The goal of this study is to investigate the role of working memory capacity in L2 attainment and performance. The study uses an L1 reading span task to measure working memory of a group of 59 high-intermediate/advanced learners of English, and a film retelling task to measure their oral production. The analysis first showed a moderate to high…

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether explicit instruction focusing on metaphorical collocations would promote the incidental noticing of similar phrases by English learners during a subsequent reading task. Noticing was operationalized using the remember-know protocol and learning was measured on a fill-in-the-blanks test. In…

The benefits of instruction on learners' production and awareness of speech acts is well documented (see Alcon and Martinez-Flor, 2008, for a review of pragmatics in instructional contexts). However, few studies examine the influence that instruction may have on the cognitive processes involved in speech act production (Felix-Brasdefer, 2008). In…

After presenting some of the main arguments against certain narrow concepts of second language practice, this article argues that a broader concept of practice, still focused on form or even forms, but with due attention to form-meaning links and with appropriate sequencing of activities to ensure declarative knowledge first, followed by its…

The psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic perspective of language acquisition requires some essential conditions in vocabulary acquisition: (a) repetitive practice, which allows for data to reach long-term memory, and thus become proceduralised and automatised; (b) how relevant the lexical items are regarding the communicative needs of the learners…

Several research studies have proven a direct relationship between the amount of words known by a foreign language student and his/her language proficiency. Therefore, knowing the amount of words that our students are acquainted with would help teachers to predict their general ability in the foreign language. The aim of this study is to determine…

There is no doubt of the importance of vocabulary in EFL coursebooks. Yet, criteria for the selection of target words remain unclear. Frequency and functionality have been proposed as the two underpinning for selection. However, they are usually incompatible so that materials designers must opt for one or the other. The question is which one…

"Wireless" is the word selected to illustrate a model of analysis designed to determine the specialized character of a lexical unit. "Wireless" belongs to the repertoire of specialized vocabulary automatically extracted from a corpus of telecommunication engineering English (TEC). This paper describes the procedure followed in the analysis which…

The scientific community has traditionally considered technical English as neutral and objective, able to transmit ideas and research in simple sentences and specialized vocabulary. Nevertheless, global communication and intense information delivery have produced a range of different ways of knowledge transmission. Although technical English is…

The writer's strategy to combine the exposition of factual information with personal judgement and interaction with the reader has been analysed in a number of studies (Hunston, 1994; Hyland, 1998a, 1998b; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Skelton, 1997). Myers' studies (1989, 1992) on the pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles analyse politeness…

The present study is a corpus-based analysis of a selection of polysemous lexical verbs used to express modality in student argumentative writing. Twenty-three lexical verbs were searched for in three 100,000-word corpora of argumentative essays written in English by American, Filipino and Spanish university students. Concordance lines were…

This article describes research undertaken in order to design a methodology for the reticular representation of knowledge of a specific discourse community. To achieve this goal, a representative corpus of the scientific production of the members of this discourse community (Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, UPV) was created. This article…

In this paper I want to focus on the difficulty perceived by seventh grade students in connection to listening activities in the English class, at some public schools in San Juan, Argentina. This analysis will lead to the examination of contextual factors that might act as unforeseen constraints on the language learning situation. (Contains 5…

The goal of this paper is to verify up to what point ELT textbooks used in Spanish educational settings comply with the official regulations prescribed, which fully advocate the Communicative Language Teaching Method (CLT). For that purpose, seven representative coursebooks of different educational levels and modalities in Spain--secondary, upper…

This article describes the visual nature of the reading process as it relates to reading speed. It points out that there is a physical limit on normal reading speed and beyond this limit the reading process will be different from normal reading where almost every word is attended to. The article describes a range of activities for developing…