We revisit morpheme studies to evaluate the long-standing claim for a universal order of acquisition. We investigate the L2 acquisition order of six English grammatical morphemes by learners from seven L1 groups across five proficiency levels. Data are drawn from approximately 10,000 written exam scripts from the Cambridge Learner Corpus. The study establishes clear L1 influence on the absolute accuracy of morphemes and their acquisition order, therefore challenging the widely held view that there is a universal order of acquisition of L2 morphemes. Moreover, we find that L1 influence is morpheme specific, with morphemes encoding language-specific concepts most vulnerable to L1 influence.

This study investigated whether the role of working memory capacity varies over the course of second language (L2) morphosyntactic development. Eighty-seven beginning, intermediate, and advanced university L2 Spanish learners completed two nonverbal tasks measuring executive function (EF) and phonological working memory (PWM) in their native language (English) and two tasks measuring knowledge of ten grammatical structures in Spanish at three points during and after a semester of instruction. Robust relationships between both working memory components, especially PWM, and L2 performance, emerged only for lower level learners, particularly at the start of instruction and 3.5 months later. Findings demonstrate that the facilitative effects of cognitive ability appear to lessen with increasing L2 proficiency and empirically support a developmental perspective of L2 learning.

This study extends the evidence for implicit second language (L2) learning, which comes largely from (semi-)artificial language research, to German. Upper-intermediate L2 German learners were flooded with spoken exemplars of a difficult morphological structure, namely strong, vowel-changing verbs. Toward the end of exposure, the mandatory vowel change was omitted, yielding ungrammatical verb forms (compare Leung & Williams, 2012). Two pre- and posttests—word monitoring and controlled oral production—gauged the development of learners’ implicit and explicit knowledge, respectively.

Interviews revealed 33 out of 38 L2 learners remained unaware of the ungrammatical verbs in the input flood; however, they showed significant sensitivity during listening as evidenced by a reaction time slowdown on ungrammatical trials. The unaware learners also improved significantly from pretest to posttest on the word-monitoring task, but not the oral production measure, unless the verbs’ salience in the input flood had resonated with them. Thus, implicit instruction affected implicit knowledge primarily, although prior knowledge and memory could potentially account for interactions between implicit processing, implicit knowledge, and explicit knowledge.

Proficiency is a key variable in late second language (L2) learning, but one that is undermeasured in current research. This study investigates whether L2 oral proficiency can be quickly and reliably assessed via the Spanish “elicited imitation task” (EIT; Ortega, Iwashita, Rabie, & Norris, 1999). Thirty-seven L2 learners of Spanish with varied L2 experience (from low to very advanced) were tested. The EIT’s external validity was assessed via correlation with the simulated oral proficiency interview. Further analyses examined the EIT’s internal reliability, discriminatory power, and usefulness in identifying subgroups (clusters) of learners within the sample. Results strongly support the utility of the Spanish EIT for measurement of oral proficiency in SLA research. Moreover, the availability of parallel EITs in other languages promises to facilitate comparisons across studies. Thus, more precise measurement and analysis of proficiency in SLA research is called for via standardized measurements including the EIT.

Formulaic language represents a challenge to even the most proficient of language learners. Evidence is mixed as to whether native and nonnative speakers process it in a fundamentally different way, whether exposure can lead to more nativelike processing for nonnatives, and how L1 knowledge is used to aid comprehension. In this study we investigated how advanced nonnative speakers process idioms encountered in their L2. We used eye-tracking to see whether a highly proficient group of L1 Swedes showed any evidence of a formulaic processing advantage for English idioms. We also compared translations of Swedish idioms and congruent idioms (items that exist in both languages) to see how L1 knowledge is utilized during online processing. Results support the view that L1 knowledge is automatically used from the earliest stages of processing, regardless of whether sequences are congruent, and that exposure and advanced proficiency can lead to nativelike formulaic processing in the L2.

This article investigates the learning of two syntactic structures in Italian—Pre-possessive Determiner Article (PPDA) and Differential Object Marking—that each pose specific learning difficulties for Spanish-speaking learners of Italian (SSLI), resulting from the asymmetrical relationship with corresponding structures in the learners’ L1 (Spanish). The article also examines to what extent these difficulties can be alleviated by means of a relatively implicit type of form-focused instruction (Textual Enhancement, or TE). SSLI tend to omit the article before the possessive determiner (e.g., *mia macchina) and overuse the Prepositional Accusative (PA, the Romance languages’ instance of Differential Object Marking) in canonical SVO sentences (e.g., *conosco a Marco). Although both structures pose learning difficulties to SSLI, the learning path that leads SSLI to acquire these two features is different: SSLI have to learn to add PPDA to their interlanguage and they have to unlearn PA, a property of their L1. Sixty-eight instructed SSLI were divided in two groups. Group A read five texts where the absence of PA was textually enhanced; group B read the same texts where the presence of PPDA was enhanced. The participants took a timed grammatical judgment test before, shortly after, and two months after the instructional treatment. The results show that the effects of the TE are different for PA and PPDA, which indicates that features to be unlearned are more difficult and require more explicit instructional intervention.

This study examined contributions of lexical factors to native-speaking raters’ assessments of comprehensibility (ease of understanding) of second language (L2) speech. Extemporaneous oral narratives elicited from 40 French speakers of L2 English were transcribed and evaluated for comprehensibility by 10 raters. Subsequently, the samples were analyzed for 12 lexical variables targeting diverse domains of lexical usage (appropriateness, fluency, variation, sophistication, abstractness, and sense relations). For beginner-to-intermediate speakers, comprehensibility was related to basic uses of L2 vocabulary (fluent and accurate use of concrete words). For intermediate-to-advanced speakers, comprehensibility was linked to sophisticated uses of L2 lexis (morphologically accurate use of complex, less familiar, polysemous words). These findings, which highlight complex associations between lexical variables and L2 comprehensibility, suggest that improving comprehensibility requires attention to multiple lexical domains of L2 performance.

Grammatical agreement phenomena such as verbal number have long been of fundamental interest in the study of second language (L2) acquisition. Previous research from the perspective of sentence processing has documented nativelike behavior among nonnative participants but has also relied almost exclusively on grammar violation paradigms. The present investigation examined the online comprehension of subject-verb number agreement by native and nonnative speakers of Mexican Spanish using the more subtle agreement attraction paradigm, with stimuli grammatical in both conditions, in addition to a nonlocal grammaticality paradigm. The results of a self-paced reading experiment confirmed that nonnatives can acquire nativelike online sensitivity to verbal number agreement, even without grammar errors, and that such sensitivity develops only at very high levels of L2 proficiency.

The present study explores the initial stages of incidental acquisition of two grammatical properties of verbs (subcategorization and [ir]regularity) during reading in first language (L1) and second language (L2) German using an adjusted self-paced reading paradigm. The results indicate that L1 speakers are superior to L2 speakers in the incidental acquisition of grammatical knowledge (experiments on subcategorization), except when the new knowledge interferes with previously acquired knowledge and mechanisms (experiments on [ir]regularity): Although both populations performed equally well regarding the acquisition of the subcategorization of verbs from the input (i.e., whether the verbs are transitive or intransitive), they differed with respect to the regularity status of new verbs. L1 speakers (in contrast to L2 learners) seem to disprefer irregularly conjugated verb forms in general, irrespective of their conjugation in the previous input. The results further show that the syntactic complexity of the context and morphological markedness positively affect the incidental acquisition of new words in the L2, triggering learners’ shift of attention from the text level to the word level.

This study investigates the relationship between foreign language aptitude and the learning of two English structures defined as easy or difficult to learn. Using a quasiexperimental design, 66 secondary-level learners of English as a foreign language from three intact classes were provided with four hours of instruction on the passive (a difficult structure) and the past progressive (an easy structure). Language aptitude was measured using the LLAMA Aptitude Test (Meara, 2005). Language outcomes were measured with a written grammaticality judgment and an oral production task. The results revealed that one of the aptitude components, grammatical inferencing, contributed to learners’ gains on the passive but not the past progressive on the written measure. Another component of aptitude, associative memory, contributed to learners’ gains on the past progressive on the oral measure. The results provide support for the claim that different components of aptitude contribute to the learning of difficult and easy L2 structures in different ways. There is also support for the proposal that different components of aptitude may be involved at different stages of language acquisition (Skehan, 2002).

This study investigates the role of probabilistic grammatical constraints on the dative alternation in English as a second language (ESL). It presents the results of an experiment in which the different factors that are influential in first language (L1) English are tested with advanced learners of English whose L1 is German. Second language (L2) learners are influenced by the same determinants as L1 speakers but to a lesser degree. Together with the results of previous studies, the present results suggest that, initially, the learners do not make use of probabilistic constraints in spite of the constraints being influential in the L1 and only gradually acquire a sensitivity toward the constraints that govern the choice between the two dative constructions.

This study explored the usefulness of dual-task methodology, self-ratings, and expert judgments in assessing task-generated cognitive demands as a way to provide validity evidence for manipulations of task complexity. The participants were 96 students and 61 English as a second language (ESL) teachers. The students, 48 English native speakers and 48 ESL speakers, carried out simple and complex versions of three oral tasks—a picture narrative, a map task, and a decision-making task. Half of the students completed the tasks under a dual-task condition. The remaining half performed the tasks under a single-task condition without a secondary task. Participants in the single condition were asked to rate their perceived mental effort and task difficulty. The ESL teachers provided expert judgments of anticipated mental effort and task difficulty along with explanations for their ratings via an online questionnaire. As predicted, the more complex task versions were found and judged to pose greater cognitive effort on most measures.

To what extent do second language (L2) learners benefit from instruction that includes corrective feedback (CF) on L2 speech perception? This article addresses this question by reporting the results of a classroom-based experimental study conducted with 32 young adult Korean learners of English. An instruction-only group and an instruction + CF group were exposed to five 1-hr form-focused lessons that drew learners’ attention to the nonnative phonemic contrast /i/-/ɪ/, but only the instruction + CF group was given relevant feedback. Forced-choice identification tasks were completed by participants in a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest. The two groups showed similar accuracy on the pretest; however, the instruction + CF group outperformed the instruction-only group on the immediate and delayed posttests as well as on unfamiliar words. The significant predictors for these differences turned out to be perceptual accuracy vis-à-vis /ɪ/-natural and /ɪ/-synthesized sounds. These findings are discussed in terms of the pivotal role played by CF in developing accuracy in L2 speech perception.

This article reports on a study that investigated the effects of two feedback exposure conditions on the acquisition of two Turkish morphemes. The study followed a randomized experimental design with an immediate and a delayed posttest. Forty-two Chinese-speaking learners of Turkish were randomly assigned to one of three groups: receivers, nonreceivers, and control. All learners performed three communication games with a Turkish native speaker in which their errors on the Turkish plural and locative morphemes were treated according to their group assignment. The receivers’ errors were corrected through explicit correction. The nonreceivers were allowed to hear the feedback provided to the receivers; however, they did not receive feedback on their own errors. The learners in the control group neither received feedback on their own errors nor were allowed to hear the feedback other learners received. Results indicated that feedback exposure condition has an effect on the extent to which learners benefit from feedback but that this effect may be moderated by linguistic structure.

The high-variability training paradigm (multiple words, phonetic contexts, and talkers) has been successful for perceptual learning of tone contrasts. Here, it is extended to training native English listeners on Tokyo Japanese pitch-accent contrasts. Participants had no previous experience with lexically contrastive pitch patterns. They learned to identify three pitch patterns in disyllabic Japanese words: 1st-syllable accented, 2nd-syllable accented, and unaccented. Immediate feedback was provided to the training group but not to the control group. The results showed an effect of training on pitch-pattern identification accuracy that was also generalized to new words spoken in new contexts. In contrast, the control group improved only on the 1st-syllable accented pattern. Error analysis suggested that the unaccented pattern is the most difficult to identify. The results are discussed in terms of native language bias and individual bias affecting second language learning in the prosodic domain.

The present study examined the effects of part and whole learning on the acquisition of second language (L2, English) vocabulary. In whole learning, the materials to be learned are repeated in one large block, whereas, in part learning, the materials are divided into smaller blocks and repeated. Experiment 1 compared the effects of the following three treatments: 20-item whole learning, four-item part learning, and 10-item part learning. Unlike previous studies, part and whole learning were matched in spacing. In Experiment 2, spacing as well as the part-whole learning distinction were manipulated, and the following three treatments were compared: 20-item whole learning, four-item part learning with short spacing, and four-item part learning with long spacing. Results of the two experiments suggest that, (a) as long as spacing is equivalent, the part-whole distinction has little effect on learning, and (b) spacing has a larger effect on learning than the part-whole distinction.

Meta-analytic research suggests an edge of explicit over implicit instruction for the development of complex L2 grammatical structures, but the jury is still out as to which type of explicit instruction—deductive or inductive, where rules are respectively provided or elicited—proves more effective. Avoiding this dichotomy, accumulating research shows superior results for guided induction, in which teachers help learners co-construct rules by directing their attention to relevant aspects in the input and asking guiding questions. However, no study has jointly investigated the effects of guided induction on both learning outcomes and processes, or whether guided induction can prove effective outside classroom settings where teacher mediation is not possible. In this study, which targeted the complex Spanish gustar structures, 70 English-speaking learners of beginning Spanish received either guided induction via a videogame, deductive instruction in a traditional classroom setting, or no instruction. Learning outcomes were measured via one receptive and two controlled production tasks (oral and written) with old and new items. Results revealed that while both instruction groups improved across time, outperforming the control group, the guided induction group achieved higher learning outcomes on all productive posttests (except immediate oral production) and experienced greater retention. Additionally, the think-aloud protocols of the guided induction group revealed high levels of awareness of the L2 structure and a conspicuous activation of recently learned knowledge, which are posited to have contributed to this group’s superior performance. These findings thus illustrate, quantitatively and qualitatively, the potential of guided induction for the development of complex L2 grammar in online learning environments.