This study investigated Spanish-speaking learners' awareness of a non-distinctive phonetic difference between Spanish and English through a delayed mimicry paradigm. We assessed learners' speech production accuracy through voice onset time (VOT) duration measures in word-initial pre-vocalic /p t k/ in Spanish and English words, and in…

This study explores whether and to what degree explicit form-focused instruction (FFI) facilitates the use of morphosyntactic forms in second language oral production and also whether it has differential effects on morphosyntactic forms with different linguistic variables. Twenty-seven university-level Chinese EFL participants were randomly…

It is often asserted that UK school-leavers know less grammatical terminology than in earlier years. However, objective data on this supposed phenomenon are somewhat scarce. The study reported in this paper aimed to see whether and to what extent knowledge about language (KaL) has declined over three decades, and how this might relate to…

Previous research has shown that learners of English might experience considerable difficulty when giving constructive criticism to peers in instructional settings. Unlike native speakers, they tend to soften their criticism far less frequently while aggravating it far more often, and thus require pedagogical help in this area. The present study…

This study is part of a larger investigation of the usefulness of instruction designed to raise cross-linguistic awareness in young Francophone learners of English in Quebec. In the research reported here, the focus is on cognates. Since previous research shows that learners typically fail to recognise many helpful similarities between words in a…

In an analysis of learners' reflections taken in real time, this study attempts to unveil what learners attend to during a task session. A total of 110 Japanese learners of English noted rationales for their form selections of epistemic modal verbs. The data were then coded and tallied to enable quantitative analysis and to examine the association…

The study investigates the importance of EFL (English as a foreign language) students' awareness of English extended pitch sequences realised within complex utterances and text sub-topics. Considering these higher levels of intonation functioning alongside with the tone group turned out to be crucial for adequate intonation production by Russian…

This paper reports on an instructed second language acquisition study that investigated the effects of explicit phonetic instruction on second language pronunciation by adopting two different outcome measurements (i.e. a rubric of accentedness as well as comprehensibility). Twenty native Japanese learners of English in ESL (English as a second…

Within the Japanese English Language Teaching context and consistent with the dominant conversation role assigned to the native English speaker teacher, there exists a belief that the most effective manner in which to teach and promote multilingualism and intercultural understanding is through restricting students to monolingual practices and…

Reformulation is mostly considered as an important verbal mechanism for coping with non-native speakers' speech production problem in second language acquisition. Drawing on interlanguage pragmatics and conversation analysis, the present study examines the specific ways in which reformulation is used to achieve mutual understanding in the…

This paper reports the results of a survey of 101 Japanese university students' perceptions of different varieties of English using an open-ended questionnaire. Participants indicated their first impressions of varieties of English that they had named. This methodology allows participants themselves to provide the specific varieties as well as the…

Using a reactive approach to focus-on-form, this study explored the types of feedback and strategies that L2 learners used to draw attention to linguistic problems in a Spanish-American telecollaborative exchange. Data from the readily available transcripts of online postings were utilised and analysed to report the findings. The results showed…

This narrative interview study of a Spanish learner documents and explains apparent contradictions in a student's story when reporting on why she continues to take Spanish even when she does not like it or perform well in foreign language courses. A dialectical approach to human activity based on sociocultural theory is used to make sense of her…

This study is an investigation of the extent to which francophone learners of English as a second language (ESL) are aware of the differences between French and English question formation and how such awareness relates to their L2 performance. Three tasks were administered to 58 grades 5 and 6 francophone ESL learners. In a grammaticality…

This paper explores how "native" and "non-native" speaker identities are created in the discourse of television lifestyle, travel, and documentary genres where an English "native speaker" audience is assumed. It presents a coding system for analysing the representation of actors in television programmes and examines to what extent "non-native"…