As an important and a challenging source-based writing task, synthesizing offers rich opportunities to explore the connections between reading and writing. In this article, we report findings from a qualitative study of two Chinese students’ learning experiences with academic synthesis writing in a university ESL composition course. Specifically, we discuss how the two students’ understanding o...

This study was an investigation of how particular processing tasks influence L2 reading in relation to text type effects and L2 reading proficiency. Two groups of Japanese university EFL students (N = 103), varying in English reading proficiency, read a narrative passage and an expository passage in one of three task conditions: outlining, answering embedded questions, and reading only. All thr...

This study investigates the relationship among working memory (WM), first language (L1), second language (L2), and mathematics; with an aim to understand whether achievement in mathematics and L1 is related to performance in later L2 learning; and if so, whether WM components (i.e. phonological loop and central executive) play a role in this relationship between mathematics and language. A seco...

This empirical study explores how L2 learners access information while reading L2 texts in a Web-based learning environment. Twenty-three second-year German students read and summarized two online texts in the netLearn program, while their use of online multimedia support resources was tracked. Multimedia resources included a program-internal glossary, an online bilingual dictionary, and an aud...

A considerable number of studies have hitherto examined how native speakers and second language (hereafter L1 and L2, respectively) learners of English process English prepositional phrases. It is usually thought that both L1 and L2 speakers have a preference for verb phrase modification (e.g., The boy broke the old window with a ball of snow.) over noun phrase modification (e.g., The boy broke...

Using the self-paced reading paradigm, the present study examines whether highly proficient second language (L2) speakers of German (English first language) use case-marking information during the on-line comprehension of unambiguous wh-extractions, even when task demands do not draw explicit attention to this morphosyntactic feature in German. Results support previous findings, in that both th...

Audio-assisted reading (reading-while-listening) was commonly used as a pedagogical method in English (L2) learning. Numerous studies had reported its efficacy reading. Its comprehension has been inconclusive due to the lack of on relationship among attention, cognitive load and L2 comprehension, with possibility that synchronous auditory input lessens attention visual input. We present study 4...