Our preferences and evaluations are often affected by contextual factors. One unavoidable context is language. We used an evaluative conditioning (EC) paradigm (pairing neutral stimuli with emotional or neutral stimuli) to investigate whether our evaluations are equally conditioned in a first (L1) and a second language (L2). An EC effect was…

Stephen Krashen has a long and enduring legacy in the field of second language acquisition. His "Input Hypothesis" was among the very first attempts to create a coherent theoretical account of second language learning. Krashen argued that learners can acquire language through the process of comprehending it. While elements of his model…

To contribute to a better understanding of first language (L1) and second language (L2) sentence processing, this study investigated the relationship between working memory capacity (WMC) and relative clause (RC) attachment preference of Persian learners of English as a foreign language . Additionally, the impact of segmentation of experimental…

Purpose: Second and foreign language (SL/FL) teachers' informal problem-solving has received little explicit research attention while it is widely acknowledged that problem-solving is crucial to expertise development in any complex knowledge domain. To develop a clearer understanding of the role of informal problem-solving in SL/FL teachers'…

In Iran the age of learning English as a foreign language is decreasing yearly. It is obvious that learning English at a very early age is a most appropriate time to start. The investigation in this study is focused on the speech act of request. Instructional effects of learning request strategies are assessed in preschoolers who received…

This study examined the receptive vocabulary knowledge and lexical developmental patterns of the 3000 most frequent words among 953 university L2 learners of Spanish at different stages in their language studies, taking into consideration the effect of high school instruction on high-frequency vocabulary knowledge. Results confirm that even…

Two experiments investigated whether exposure to Chinese characters and pinyin would facilitate oral vocabulary learning for Chinese as a first (L1) and second (L2) language learners. In Experiment 1, 48 second Chinese graders studied 15 made-up associations between spoken labels and pictures accompanied either by no orthography, by pinyin, or…

This study aimed to investigate the enhancements of Self Directed Learning (SDL) on tertiary-level students' English reading skills in a private university context and their perceptions towards it. Thirty-eight first-year English-major subjects participated in a 6-week experiment. A mixed method of quantitative and qualitative approaches was used…

Research indicates that investigation into the role of emotions during the process of second language acquisition (SLA) has lagged behind the work of educational psychologists. Experts in the area of achievement emotions have suggested that SLA researchers have limited their examination mostly to the role of anxiety and enjoyment. Consequently, an…

In recent years, despite the fact that many researchers have devoted much of their attention to second language attrition, not much focus has been given to first language attrition (FLA) specifically among Iranian immigrants. The present study attempts to describe FLA in the semantic domain of idiomatic expression and effect of length of residence…

Purpose: This research aimed to identify the levels of stress students experience, the different sources that generate them and the relationship between the stress levels and the students' gender. Design/methodology/approach: A mixed-methods design was used, focusing on the quantitative stage. The qualitative section was designed to obtain…

That 'a picture can stimulate a thousand words' aptly summarises the role of the visual in the field of language learning and teaching. The power of the image to generate language output has been widely acknowledged in the field of second/foreign language acquisition. Posters, diagrams, symbols and pictures are often found in language classrooms;…

The article considers the concept of reading literacy as a means of successful socialization of foreign students of Elabuga Institute of Kazan Federal University. As a prerequisite for the research served the growth of number of foreign students in the Institute. That in its chain caused the problem of socialization of foreign students in the…

While making a decision facing a moral conflict, does your answer vary depending on whether you use your first language or later learned second language? A previous study conducted by Costa, Albert, Alice Foucart, Sayuri Hayakawa, Melina Aparici, Jose Apesteguia, Joy Heafner, Boaz Keysar, and Mariano Sigman [2014. "Your Morals Depend on…

This study investigated the relationship between language proficiency and negative pragmatic transfer from a first language (L1), focusing on the speech act of refusal as realised by American learners of Arabic as a Foreign Language (AFL) in Egyptian Arabic. Twenty American AFL learners (10 intermediate and 10 advanced) and 2 baseline groups (10…