about four hours of pronunciation instruction over three weeks using the same teaching sequence. Groups differed in the type of explicit instruction received: two experimental groups received explicit instruction either on suprasegmental features or four vowel sounds. The same content was presented to the third group without explicit instruction. Speech samples collected from all L2 learners before and after treatment revealed an effect of explicit instruction on comprehensibility: the group instructed in suprasegmentals was rated as more comprehensible. No significant improvement was seen in the nonexplicit group. These results suggest that focusing on suprasegmental aspects seems to be most effective for comprehensibility when time is limited, and argue for a major role for explicit phonetic instruction in developing enhanced comprehensibility (e.g., Derwing, Munro, & Wiebe, 1998; Munro, 1995).

Gender has received scant attention in L2 phonology studies, yet evidence for a female advantage in pronunciation has appeared throughout the past several decades. Neurolinguistic research suggests that females process language differently than males. At the same time, female L2 learners may be more concerned about pronunciation accuracy than their male counterparts. No definitive explanation has yet been offered, however, about why this is so, and how it might impact long-term language acquisition. This paper explores the gender construct in terms of such neurolinguistic predispositions, as well as the L2 evidence for socio-psychological and cognitive differences in orientation to accent, including motivation and strategy use. Suggestions for future research include a closer examination of gender differences in: (a) self-concept; (b) approach to task; (c) access to relevant resources and L2 experience. In this way, gender effects may be more clearly understood as extrinsic or intrinsic in nature.