Many college students set out on Study Abroad Programs to other countries in which the variant of the foreign language spoken in the region differs from the variant to which learners have been exposed. This study explores the perception of L2 Western Andalusian Spanish aspiration of word-final /s/ by L1 American English listeners, in relation to their length of exposure to the L2 in quiet conditions and to their competence level in the L2 in noisy conditions. Results indicate that perception drops in adverse conditions, particularly for listeners in their intermediate stages of learning. Proficient listeners’ perception also suffers with respect to native listeners’ performance at lower signal-to-noise ratios. For all listeners, native and nonnative, standard features are best identified, whether in quiet or noise.

This longitudinal study investigates the effect of mode of reading on the incidental learning of collocations and factors that affect learning. One hundred Vietnamese pre-intermediate learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) were assigned to either an experimental group or a control group (no treatment). In 9 weeks, the experimental group read three graded readers containing 32 target collocations in three counterbalanced reading modes: reading-only, reading-while-listening, and reading with textual input enhancement (i.e., underlining). Learning gains were measured by a form recall pretest and delayed posttest. The results showed that reading mode had a significant effect on incidental collocation learning. Reading with textual input enhancement resulted in significantly higher learning gains than the other reading modes. Reading-while-listening was also more beneficial for collocation learning than reading-only. Learners’ prior vocabulary knowledge and congruency of collocations were significant predictors of the learning gains.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that native Mandarin speakers have pervasive difficulties processing L2 English agreement morphology. However, less is known about the lexical and morphological cues that may modulate Mandarin speakers’ sensitivity to English number agreement. To investigate this, we examined subject-verb agreement processing in English by L1 Mandarin participants using event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and focused on the use of quantificational cues to noun number and their interaction with agreement morphology on the verb. Previous work in English monolinguals has shown that agreement violations elicited larger P600s when preceded by a plurally quantified subject noun phrase (NP) compared to an unquantified NP. In the present study, Mandarin speakers were tested on the same quantified and unquantified sentences (e.g., Most/The cookies taste/*tastes…) as in the prior work. Like the L1 English speakers, ERPs time-locked to the verb showed a reliable P600 in response to agreement violations. However, the P600 in Mandarin speakers was larger for ungrammatical verbs with unquantified subjects, a contrast with English monolinguals. First, these results demonstrate that L2 agreement violations can elicit qualitatively similar neural responses in L1 Mandarin speakers as in English monolinguals (P600 effects), a finding that is to our knowledge novel. Second, quantification modulated the P600 in the L2 speakers in a qualitatively different way than in natives. Overall, these findings suggest stronger reliance on lexical versus morphological cues to number in Mandarin speakers, and that this impacts anticipation of subsequent grammatical features.

Statistical learning (SL) approaches to reading maintain that proficient reading requires assimilation of rich statistical regularities in the writing system. Reading skills in developing first-language readers are predicted by individual differences in sensitivity to regularities in mappings from orthography to phonology (O-P) and semantics (O-S), where good readers rely more on O-P consistency, and less on O-S associations. However, how these regularities are leveraged by second-language (L2) learners remains an open question. We utilize an individual-differences approach, measuring L2 English learners’ sensitivity to O-P, O-S, and frequency during word-naming, across two years of immersion. We show that reliance on O-P is leveraged by better readers, while reliance on O-S is slower to develop, characterizing less proficient readers. All factors explain substantial individual variance in L2 reading skills. These findings show how SL plays a key role in L2 reading development through its role in assimilating sublexical regularities between print and speech.

There is growing evidence that L2 learners pick up new words while viewing video but little is known about the role of individual differences. This study explores incidental learning after viewing a French documentary containing 15 pseudowords and investigates whether learning is moderated by participants’ prior vocabulary knowledge and working memory. Sixty-three higher-intermediate learners of French participated in this study. Prior vocabulary knowledge was measured by means of a French meaning recognition test. Participants also took a forward digit-span (phonological short-term memory), a backward digit-span, and an operation-span task (complex working memory). After viewing the video, four surprise vocabulary tests on form and meaning were administered. Results revealed that learning gains occurred at the level of form and meaning recognition. Vocabulary knowledge was positively related to picking up new words from video. Complex working memory correlated with the recognition tests showing more incidental learning gains for learners with higher complex working memory.

While monolingual speakers can use contrastive pitch accents to predict upcoming referents, bilingual speakers do not always use this cue predictively in their L2. The current study examines the role of recent exposure for predictive processing in native German (L1) second language learners of English (L2). In Experiment 1, participants followed instructions to click on two successive objects, for example, Click on the red carrot/duck. Click on the green/GREEN carrot (where CAPS indicate a contrastive L + H* accent). Participants predicted a repeated noun following a L + H* accent in the L1, but not in the L2, where processing was delayed. Experiment 2 shows that after an exposure period with highly consistent prosodic cues, bilinguals engaged in predictive processing in both their L1 and L2. However, inconsistent prosodic cues showed different effects on bilinguals’ L1 and L2 predictive processing. The results are discussed in terms of exposure-based and resource-deficit models of processing.

This study examined the extent to which manipulating the characteristics of second language reading activities affects the reading process and noticing of glossed linguistic constructions. Thirty-eight Korean learners of English read two texts under conditions that required more or less careful reading. For the condition intended to promote more careful reading, each paragraph of the texts was divided into three or four subparts. For the condition expected to elicit less careful reading, each paragraph was split into two sections. While reading the texts, the participants’ eye movements were recorded. Eleven students were further invited to participate in stimulated recall protocols. The target constructions were English unaccusative verbs and 10 pseudowords, which were glossed with Korean translations. The eye movement and stimulated recall data indicated that, as predicted, the participants processed the texts more carefully and attended to the target verbs more closely when paragraphs were divided into more subparts.

Learners must develop the ability to vary language according to linguistic and situational factors to produce context-appropriate utterances. Likewise, interpreting the additional meaning conveyed through language variation is essential for successful communication. Nevertheless, research on the interpretation of the variable copulas in Spanish is scarce and we do not know how individual lexical items and patterns of co-occurrence of adjectives with particular copulas influence interpretation. Addressing this void, we compare interpretation of the copulas by native speakers and highly advanced, advanced, and intermediate learners. Participants completed an interpretation task containing the copulas paired with one of nine adjectives, categorized as typically co-occurring with ser, estar, or both copulas. The current study contributes to the body of work on communicative competence and advanced L2 proficiency by exploring the development of interpretative abilities of English-speaking learners of Spanish and the extent to which interpretation differs across adjective classes and individual adjectives.

This study builds upon previous research investigating the construct validity of phraseological complexity as an index of L2 development and proficiency. Whereas previous studies have focused on cross-sectional comparisons of written productions across proficiency levels, the current study compares the longitudinal development of phraseological complexity in written and oral productions elicited over a 21-month period from learners of French. We also improve upon the state of the art by including L1 data to benchmark learner levels of phraseological complexity. Phraseological complexity, operationalized as the diversity (no. types) and sophistication (PMI) of adjectival modifiers (adjective + noun) and direct objects (verb + noun), was generally higher in learner writing as compared to speaking. Over the study period, the sophistication of phraseological units increased slightly but developmental patterns were found to differ between tasks, highlighting the importance of considering task characteristics when measuring phraseological complexity.

Input variability is key in many aspects of linguistic learning, yet variability increases input complexity, which may cause difficulty in some learning contexts. The current work investigates this trade-off by comparing speaker variability effects on L2 vocabulary learning in different age groups. Existing literature suggests that speaker variability benefits L2 vocabulary learning in adults, but this may not be the case for younger learners. In this study native English-speaking adults, 7- to 8-year-olds, and 10- to 11-year-olds learned six novel Lithuanian words from a single speaker, and six from eight speakers. In line with previous research, adults showed better production of the multispeaker items at test. No such benefit was found for either group of children, either in production or comprehension. Children also had greater difficulties in processing multiple-speaker cues during training. We conclude that age-related capacity limitations may constrain the ability to utilize speaker variability when learning words in a new language.

Frequency and contingency (i.e., co-occurrence probability of words in multiword sequences [MWS]) are two driving forces of language acquisition and processing. Previous research has demonstrated that L1 and advanced L2 speakers are sensitive to phrasal frequency and contingency when processing larger-than-word units. However, it remains unclear whether such statistical sensitivity is robust across tasks and among subcategories of MWS. In addition, little is known about whether cognitive aptitudes can moderate such sensitivity. This study examined L1 and advanced L2 speakers’ statistical sensitivity to phrasal frequency and contingency as well as cognitive aptitudes’ moderating effects on such sensitivity when processing English adjective-noun collocations. Participants performed a phrasal acceptability judgment task (PJT). Meanwhile, their aptitude profiles were measured by six aptitude tests, which loaded separately onto implicit language aptitude, explicit language aptitude, and working memory capacity. Linear mixed-effects modeling revealed that both L1 and L2 English speakers were sensitive to phrasal frequency and contingency of collocations, although L2 speakers’ sensitivity was much stronger than that of L1 speakers. None of the aptitudes was found to moderate language users’ statistical sensitivity to either collocation frequency or contingency. Interestingly, disassociation patterns between the PJT performance and the involvement of implicit or explicit language aptitude among the L1 and L2 speakers were found. It was concluded that L1 and L2 speakers differed in terms of the way they processed the collocations, as well as the nature of their collocational knowledge.

Research suggests new foreign language (FL) words are learned more easily if their phonology follows the phonotactic rules of the native language. Very little is known, however, about the impact of orthography on FL learning. This study investigated the cognitive mechanisms supporting the learning of words with familiar and unfamiliar orthographies. Participants took part in learning and meaning recall tasks, as well as a series of cognitive tasks (short-term and working memory tasks and tasks assessing their phonological and acoustic abilities). Orthographic and phonological familiarity judgments were collected using another sample of participants. Using a mixed-effects model, the results showed that orthographic familiarity impacted FL word learning even after controlling for phonological familiarity. However, there were no interactions with cognitive abilities.

This study investigated whether L2 English learners’ prosodic properties in speech acts change as they are immersed in the English-speaking academic community over time, and if so, what individual and contextual factors (proficiency, orientation to language study, and target language contact) potentially affect these changes. Forty-seven Japanese learners of English in an English-medium university in Japan completed a speaking task that elicited two speech acts (request and opinion) three times over one academic year (8 months). Their speech was analyzed for discourse intonational features (e.g., tone choices, prominence ratio, and pitch range). Results showed that all prosodic properties changed over time, although the pace and patterns of changes differed among the properties. Proficiency and language contact significantly affected the change in tone choice, but no other relationship was found between individual/contextual factors and changes in prominence ratio or pitch range.

Researchers are traditionally advised to plan for their required sample size such that achieving a sufficient level of statistical power is ensured (Cohen, 1988). While this method helps distinguishing statistically significant effects from the nonsignificant ones, it does not help achieving the higher goal of accurately estimating the actual size of those effects in an intended study. Adopting an open-science approach, this article presents an alternative approach, accuracy in effect size estimation (AESE), to sample size planning that ensures that researchers obtain adequately narrow confidence intervals (CI) for their effect sizes of interest thereby ensuring accuracy in estimating the actual size of those effects. Specifically, I (a) compare the underpinnings of power-analytic and AESE methods, (b) provide a practical definition of narrow CIs, (c) apply the AESE method to various research studies from L2 literature, and (d) offer several flexible R programs to implement the methods discussed in this article.

The present study compares native and nonnative processing of Spanish active and passive sentences. The nonnative speakers were tested before and after receiving processing instruction on the Spanish passive. The native speakers were tested once and provide a baseline for comparisons. We measured accuracy and response time to select the correct response in a paired picture matching task. We used eye-tracking measures to capture processing behaviors on both active and passive verb forms. We measured processing using time to first fixation on the verb area of interest, mean first fixation duration, mean first pass time, and mean second pass time. The results revealed that processing passive sentences comes at a cost to both native and nonnative speakers. After instruction the nonnative speakers showed no significant differences with native speakers in accuracy and response time. Also, the nonnative speakers’ processing behaviors became more nativelike but did not reach the native speaker level.

The question of whether L2 learners can use discourse cues online during pronoun resolution remains debated in the field. We examine one factor that has been argued to impact pronoun resolution in native speakers, implicit causality (IC) bias, a property related to certain verbs in which one of verb’s arguments are considered to be the cause of an action. We investigate whether individual differences modulate sensitivity to IC bias in both native English speakers and Chinese-speaking learners of English, examining whether variability is similarly explained in the two populations. Results from a sentence completion task and a self-paced reading (SPR) task show similar sensitivity to IC bias in both groups; reading times on the SPR task were also modulated by working memory and vocabulary knowledge. The findings suggest that L2 learners are successful in using discourse-level cues during processing and that variability is qualitatively similar in both learners and natives.

Elicited Imitation Tests (EITs) are commonly used in second language acquisition (SLA)/bilingualism research contexts to assess the general oral proficiency of study participants. While previous studies have provided valuable EIT construct-related validity evidence, some key gaps remain. This study uses an integrative data analysis to further probe the validity of the Korean EIT score interpretations by examining the performances of 318 Korean learners (198 second language, 79 foreign language, and 41 heritage) on the Korean EIT scored by five different raters. Expanding on previous EIT validation efforts, this study (a) examined both inter-rater reliability and differences in rater severity, (b) explored measurement bias across subpopulations of language learners, (c) identified relevant linguistic features which relate to item difficulty, and (d) provided a norm-referenced interpretation for Korean EIT scores. Overall, findings suggest that the Korean EIT can be used in diverse SLA/bilingualism research contexts, as it measures ability similarly across subgroups and raters.

Despite the prevalence of quantitative approaches in applied linguistics (AL) and second language acquisition (SLA) research (Gass, 2009), evidence indicates a need for improvement in analyzing and reporting SLA data (e.g., Larson-Hall & Plonsky, 2015). However, to improve quantitative research, researchers must possess the statistical knowledge necessary to conduct quality research. This study assesses AL and SLA researchers’ knowledge of key statistical concepts on a statistical knowledge test. One hundred and ninety-eight AL and SLA researchers from North America and Europe responded to 26 discipline-specific questions designed to measure participants’ ability to (a) understand basic statistical concepts and procedures, (b) interpret statistical analyses, and (c) critically evaluate statistical information. Results indicate that participants generally understood basic descriptive statistics, but performance on items requiring more advanced statistical knowledge was lower. Quantitative research orientation, number of statistics courses taken, and frequent use of statistics textbooks had positive influences on researchers’ statistical knowledge.

Elicited imitation tasks (EITs) have been proposed and examined as a practical measure of second language (L2) proficiency. This study aimed to provide an updated and comprehensive view of the relationship between EITs and other proficiency measures. Toward that end, 46 reports were retrieved contributing 60 independent effect sizes (Pearson’s r) that were weighted and averaged. Several EIT features were also examined as potential moderators. The results portray EIT as a generally consistent measure of L2 proficiency (r = .66). Among other moderators, EIT stimuli length was positively associated with stronger correlations. Overall, the findings provide support for the use of EITs as a means to greater consistency and practicality in measuring L2 proficiency. In our Discussion section, we highlight the need for more transparent reporting and provide empirically grounded recommendations for EIT design and for further research into EIT development.

Prior research has found reduced emotionality with foreign language use, especially with single words, but what happens if emotionality is conveyed throughout a longer text? Does emotionality affect how well we remember and associate information, that is, content learning? We played participants descriptions of two invented countries and tested how well they remembered facts about these countries. Each participant listened to one positive and one neutral description, which was read either in their native language (Spanish) or in their foreign language (English). Participants remembered facts they heard in positive semantic contexts better than those learned in neutral semantic contexts and did better in their native than their foreign language. Importantly, there was no interaction between language and emotionality, suggesting that the previously reported decrease in emotionality in a foreign language might not extend to all areas of foreign language use.