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While discourse markers (DMs) are crucial for coherence and interactional competence, previous research suggests that learners' usage of DMs differs from L1 speakers. Prior research has taken either a discourse-functional or interactional approach, yet combining these two methods may provide greater understanding of the unique learner communicative needs that drive the acquisition and use of DMs. This investigation contributes to research on interlanguage DM use by quantitatively investigating the frequency and functional distribution of the Spanish DM "pues" by L2 and L1 speakers of Spanish from a discourse-functional perspective and qualitatively examining "pues" as an interactional resource. Oral interviews with 58 L2 and 14 L1 speakers of Spanish were analyzed, revealing distinct frequency and distributional patterns across groups and unique L2 interactional needs that are supported with the DM "pues." Results inform L2 learners and teachers of the importance of DMs for interactions and provide classroom implications.

The present study analyses the impoliteness of criticism over social status and distance, incorporating the concept of "levels of imposition." Criticism as a fundamental speech act is commonly used by people in the modern era, either in the digital world or the real world. It usually contains impoliteness if it embodies negative behavior, conveying criticism. This study belonged to an interlanguage pragmatics study and used forty participants from English language learners having Javanese backgrounds. It also applied the role play technique to take data to be analyzed using mixed method analysis. The data showed that the criticizer performed various impoliteness strategies in criticism, considering familiar and unfamiliar relationships in different social status levels. They mainly performed bald-on-record impoliteness and adhered to other strategies such as negative, positive, and mock politeness. Besides that, delivering criticism in high intonation was also perceived as a part of impoliteness. Therefore, it suggested conducting another research concerning paralinguistics and impoliteness in various communication contexts.

This study sought to scrutinize the interplay between interlanguage pragmatic learning strategies (IPLS) usage and learner autonomy among male and female English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. It also examines whether gender plays a significant role in the adoption and efficacy of these strategies in the EFL learning context. The study sample consisted of 156 upper-intermediate Saudi EFL learners, comprising an equal distribution of 78 males and 78 females. Data were collected via a proficiency test, learner autonomy survey, and IPLS inventory. The results revealed significant gender-based differences in both learner autonomy scores and the application of IPLS. Female learners displayed more strategic approaches to pragmatic learning and greater autonomy compared to male learners. Additionally, a moderately positive correlation between IPLS use and learner autonomy was found for female learners, whereas a strong positive association was observed for male learners, suggesting the critical role of strategy training in fostering learner autonomy. This study provides significant pedagogical implications and substantial insights into the interplay between learner autonomy and IPLS across genders in EFL learning environments.

While acquiring a second language, learners may encounter challenges and difficulties in effectively carrying out verbal communication in the second language. Mastering the apology speech act is a challenge for L2 learners. The objective of this study is to identify the apology strategies utilized by individuals learning the Japanese language, as well as the specific types and underlying causes of errors produced during the execution of apologetic speech acts. The results of this study were gathered via the Discourse Completion Test (DCT), which encompassed a sample of 150 Japanese language learners. The gathered data were further classified using eight semantic formulas based on the research conducted by Haristiani and Sopiyanti (2019), while the various types and sources of error categorization were conducted based on the theories proposed by Corder (1981) and Richards (1975). The results of this study suggest that Japanese learners utilize the same primary strategies in apology speech acts. Furthermore, the study findings indicated that learners at the intermediate level displayed a higher frequency of errors in their speech compared to learners at the beginner levels and pre-intermediate levels, particularly in the strategy of taking responsibility. The main reason for this was primarily a lack of familiarity with the conventions of sentence structures, the proper use of language, and the appropriate use of expressions. The other sources of errors in language learning are likely to be ignoring language rule restrictions, incomplete application of rules, the learner's false hypothesis, overgeneralization, and language transfer. This study is anticipated to function as a point of reference for research in interlanguage pragmatics, second-language acquisition, and error analysis. Gaining comprehension of the various problems and difficulties encountered when performing the speech act of apology in Japanese can assist both learners and educators in reducing these errors.

Pragmatic formulas have been recognized as linguistic building blocks necessary for successful speech act performance. Current approaches to speech act teaching overlook pragmatic formulas, promoting an incomplete view of pragmatics instruction. This paper reports on the results of a classroom-based study in which a formula-enhanced treatment focusing on both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic components of pragmatic ability was tested. Seven students from the Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program participated in four lessons involving pre-, post- and delayed post-test measures. During the treatment, the students were exposed to target formulas from four interaction contexts. A qualitative utterance analysis was conducted to determine how pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic abilities of the students evolved after the teaching intervention. Additionally, three expert judges evaluated students' pragmatic performance. The results indicate that improvements in both pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic abilities of the students were associated with the use of target-like formulas in their speech acts.

Though dynamic assessment (DA) has gained strong theoretical and empirical support over the last decades, second language (L2) practitioners have blamed it for its applicability in large classes. To ameliorate this limitation, peer-dynamic assessment (peer-DA), rooted in the conceptualization of zone of proximal development (ZPD), can be introduced and practiced as an alternative approach. Thus, this study aimed to investigate the effects of peer-DA on cultivating Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners' interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) competence. Additionally, it was to disclose how peer-DA leads to improving the learners' ILP competence. To achieve these aims, a sample of 84 upper-intermediate EFL learners, including females was selected through a convenience sampling method at Iran Language Institute in Borujerd City, Iran. Then, a total of 37 EFL learners whose scores fell around the mean score were selected and randomly assigned to two groups, namely an experimental (n = 19) and a control (n = 18). Then, they went through a pre-test, interventions (lasting 16 one-hour sessions held two times a week), and a post-test. The experimental group's interactions were meticulously recorded. The collected data were analyzed through two independent samples t-tests, and the microgenetic development approach. Findings documented a statistically significant difference between the experimental group and control group concerning the gains of ILP competence on the post-test. Furthermore, the results of the microgenetic development analysis evidenced how the gradual, contingent prompts could lead to noticeable improvements in the learning of ILP features. These findings may have some pedagogical implications for different stakeholders.

Second language development can be viewed as a complex and dynamic process in which learners follow non-linear trajectories and develop their language over a period of time (Larsen-Freeman, 2006). Intrinsic to the view of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST), a system is composed of hierarchical, interdependent subcomponents (learner, learner language, and environment) in dynamic relations as learners develop their interlanguage over time. This piece reviews the interactive and dynamic nature of the subcomponents illuminating the transitory nature or variability (in patterns of language development) that is inherently a characteristic of a complex dynamic system (Larsen-Freeman & Cameron, 2008). First, the forum piece describes how the growth of a subsystem can affect other parts of the system, followed by an explanation of the diverse interrelationships between the connecting subsystems. Next, three empirical studies on the varied relationships between the subsystems are presented. The article concludes with a critique of the current state of research on this topic, revealing some gaps that need to be addressed in future research.

A large body of research has been conducted on the requests employed by monolingual children, whilst knowledge about the requests uttered by bilingual children has remained scarce. To address this issue, this paper, for the first time in the literature, focuses on the request strategies and purposes employed by preschool children bilingual in Turkish and Zazaki in Turkey. By examining the requests of these children, this paper demonstrates how these learners differ from monolingual preschool children concerning their requestive language and the affordances of the local context. The investigation was based on the video-recorded spontaneous speech of 10 five-year-old preschool children (range = 5.0-5.6 years). The results were analyzed according to the request strategies and then according to the purposes of requests. The interactions were handled under two headings: child-child and child-teacher interactions. The outcomes indicated that imperative forms constituted the most frequent strategy both in child-child and teacher-child interactions and that the use of hints was revealed at a rudimentary level, and request for action was the most common purpose elicited in both interactions.

Based on the theoretical approaches to interlanguage and discourse cohesiveness, this study examines international students' growth in discourse awareness and discourse competence in the teaching of elementary Chinese reading and writing, and explores a set of assessment methods for teaching discourse. The learners' knowledge and production of Chinese conjunctive words were assessed with multiple test methods, including the sentence sequencing test for testing learners' cognitive understanding of discourse cohesiveness, the elicitation tasks for assessing learners' production of conjunctive words, the tests of picture-based sentence writing and essay writing for evaluating learners' discourse awareness of the cohesiveness in form and meaning. 13 students were recruited by us to participate in these tests. A comprehensive discussion of the data supports that appropriate reading and writing instruction can develop learners' discourse competence and enhance their discourse awareness to a certain extent.

This paper provides an experimental study of interlanguage phonological characteristics of Chinese students learning Thai as a foreign language and the accentedness perceived by native Thai speakers. Both production and perception experiments were designed to see how Chinese students acoustically produced Thai final nasal consonants and how Thai native speakers perceived these Chinese-accented nasals. The production experiment compared the acoustic features of Thai final nasal consonants (i.e. /m/, /n/, and /[eng]/) produced by Chinese students and native Thai speakers (n = 5 in each group), who provided speech samples from a wordlist reading task, consisting of 28 words (840 tokens). Nasal acoustic properties of 840 tokens (duration, nasal murmurs, and formant transitions) were examined. The findings showed that the Chinese students produced significantly longer nasal duration and more drastic formant transitions compared to the native speakers. The perception experiment analyzed how native Thai raters (n = 10) rated speech samples concerning degrees of accentedness by using a 5-point Likert scale with 5 as the most native level. Based on this, the native Thai raters rated the Chinese students' speech as 3.22 on average, while native Thai speech was judged with an average score of 4.65, which demonstrated that native Thai raters could distinguish foreign speech from those pronounced by native speakers. To find out to what extent nasal acoustic characteristics in Chinese students' interlanguage phonology contributed to the degree of accentedness, stepwise regression analyses were utilized to discover that nasal duration was particularly important in accurately predicting accentedness in Thai with Chinese accents.

This study examined how Korean EFL learners in different proficiency levels attest contrasts of L2 phonology. To this end, twenty Korean EFL learners in high and low levels of English proficiency produced words with word-final contrasts of /[esh]/ vs. /[esh]i/, /t[esh]/ vs. /t[esh]i/, and /d[ezh]/ vs. /d[ezh]i/. Acoustic analyses of lexical vs. epenthetic vowels and lexically vs. derivationally final sibilants were conducted. The results of the acoustic analyses revealed that Korean learners differentiated them at the acoustic level by employing different vowel ratios or F1 for the produced forms with a final lexical or epenthetic vowel which did not differ at the segmental level. On the other hand, the low group did not acoustically differentiate the two types of vowels after /d[ezh]/ at all. With the production of a final sibilant either lexical or derivational, Korean learners also made distinctions in terms of different frication ratios. The results of the study found L2 learners distinguish segmental contrasts acoustically, which is different from L1 speakers, and the proficiency level partially mediates this. The results implicate the existence of interlanguage phonology with its independent system.

Research into instructed pragmatics mainly comparing implicit and explicit instruction has gained salience in language teaching research in the last two decades. The present study was designed to investigate the effect of cognitive and interpersonal task-based instruction on EFL Learners' production of two speech acts of apology and request. To this end, 125 intermediate EFL learners were conveniently sampled, and randomly assigned to four experimental groups (EG) and one control group (CG). The four experimental groups received task-based instruction on the two speech acts of apology and request (three 30-minute sessions on each), though instruction varied in terms of general tasks types (cognitive or interpersonal) and their specific variants (cognitive: predicting (EG1; N=25) and inducing (EG2; N=25); interpersonal: co-operating (EG3; N=25) and role-play (EG4; N=25)). The control group (N=25) did not receive any speech act-specific treatment. The participants' speech act production was measured through a 16-item written discourse completion test (WDCT) as both the pretest and the posttest. The findings showed the significant effect of both cognitive and interpersonal tasks, but also the greater effectiveness of the latter for speech act production. The study has implications for pragmatic task design and classroom practice. More specifically, it shows the potential of task-based instruction and interaction for EFL learners' pragmatic development.

The study addresses the research gap of how being a speaker of a Slavic language influences the ability to convey tempo-aspectual meanings in Romance languages by examining personal and impersonal narratives delivered in written and spoken mode by learners of L3 Spanish and L3 Italian with L1 Slovak and L2 English. Narratives are analysed following the methods of interlanguage analysis proposed by Ellis and Barkhuizen [(2005). "Analysing learner language." Oxford University Press] and Salaberry and Comajoan [(2013). "Research design and methodology in studies on L2 tense and aspect." De Gruyter Mouton], such as coding for grounding, frequency analysis of tense forms and lexical aspectual classes, etc. Following the ideas presented by Bayley (2013, Data analysis: Quantitative approaches. In M. R. Salaberry & L. Comajoan (Eds.), "Research design and methodology in studies on L2 tense and aspect" (pp. 357-390). De Gruyter Mouton), binomial logistic regression models were built which showed that (a) the combination of discourse grounding and lexical aspect is of predictive power regarding the appropriateness of participants' choices of morphological marking; (b) the distributional characteristics of morphological marking on telic predicates differs from activities and statives. One of the main differences compared to the results of previous studies, conducted on speakers of Germanic languages, is that the data did not provide enough evidence for morphological marking being used to convey primarily temporal distinctions (see Salaberry, 1999, The development of past tense verbal morphology in classroom L2 Spanish. "Applied Linguistics," 20(2), 151-178. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/20.2.151; Wiberg, E. (1996). Reference to past events in bilingual Italian-Swedish children of school age. "Linguistics," 34(5), 1087-1114. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling.1996.34.5.1087]) and presented the marking of telic predicates in foreground with perfective morphology as consistent, disregarding the level of participants' performance.

This study investigates the acoustic realizations of English phonemic contrasts by Korean EFL learners, comparing their productions with those of native English speakers. Focusing on the segmentally correct production, the research aims to determine if Korean learners' acoustic properties align with those of native speakers, influenced by second language (L2) proficiency and specific consonant involvement. A total of 20 Korean university students were divided into two proficiency groups and compared with native English speakers. Acoustic analyses were conducted to measure vowel ratios, frication ratios, and formant frequencies. Results indicated that the learners' acoustic properties typically differed from those of native speakers and were mediated by proficiency levels. Even within the high group which showed more correct segment pronunciation than the low group, its acoustic realizations differed from those of native English speakers. In addition, the low group at times illustrated acoustic realizations similar to the native English group. The study underscores the complexity of L2 phonological acquisition in that accuracy at the phonemic and acoustic level may be dissociated. The study thus highlights the need for pedagogical approaches that address accuracy at both segmental and acoustic levels.

When researching socioscientific topics, particularly on the Internet, readers face multiple texts that they must integrate into a coherent mental model. Previous research in monolingual settings has found that comprehension is biased toward readers' prior beliefs (text-belief consistency effect). Considering that the Internet is multilingual, this experiment focused on the influence of document language on the text-belief consistency effect. Assuming differences in epistemic prestige among languages, we hypothesized that document language would act as a credibility cue and moderate the text-belief consistency effect. Seventy-four German university students read two conflicting texts either in their L2 English (higher epistemic prestige) or in their L1 German (lower epistemic prestige). Participants constructed stronger situation models for the belief-consistent text than for the belief-inconsistent text only when they read the texts in German. These results indicate that document language can act as a source characteristic that may reduce belief biases in comprehension.

From November 2015 to October 2020, Canada had welcomed 44,620 Syrian refugees to more than 350 communities across the country. In 2019, it further surpassed the United States and Australia in the number of refugees settled. Lacking the necessary language skills for living and working in a new country is one of the most critical barriers refugees face. This paper aims to inform language-teaching professionals about pertinent linguistic and nonlinguistic issues as well as pedagogical implications associated with supporting adult Syrian refugee learners, drawing both on the literature more broadly and on the author's research in the Canadian context.

The effect of first language transfer on second language acquisition and learning has been a major theoretical concept in second language research and pedagogy since the 1950s. In order to give a historical perspective, the authors offer a brief presentation of some of the major topics from the broad spectrum of issues that have been examined by the applied linguistics research community during the past six decades and some significant developments in neuroimaging and cognitive science that have allowed researchers to investigate the role that first language plays in transfer to second language during neural activity and cognitive processing. The paper concludes with some pedagogical implications for second language instructors.

This study attempts to explain a systematic phenomenon that has been described in interlanguage grammars crosslinguistically: Null-Prep, which consists of omitting the obligatory preposition in certain movement constructions. We propose that Null-Prep is not related to lack of knowledge of "wh"-movement, as previously assumed, but to structural complexity; indeed, we consider Null-Prep a movement-derived structure. With evidence from prepositional relative clauses, "wh"-interrogatives, and sluicing constructions in first language (L1) and second language (L2) Spanish (English and Arabic L1s), we predict the potential appearance of the Null-Prep with a two-way complexity hierarchy that takes into account the syntactic position displaced, as well as its derivational complexity, in such a way that we calculate Null-Prep to occur more often in Relative Clauses, followed by Sluicing, and finally by Questions. This scalar phenomenon uniformly applies to all participants, native and L2 learners, emphasizing its universal nature.

From a complex dynamic systems (CDST) perspective, language is understood as a dynamic system comprised of subsystems that change and develop over time in response to learner-internal and -external factors (Verspoor et al., 2008). Accordingly, language development is seen as a process responsive to the dynamic interaction between the learner and her context over time. While CDST prefers a process over product approach to analyzing language and its development, extant research on language learning has traditionally taken a more static and rigid perspective on acquisition, generally operating under the assumption that development can be understood (more or less) by drawing a straight line between individual variables or conditions and changes in the interlanguage. Findings from traditional research are often presented in "before and after" terms, framing language outcomes as a product of treatments, rather than characterizing developments as an ongoing and variable process.

The research investigated pragmatic transfer in responses to English tag questions by L1 Thai learners based on Interlanguage Pragmatics, specifically pragmatic transfer (Kasper & Blum-Kulka, 1993). The L1 Thai learners were categorized into two groups according to their English proficiency levels: advanced and intermediate. Oral and written discourse completion tasks (Blum-Kulka, 1982) were employed to elicit the participants' responses to English affirmative and negative tag questions in two modalities, speaking and writing. The major findings cast light on the L1 Thai learners' problems of responding to English negative tag questions, rather than positive ones, as a result of their strong reliance on the Thai pragmatic norm. The results also suggested that the responses to English negative tag questions by the intermediate group were less native-like than the advanced group's responses and manifested a higher degree of pragmatic transfer. Concerning pragmatic transfer in the two modalities, responses to English negative tag questions in writing showed a greater degree of pragmatic transfer than those in speaking. The results of the study are expected to elucidate the performance of the L1 Thai learners' responses to English tag questions in both modalities and their dependence on the Thai pragmatic norm in responding to English tag questions. [This study was presented virtually at the 32nd International Conference on Foreign/ Second Language Acquisition on May 20-22, 2021.]

The aim of this study is twofold: to analyze politeness strategies in the online conversations of Thai students, and to suggest how this analysis can be applicable to pedagogical practice. A corpus of a 21-month instant online conversation among students and teachers has been analyzed. Throughout the time of data collection, the teachers continually encouraged students to use English and French to promote the use of foreign languages that they were learning. The result of statistical analysis showed the relation between speech acts and politeness strategies used in the data. It could be claimed that the students' language proficiency governed their politeness strategies. As a result, the authors proposed a modification of Brown & Levinson's (1978) Weightiness formula for non-native speakers of English as: W[subscript x] = LP(S) × [D(S,H) + P(H,S) + R[subscript x]]. The results also showed that emoticons were used as redressive actions in politeness. Further, interlanguage pragmatics in the data were discussed based on linguistic competency and socio-cultural norms in the participants' L1. The results suggest that teachers and curriculum developers could better understand students' communication behaviors and language competency through computer-mediated communication. Finally, we offer suggestions to promote online communication in the context of active learning.

In EFL teaching, it has been theorized that intelligibility can be achieved by relative closeness of oral performance to the standard of EFL proficiency. The current study sought to investigate the position of interlanguage performance of EFL college students in terms of intelligibility of the language product (Speaking). Ten students' Mid Semester Tests of the Speaking Class were videotaped as the source of data in the study. They were in the First Semester of the English Department, majoring in English Letters. The oral performance of EFL college students as the research subjects were analyzed employing QDA Miner, a research software for text mining to position the students' points of interlanguage approximation. As it was only a case study with a limited number of subjects, the findings may not represent EFL students in general. It was revealed that only minimum intelligibility had been achieved. The students produced ungrammatical utterances, mispronounced words, limited communication strategies, lack of sentence variations, and most surprisingly with only a narrow scope of vocabulary selection to express their unforgettable memories in monologues. The errors were attributed to the influence of the mother tongue (Indonesian or Javanese in particular) within the interlanguage boundary of English and Indonesian. Room for improvement is still ahead as they are heading for the next seven semesters in the English Department. The study, pedagogically, concludes that, in teaching EFL, considerably sufficient proportions of teaching pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, should be given throughout the process of learning for the students to achieve the standard of EFL proficiency.

Variability in the form of article (i.e., a and the) omissions and stressing has been attributed to a mismatch between first (L1) and second language (L2) prosodic and syntactic structures. An overlap between the L1 and L2 systems, on the other hand, is expected to contribute to native-like article productions. This case study aims to explore the role of L1 prosodic structure (Turkish, Spanish and English) and syntactic environment (nouns with and without adjectives) on article productions of two end-state L2 speakers and one Australian-English native speaker. The data consisted of a sentence imitation task and spontaneous speech recordings of these three speakers. Article use patterns in the data were coded as supplied and omitted, and indefinite article durations were excised and measured using PRAAT. The findings suggest that the presence of an adjective in the noun clause increases cognitive demand, since irrespective of the L1 background, all the speakers had longer indefinite article durations in contexts with an adjective. Second, the Turkish speaker, whose L1 has a different prosodic and syntactic structure from Spanish and English for encoding definiteness, had higher rates of article stressing and omissions in contexts with an adjective. Third, L1 prosodic constraints can be responsible for article stressing and omissions in end-state L2 speech since only the prosodic transfer hypothesis predicts a difference in article durations between the two syntactic environments within the interlanguage of the same speaker. Despite long years of exposure to and frequent daily use of the L2, the persistent difficulty in article productions, as reported in this paper, may imply the importance of age of acquisition in overriding certain L1 prosodic effects in acquiring an L2.

Although previous studies support using pair work in the language learning classroom, some have shown that getting L2 learners into pairs without raising their awareness about the global norms of collaboration will not necessarily create quality opportunities for interlanguage development. In this study, we investigated the contribution of teaching collaborative ground rules through peer modeling to a learner's routine participatory patterns over time. Using a qualitative single case study methodology, we focused on one intermediate EFL learner interacting with different peers in pairs in an intact class. According to the syllabus of the course, learners had to pair up each session (9 sessions in total) with three different partners to do a narrative task. On the fifth session, a model performance with collaborative ground rules knitted into it was demonstrated to the class to find out how the provision of peer modeling would change the pair participatory patterns. Our analyses of the data from the learner's audio-recorded performances prior and subsequent to the modeling session suggest that the provision of peer modeling has qualitatively expanded the learner's interactive patterns in pair interaction. This study contributes to our understanding of collaborative tasks, and it also suggests that peer modeling could be used as a useful pedagogical technique for teaching learners how to collaborate meaningfully in dyadic interaction.

Learners of a second language often have limited access to the native culture of that language in an authentic way, resulting in them committing linguistic and intercultural mistakes. One of the main advantages of task-based learning is that it can expose students to real-world circumstances, which makes learning a language more meaningful and inclusive of appropriate language behaviour. Task-based learning has become an accepted method for learning a language in face-to-face classroom environments, but its applicability to online learning is largely unaddressed. The author proposed well-organised online role-plays based on a task-based approach involving native speakers, which helped students interact in an authentic way and demonstrate their understanding of culture. The author conducted the research to increase intercultural pragmatic competencies in online L2 classrooms regarding common pragmatic speech acts as to not only increase their pragmatic competency but to also motivate students. The students from the online experimental group who were exposed to task-supported role-plays performed better than the online control group of students; however, student motivation was only mildly impacted. Thus, pragmatics and interculturality can be effectively taught in online L2 classrooms through task-supported learning, though motivation may require longer interventions.

A cross-cultural investigation of lacunae contributes to successful intercultural communication, helping in achieving mutual understanding between cultures and solving communication problems between different nations. This study is aimed at identifying and classifying lexical lacunae in the kinship terminologies of the Russian and Kazakh languages. The comparative study reveals semantic, cultural, psychological, evaluative, and aesthetic factors. The material of the study comprises the terms of kinship, selected by the method of continuous sampling from lexicographic sources of the Kazakh and Russian languages, with a total volume of 300 units. Interlanguage lacunae were described from the perspective of comparative structural-semantic analysis. The analysis of kinship terms in the Russian and Kazakh languages showed that there are more similarities than previously thought. Significant differences in Russian and Kazakh kinship terminology were manifested in connection with the allocation of the seme "gender correlation", i.e., the name depends on the gender of the person concerning whom it was used, as well as the seme "age concerning the speaking person". Analysis of Kazakh kinship terms that act as lacunae in the Russian language and their classification in terms of semantics, structure, etymology and cultural components was not considered an object of research until now.

For corrective feedback (CF) to contribute to second language (L2) development, some cognitive processes need to be completed. Learners need to notice and comprehend the CF, reflect on and deeply process it, and finally integrate it into their interlanguage (Gass, 1997). Written languaging (WL), which requires learners to explicitly explain to themselves why they have received CF, has been proposed as a technique which can stimulate deep cognitive processing of the written CF. In an effort to improve learners' writing accuracy, I adopted WL, whereby upon receiving online direct corrections, learners typed their self-explanations regarding the underlying reasons for their writing mistakes. Then, I engaged in systematic reflection and journaling during a 10-week semester to critically analyze the affordances and limitations of WL. The conclusion, drawn from my perceptions of the usefulness of WL originating from my journal writing, is that WL has the potential to not only facilitate learning for students but also can provide teachers with a rich description of learners' cognitive and affective engagement with CF. Some recommendations are made for better implementation of this instructional technique.

This study aimed to investigate the production of stress in English compound nouns and phrasal verbs by L1 Thai learners. Based on the Interlanguage Hypothesis (Corder, 1982; Selinker, 1972), it was hypothesized that (1) there is a positive relationship between English proficiency levels and accuracy in stress assignment in compound nouns and phrasal verbs; and (2) L1 Thai learners' systematicity of L2 English stress placement is influenced by L1 transfer. The participants were 60 first-year undergraduates who were equally divided into two groups, namely intermediate and advanced groups, based on their English proficiency levels. All the participants were required to read sentences containing three different types of compound nouns in the first task and read sentences containing compound nouns and their corresponding phrasal verbs in the second task. Their readings were analyzed using an independent-samples t-test and ANOVA. Although the advanced learners outperformed their intermediate counterpNaarts in assigning stress in both tasks, the statistical results indicated a correlation between English proficiency levels and accuracy in stress placement only in compound nouns, but not in phrasal verbs. It was assumed that such systematicity found in the learners' IL resulted from the interlanguage factor of language transfer.

The aim of this project was to identify factors contributing to cross-language semantic preview benefits. In Experiment 1, Russian-English bilinguals read English sentences with Russian words presented as parafoveal previews. The gaze-contingent boundary paradigm was used to present sentences. Critical previews were cognate translations of the target word ("CTAPT-START"), noncognate translations ("CPOK-TERM"), or interlingual homograph translations ("MOPE-SEA"). A semantic preview benefit (i.e., shorter fixation durations for related than unrelated previews) was observed for cognate and interlingual homograph translations, but not for noncognate translations. In Experiment 2, English-French bilinguals read English sentences with French words used as parafoveal previews. Critical previews were interlingual homograph translations of the target word ("PAIN-BREAD") or interlingual homograph translations with a diacritic added ("PÁIN-BREAD"). A robust semantic preview benefit was found only for interlingual homographs without diacritics, although both preview types produced a semantic preview benefit in the total fixation duration. Our findings suggest that semantically related previews need to have substantial orthographic overlap with words in the target language to produce cross-language semantic preview benefits in early eye fixation measures. In terms of the Bilingual Interactive Activation+ model, the preview word may need to activate the language node for the target language before its meaning is integrated with that of the target word.

The current study investigates second language acquisition of Chinese object ellipsis to probe the development of features transferred from learners' native language without robust confirming or disconfirming evidence in the second language (L2) input. It is argued that Chinese allows object ellipsis licensed by a verb with a [VCase] feature but not by a verb with a [Vnon-Case] feature. In contrast, Korean allows object ellipsis to be licensed by both types of verbs, whilst English prohibits both. An acceptability judgement task was conducted among first language (L1) English and L1 Korean L2 Chinese learners from elementary to advanced levels, with the results showing that the [Vnon-Case] feature was assembled in the Chinese grammars of English and Korean elementary L2 learners; however, it gradually lost its vigour and licensing power for object ellipsis in intermediate L2 grammars and was successfully removed from licensing object ellipsis in advanced L2 grammars. These findings support predictions by Yuan regarding a feature's dormant status and modify Yuan's predictions regarding a dormant feature's consequences.

The present study investigated the production of the speech act of disagreement among Tunisian non-native students of English and American native speakers of English. Discourse completion test (DCT) was used to elicit disagreement strategies by the informants. Non-native informants produced a total of 376 acts and native informants produced 395 acts. The acts were categorized based on Brown and Levinson's (1987) Politeness Model. The speakers' performance of disagreement in variation with the contextual factors of Social Distance and Social Power was examined. Data was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively. Results showed that there were significant differences between native and non-native speakers of English with regard to the frequency of direct and indirect strategies of disagreement. Non-native informants used a higher percentage of direct strategies (47%) and a lower percentage of indirect strategies (13%) than their native counterparts, who produced indirect strategies considerably (30%). NNSE opting for direct disagreement strategies might be attributed to their poor pragmatic and sociolinguistic knowledge of indirect strategies. This work can have pedagogical implications in teaching speech acts and pragmatics.

The aim of the current study is to test whether explicit instruction of various L2 request forms can be a useful measure in developing Saudi learners' linguistic and pragmatic competences. This study is based on the results obtained from a previous research investigating interlanguage requests. The findings in that study suggested that the second language learners were not aware of some of the request strategies which were exclusively employed by the British English native speakers. The aim and the question of this study is to find out whether explicit instruction of request strategies will be effective in helping Saudi EFL learners gain linguistic knowledge and achieve pragmatic appropriateness in making requests in L2. Thirty female foundation year students participated in this study. They were all EFL learners studying at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The group underwent three phases of instruction: pre-test, instruction/intervention, and post-test. The first and last phases consisted of written questionnaires which were distributed right before and after the instruction phase. The results showed that in the third phase, the students demonstrated great progress in their understanding of request forms in L2. Their improvement was manifested by the learners' acknowledgement of these forms as proper employment of request strategies in English, recognition of request function names, ability to assign correct functions to linguistic realizations and their overall understanding of the appropriate use of these forms dictated by the weightiness of different request situations.

The the article proves the crucial role of principles of comparative/contrastive teaching Russian. The author proves that Russian methodologists understand the need to take into consideration students' mother tongue when teaching Russian as a foreign language. The article contains general characteristics of Swahili and comparative analysis of Russian and Swahili lexical and grammatical systems as the basis for the system of teaching Russian as a foreign language.

The complexity of the linguistic environment in Cameroon raises the question of context and its role in the acquisition of another language. This paper draws a dichotomy between learners in such contexts considered rural and those regarded as urban or cosmopolitan. Using the irregular verb as a yardstick, an evaluation of the acquisition of irregular verb patterns by 80 final year primary school learners from 2 contexts in the Northwest Region of Cameroon was done. Oral and written tests were administered to check learners' acquisition of verb inflectional categories, verb tenses and general written and oral productions. The findings reveal similar trends in the acquisition of inflectional categories and verb tenses by learners in both contexts and divergent trends in general oral and written productions. For instance, learners in both contexts had similar challenges using the Vs, Ved and Ven inflections with a very low average frequency of 26% and with a high frequency of 67.2 % for the Ving and Vo inflections. Though learners in the urban centres had higher degrees of efficiency in oral productions, their counterparts in the rural areas had more challenges in verbal as against written productions. The paper concludes that second language acquisition is not a consequence of a unilateral context but a result of a plethora of other factors both within and without the learning environment with evident pedagogic implications for stakeholders in the second language acquisition industry.

This case study explores Turkish-English-Arabic multilingual identity sequentially and simultaneously constructed by two refugee siblings raised by their multilingual mother in the family environment where they interact in English and Arabic while they are exposed to Turkish in societal surroundings. By focusing on the multilingualism experiences of a 7-year-old boy and a 10-year old girl, the study aimed to explore the multilingualism of the children practising their languages. The study is filling the void of refugee children identity and language development under scrutiny via data triangulation, consisting of field notes of the researcher, a metaphor questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest multilingual identity development is a way socialization and achieving success in their host country. The study offers implications for multilingual child-raising in a refugee setting offering the simultaneous use of the language repertoire of children fostering their interlanguage development, results in better awareness and improved use of the languages.

Interlanguage is the most fruitful issue in the field of second language acquisition. In the interlanguage phase, Indonesian learners of English tend to alternate between two forms of language features to express the same language function where a variation of language forms will be exhibited to mark the variable of linguistic function. Variability in phonology of interlanguage is the most interesting subject to investigate based on markedness differential hypothesis theory. This study is aimed at finding out: (1) marked sounds of English fricatives: [[voiceless dental fricative]], [ð], [[voiceless palato-alveolar fricative]], and [[voiced postalveolar fricative]] which are indicated as interlanguage variants; and (2) how interlanguage sound variants emerge based on surround the varying element. There were 30 college students of English study purposively selected to become respondents in this research representing advance and intermediate proficiency of English speaking. The data were taken from two types of task namely word list reading and sentence reading. There were 600-word tokens containing target marked sounds of fricative [[voiceless dental fricative]], [ð], [[voiceless palato-alveolar fricative]], and [[voiced postalveolar fricative]] obtained from the data collection. The analysis was done quantitatively to find the percentages of non-interlanguge sounds and interlanguge ones produced by respondents. The result showed that fricatives such as [[voiceless dental fricative]], [[voiceless palato-alveolar fricative]], and [[voiced postalveolar fricative]] have phonological variations in interlanguage with certain positions of word being pronounced. These phonological variations emerge due to the generalization of pronunciation by similar-ending sounds, the certain vowel sound preceding marked sounds, and the absence of consonant clusters in learners' native language which bears the variation of certain marked fricatives of English.

The present study empirically scrutinizes the fixed natural order of grammatical morphemes relying on a manual analysis of an EFL learner corpus. Specifically, we test whether the accuracy order of L2 grammatical morphemes in the case of L1 Turkish speakers of English deviates from Krashen's (1977) natural order and whether proficiency levels play a role in the order of acquisition of these morphemes. With this in mind, we focus on the (in)accuracy of nine English grammatical morphemes with 2883 cases manually tagged by the UAM Corpus Tool in the written exam scripts of Turkish learners of English. The results based on target-like use scores provide evidence for deviation from what is widely believed to be a set order of acquisition of these grammatical morphemes by second language learners. In light of such findings, we challenge the view that the internally driven processes of mastering grammatical morphemes in English for interlanguage users are largely independent of their L1. Regardless of L2 grammar proficiency in our data, the observed accuracy of some morphemes ranked low in comparison with the so-called natural order. These grammatical morphemes were almost exclusively non-existent features in participants' mother tongue (e.g., third person singular "-s," articles and the irregular past tense forms), thus suggesting the influence of L1 in this respect.

Language proficiency is multi-componential in nature and, according to many SLA researchers and L2 practitioners, is best captured by the concepts of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). Two of the three studies reported in this paper adopted the Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson, 2003) as the means to address the question of whether increasing task complexity positively impacts learning and performance. The Cognition Hypothesis claims that increasing cognitive task complexity along specific dimensions has the potential to promote "greater analysis, modifications, and restructuring of the IL (interlanguage) with consequent performance effects" (Robinson, 2001a, p. 302). The studies that invoke the Cognition Hypothesis either refer to Robinson's Triadic Framework (Robinson, 2001a) and the Cognition Hypothesis to structure their research and explain the findings, or they take a more radical stand to argue that the premises underlying the Cognition Hypothesis and the claims derived from it are problematic. This forum begins with a literature review on CAF. It then reports on metric indices employed in the studies to measure the phenomenon of linguistic complexity and the results pertaining to grammatical and lexical complexity. Next, it describes the status of theory in empirical research and the challenges research on CAF faces. The closing presents a discussion on how theory impacted the design of the empirical studies sampled for this paper.

This study investigated features of first language and cultural interference in Thai EFL learners' English paragraph writing on popular culture. Drawing from theoretical grounds of interlanguage, language interference, and rhetorical interference, the sample of 30 English paragraphs of Thai EFL undergraduate learners was examined quantitatively and qualitatively. The English writing included 15 paragraphs from the Thai learners with high exposure to English language (TEH) group, and 15 paragraphs from those with the low exposure to English language (TEL) group. Using analysis models of metadiscourse markers and topical progressions, the findings revealed the preference of both groups in the use of interactive and interactional devices as well as SP, PP, and EPP types of topical progressions. The preference highlights the feature of oral-based, inductive, or reader-responsible writing orientation with a possibility of writing development, especially among the TEHs to reach expectation of the target language readers. The findings encourage assessing the Thai EFL learners' writing as a process and raising frequent awareness of both language and rhetorical interferences when writing English texts. As the introductory stage during COVID-19 remote learning, writing to express learners' interests could be used as an effective communication strategy for a positive instructor-learner relationship which assists the learners to further engage in the class in a more meaningful way.

This cross-sectional study examined the effects of English language proficiency on Jordanian EFL students' production and comprehension of apology strategies. The participants were 270 Jordanian EFL learners and 90 native speakers of English. Data were collected using Written Discourse Completion Test (WDCT) and Multiplechoice Discourse Completion Test (MDCT). Descriptive statistics and the Spearman rank-order correlation coefficient (rho) test were used to analyse the data. Results showed that Jordanian EFL learners' production and comprehension of apology strategies are influenced by their levels of English language proficiency. A small to large negative correlation relationship was reported between Jordanian EFL learners' language proficiency and the production of explicit apology strategies and non-apology strategies. On the other hand, the study revealed a small to medium positive correlation relationship between Jordanian EFL learners' language proficiency and the production of less-explicit apology. The study also showed a significant correlation relationship between proficiency and the comprehension of apology strategies. Thus, teachers of English at Jordanian schools may need to consider focusing on classroom activities that can help EFL learners enhance their pragmatic knowledge of apology strategies.

Although translation is a means of intercultural communication, it represents a challenge when it comes to rendering the intended meaning of some propositions, particularly because every language has its distinctive features and structures that may not be accurately rendered into the target language. This challenge is reinforced when translation occurs between two languages that belong to different origins such as English and Arabic. This paper explores the translatability of a grammatical construction (viz. Hypothetical or unrealizable proposition) from English to Arabic, and vice versa. The paper shows--through examples from both languages--that regardless of how carefully translation is conducted, incomplete meanings are usually rendered into the other language. It, moreover, asserts the interlanguage translatability of such propositions and notions. In principle, but by no means exclusively, Arabic is treated as a source language and English as a target language for the purpose of translation. But in many places, this order is reversed. The analysis has implications for translation-related courses, particularly in crucial areas such as legal translation where accurate meanings are carefully searched for.

This study aimed to identify second language (L2) developmental indices while controlling for the effects of first language (L1). More specifically, this study investigated the differences in the use of metadiscourse markers among learners from different L1 backgrounds. The following research questions were explored: (1) Which metadiscourse markers can be used as developmental indices to predict learners' proficiency levels? (2) How strongly do learners' L1s impact their L2 development? To answer these questions, multilevel ordinal logistic regression analysis was performed comparing the metadiscourse in English essays written by three Asian learner groups (i.e., Japanese, Thai, and Taiwanese). The results suggest that the frequencies of transitions and self-mentions are the best predictors of language development of metadiscourse categories. Additionally, this study showed that the multilevel regression model can measure the significance of each metadiscourse category more accurately than the single-level model. Therefore, we must consider the influence of learners' L1s for precise detection of the linguistic features that predict their proficiency levels. Through this application of multilevel ordinal regression analysis to learner corpus research, this study illustrated the effectiveness of multilevel analysis for tracking the language acquisition process.

This study investigates the use of high-frequency cognitive verbs - think and believe - in Turkish L2 learners' interlanguage, both in terms of their verb senses and complementation patterns. In line with this purpose, a Sentence Production Task consisting of context-independent items and a Sentence Completion Task consisting of context-dependent items were developed by using the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). These tasks were applied to 182 students at four different vocabulary levels. The findings indicated that the learners showed a strong tendency to use verb think in the verb sense of expressing a personal opinion and in the complementation pattern of [zero that-CL]. Along with these results, the acceptability levels of learners' productions with the verbs think and believe showed differences. The learners had problems with the use of believe more than they had with the verb think. The findings have pedagogical implications by shedding light on the learner preferences for verb complementation patterns and senses. The findings also provide an insight into the learners' performance on the syntactic and semantic properties of the cognitive verbs through context-dependent and independent tasks.

This study investigated the influence of phonological word representations from both first language (L1) and second language (L2) on third language (L3) lexical learning in L1-dominant Spanish-English bilinguals. More specifically, we used event-related potentials (ERPs) to determine whether L1 Spanish and L2 English phonology modulates bilinguals' brain response to newly learned L3 Slovak words, some of which had substantial phonological overlap with either L1 or L2 words (interlingual homophones) in comparison to matched control words with little or no phonological overlap. ERPs were recorded from a group of 20 Spanish-English bilinguals in response to 120 auditory Slovak words, both before and after a three-day-long learning period during which they associated the L3 Slovak novel words with their L1 Spanish translations. Behaviorally, both L1 Spanish and L2 English homophony facilitated the learning of L3 Slovak words in a similar manner. In contrast, the electrophysiological results of the post-training ERPs, but not the pre-training ERPs, showed an N100 effect for L2 English interlingual homophones and opposite N400 effects for L1 Spanish and L2 English interlingual homophones in comparison to control words. These findings suggest different neurocognitive mechanisms in the use of L1 and L2 phonological information when learning novel words in an L3.

The unforeseen shift to virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic required instructors and students to face unprecedented learning challenges. Under these circumstances, Chinese international students who intended to come to the U.S. to begin their studies were required to remotely access their courses while still residing in China, which included a general chemistry laboratory course. Research suggests that English language learners (ELL) face a substantial language barrier in science-based courses as they must simultaneously be proficient in English as well as in the discipline-specific academic language; however, little is understood about how ELLs navigate these challenges in the context of a virtual chemistry laboratory course. This study examined the perceptions of Chinese international students about their learning as well as the tools/strategies they used to navigate the language barrier in the virtual laboratory course. Results suggest that although the participants perceived the virtual laboratory space as a safe and low-pressured environment to run experiments, they experienced difficulties in comprehending procedures adequately which potentially hindered them from developing a deeper understanding of the experiments. The types of strategies and tools that students used to navigate between their first language, the English language, and the academic language associated with chemistry mainly supported surface level learning. These findings underscore the need to identify and develop more sophisticated instructional strategies that help students navigate interlanguage spaces and reach higher levels of learning.

The research work attempts to investigate that in any geographical contact zone, where the diverse languages and cultures intersect, there would inevitably be linguistic and cultural integration and assimilation. In a similar vein, the worldwide dissemination of the English language has radically shaped the linguistic and textual devices installed by the Saudi English writers in their texts. Besides, the Saudi English writers have reconstructed L2 (English) on the linguistic pattern of L1(Arabic) to foreground their distinctive ideological and cultural norms. Also, the research work investigates, can Saudi English be considered an authentic linguistic instrument? The researcher also has focused and authenticated on the emergence of Saudi English regarding the innovative linguistic and textual tactics inducted by the Saudi writers in their texts. Besides, the research study has investigated the reconstruction of L2 (English) on the lexical, rhetorical, and grammatical patterns of L1(Arabic). The research work also has a great significance regarding the pedagogical, and theoretical linguistic debate about the emergence of the Asian and African variants of Englishes. Likewise, the researcher has chosen the appropriating linguistic theory, and multiple canons approach as a theoretical framework to analyze the selected Saudi English texts. The research work also has concluded that the Saudi English has emerged as a practical linguistic instrument like any other Asian variants of Englishes. Consequently, the researcher has suggested to the Saudi English writers to reconstruct L2 (English) as a functional instrument to disseminate their national, ideological, and cultural norms for global readers.