Interaction research that has investigated the relationship between language production and second language (L2) development has largely focused on learners' immediate responses to interactional feedback. However, other speech production processes might help account for the beneficial relationship between interaction and L2 development. The…

This study examines the role of task-based conversation in second language (L2) grammatical development, focusing on the short-term effects of both negative feedback and positive evidence on the acquisition of two Japanese structures. The data are drawn from 55 L2 learners of Japanese at a beginning level of proficiency in an Australian tertiary…

Linguistic analyses suggest that the nongeneric use of the English definite article "the" falls into four major categories: cultural, situation, structural, and textual. Aims to determine whether these uses present different levels of difficulty for English-as-a-Second-Language students and whether they are acquired at the same time. (Author/VWL)

Examines the processing of Spanish future tense morphology incidentally while reading in a second language. Participants had no previous knowledge of future tense morphology so that, as they read the passage used in the study, they encountered the target form for the first time, which is an accented "a" on the end of an infinitive--for example,…

Considers the role of instruction, second language (L2) input, first language (L1) transfer, and universal grammar in development of L2 morphosyntactic knowledge. Specifically investigates the acquisition of the Spanish morpheme "se" by English-speaking adult learners. (Author/VWL)

Investigates the effects of awareness, or lack thereof, on 32 adult second or foreign language learners' subsequent intake and written production of targeted Spanish morphological forms. Think-aloud protocol data were used to measure awareness or lack of it, and morphological learning was assessed by the learners' performances on two postexposure…

Challenges the critical period hypothesis by examining phonological performance among highly motivated subjects who use German daily as graduate student instructors and who have been immersed in the language through in-country residence, augmented by years of instruction in both language- and content-based courses. (Author/VWL)

Investigated whether planning opportunity results in increased focus on form at the level of strategic attention to form during planning time, as well as at the level of production outcomes during task performance. Results provide support for the claim that planning before doing a second language task can promote an increased focus on form.…

This follow-up study of a classroom experiment with university English-as-a-Second-Language students that demonstrated incidental acquisition of new lexical knowledge through the reading of thematically-related texts explores how vocabulary knowledge may be acquired as a by-product of reading for comprehension. Findings are interpreted in terms of…

Presents a hypothesis-generating study of advanced university English-as-a-Foreign-Language learners' incidental vocabulary acquisition from oral and written dialogue journals over a semester. Teacher and student entries were analyzed and transcribed using WordCruncher (1993). Analyses compare characteristics of the input to the learners in the…

Investigates how second language intake was affected both by awareness and by the conditions under which a problem-solving task was performed. Spanish conditional sentences were presented to learners through five different degrees of explicitness. Intake was measured through a multiple-choice recognition test administered immediately after the…

Examined whether intermediate learners of a second language acquire and retain unknown vocabulary as a result of reading. Also assessed the effect of the text variable of exposure frequency. (Author/VWL)

Reports the results of a study on the intonation of 18 Mandarin Chinese speakers lecturing in English. The study investigated the hypothesis that the nonnative speakers who were able to use the intonation system of English most effectively would score higher on a global language test. (Author/JL)

Seeks to resolve certain questions pertaining to the relationship between gender and second-language vocabulary knowledge. One particular question examined was whether female and male English-as-a-Second-Language students at the University of California at Irvine differ significantly in their knowledge of academic vocabulary in English as measured…

Reports on a study that investigated the effect of different amounts of planning time on the speech performance of second-language speakers. Subjects were four groups of learners of German performing two tasks each. The study employed various general and specific constructs for measuring fluency, complexity, and accuracy of speech; the…