L2 learners’ individual differences are crucial factors that deserve attention in L2 education. Focusing on 2 main areas of individual differences (i.e., field (in)dependence and multiple intelligences), this study explored their relationships with L2 reading performance. Participants were 64 TEFL undergraduates and postgraduates. To assess the participats’ degree of field (in)dependence and mu...

We used eyetracking, perceptual discrimination, and production tasks to examine the influences of perceptual similarity and linguistic experience on word recognition in nonnative (L2) speech. Eye movements to printed words were tracked while German and Dutch learners of English heard words containing one of three pronunciation variants (/t/, /s/, or /f/) of the interdental fricative /θ/. Irresp...

Grammatical gender presents persistent difficulty for adult learners of Spanish in L2 acquisition; however, there is a literature gap L3 acquisition gender, specifically typologically different languages. In this project, we investigate the agreement by Russian (L1)/Mandarin (L1)-English (L2) speakers (L3) and compare findings with English(L1) (L2). Studying these languages particularly interes...

This study aimed to investigate the effects of subtitles in the context of authentic material on second language comprehension and potentially, second language acquisition for Norwegian learners of English. Participants in the study were 49 17-year-old students and 65 16-year-old students, who were all native speakers of Norwegian learning English as an L2 in high school. Both age groups were d...

The study of second language speech perception usually put L1-L2 phonological mapping as the rule of thumb in predicting learning outcome, and seldom included more fine-grained aspects such as frequency. This study examines how frequency of sounds in L1 may influence L2 segmental production and perception, with examples from English learners native to two Chinese dialects, Cantonese and Sichuan...

This study explores 19 Taiwanese students’ writing in weekly online forum posts and traditional essays. Results drawn from discourse analysis of students’ writing in both types of writing tasks showed that the semesterlong online writing accompanied by explicit instruction on essays and basic academic writing conventions appeared to help raise EFL students’ consciousness of register in the two ...

To date, little research on pragmatic transfer has considered a multilingual situation where there is an interaction among three different languages spoken by one person. Of interest was whether pragmatic transfer of refusals among three languages spoken by the same person occurs from L1 and L2 to L3, L1 to L2 and then to L3 or from L1 and L1 (if there are more than one L1) to L2. This study ai...

This experimental study investigated the learners’ integrative acquisition of obligatory overt subjects and subject-verb clause agreement in English as an L2. In L1 acquisition research, correlations between superficially unrelated linguistic phenomena are analyzed in terms of integrative effects. For instance, in English L1 acquisition, there is evidence for an integrative appearance of subjec...