We examine cross-linguistic influence in the processing of motion sentences by L2 users from an embodied cognition perspective. The experiment employs a priming paradigm to test two hypotheses based on previous action and motion research in cognitive psychology. The first hypothesis maintains that conceptual representations of motion are embodied…

The aim of the current study is to investigate motion event cognition in second language learners in a higher education context. Based on recent findings that speakers of grammatical aspect languages like English attend less to the endpoint (goal) of events than do speakers of nonaspect languages like Swedish in a nonverbal categorization task…

This article analyzes whole-class discussions between a teacher and her students in a Latin American Colonial literature course at the college level. The study is theoretical-exploratory in nature in that it (a) articulates theoretical assumptions inherent in an ecological perspective on second language learning and teaching and (b) attempts to…

This study investigated the role of morphological and contextual information in inferring the meaning of unknown L2 words during reading. Four groups of college-level ESL students, beginning (n?=?34), intermediate (n?=?27), high-intermediate (n?=?21), and advanced (n?=?25), chose the inferred meanings of 20 pseudo compounds (e.g.,…

This article is part of a longitudinal study of American college students studying Mandarin in China. Its main data are drawn from monthly speaking events (four sessions with each student) conducted in Chinese with each of 29 participants in a study-abroad program in China. The study yielded these results: (a) Students made significant progress in…

This study investigates whether native Hmong speakers' first language (L1) lexical tone experience facilitates or interferes with their perception of Mandarin tones and whether training is effective for perceptual learning of second (L2) tones. In Experiment 1, 3 groups of beginning level learners of Mandarin with different L1 prosodic background…

This study investigated whether learners of Japanese with different first language (L1) writing systems use different recognition strategies and whether second language (L2) exposure affects L2 kanji recognition. The study used a computerized lexical judgment task with 3 types of kanji characters to investigate these questions: (a)…

This study investigates whether practice with computer-administered feedback in the absence of meaning-focused interaction can help second language learners notice the corrective intent of recasts and develop linguistic accuracy. A group of 218 beginning Anglophone learners of Spanish received 1 of 4 types of automated feedback (no feedback,…

This article explores the value of judiciously used first language (L1)-to-second language (L2) translation in meaning-focused, advanced-level academic language education. It examines languaging in the teacher-led discourse (TLD) that arises when translation tasks are used and compares it to languaging during the TLD engendered by 4 other…

This study investigates contextual features surrounding the use of a first language (L1) in a Japanese university English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) course during peer interaction in the extended preparation phase leading up to two oral presentation tasks (OP1 and OP3), performed seven months apart. Interaction data were analysed in terms of the…

This study investigates caption-reading behavior by foreign language (L2) learners and, through eye-tracking methodology, explores the extent to which the relationship between the native and target language affects that behavior. Second-year (4th semester) English-speaking learners of Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish watched 2 videos…

This study tracks the development of syntactic complexity in the writing of two beginning German as a second language learners with English as a first language over four semesters of collegiate language study by using developmental profiling techniques applied to an annotated learner corpus. The focus of the investigation is on individual…

This study examined variability in Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) learners' development of the Chinese numeral classifier system from a dynamic systems approach. Our data consisted of a longitudinal corpus of 657 essays written by CFL learners at lower and higher intermediate levels and a corpus of 100 essays written by native speakers (NSs)…

The article discusses the potential of combining learner corpus research with experimental studies in order to fine-tune the understanding of learner language development. It illustrates the complementarity of the two methodological approaches with data from an ongoing study of the acquisition of the English tense and aspect system by French…

This study presents the results of four experiments in the framework of processing instruction conducted with four language learner groups (Spanish, "n"?=?43; German, "n"?=?46; Russian, "n"?=?44; and French, "n"?=?48; discussed in that order). In each experiment, the processing problem was held constant (the…