Is the feeling of difference experienced by many biand multilinguals linked to a later age of onset (AoA) and a lower level of proficiency in the foreign language (LX)? This empirical study, based on the qualitative and quantitative data from 1005 biand multilinguals, suggests AoA is unrelated to feelings of difference. While several participants mentioned the fact that limited proficiency in t...

This study designed learning activities supported by a mobile learning system for students to develop listening and speaking skills in English as a foreign language (EFL). How students perceive learning activities and a mobile learning system were examined in this study. Additionally, how different practices relate to students’ language proficiency was also explored. It was found that students ...

BACKGROUND National studies report patients with limited English proficiency (LEP) have difficulty finding bilingual physicians; however, it is unclear whether this situation is primarily a result of an inadequate supply of bilingual physicians or a lack of the insurance coverage necessary to gain access to bilingual physicians. In California, 12% of urban residents are Spanish-speaking with so...

The aim of the current study was to examine the effect of metacognitive instruction on EFL learners’ metacognitive awareness of listening strategies, listening comprehension, and oral language proficiency. Fifty students of two upper-intermediate English courses participated in the study and were sampled as the experimental and control groups. For sixteen weeks the experimental group participat...

In this study we evaluate the ability of a state-of-the-art speechto-speech machine translation system, Skype Translator, to preserve the communicative effectiveness of its input speech. Specifically, we elicited Spanish spoken responses from 24 native speakers of Spanish in the following two scenarios: academic speaking (in the context of 6 questions from a standardized assessment of academic ...

& Lexical proficiency, as a cognitive construct, is poorly understood. However, lexical proficiency is an important element of language proficiency and fluency, especially for second language (L2) learners. For example, lexical errors are a common cause of L2 miscommunication (Ellis, 1995). Lexical proficiency is also an important attribute of L2 academic achievement (Daller, van Hout, & Treffe...

The activity of speaking is conducted spontaneously and there is not much time devoted to preplanning and arranging the utterances the speaker intends to deliver. Briefly defined, gambits and routines refer to the words and phrases that facilitate the flow of conversations. As such, one way to help learners acquire oral proficiency is to teach gambits that support the social skills emphasized. ...

The main purpose of the study reported in this paper was to examine the interrelationships between L2 risk-taking, English learning motivation, L2 speaking anxiety, linguistic confidence, and low-proficiency English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ speaking complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). A secondary purpose was to test whether task repetition can influence the level of the mentio...