Learning a second language (L2) proceeds with individual approaches to proficiency in the language. Individual differences including sex, as well as working memory (WM) function appear to have strong effects on behavioral performance and cortical responses in L2 processing. Thus, by considering sex and WM capacity, we examined neural responses during L2 sentence processing as a function of L2 p...

This study investigated the relationship of the attitudes and cultural background of Arab students in Israel to their reading comprehension of stories from Jewish and Arab culture. Participants were 74 eighth-grade Arab students (age 14±15 years) from Israel, learning Hebrew as a second language (L2). An attitude questionnaire, stories from Arab and Jewish culture and multiple-choice questions ...

Relatively little is known about the interaction between a bilingual’s two languages beyond the word level. This paper investigates the issue by comparing word reading times (RTs) in both L1 and L2 to quantitative predictions by statistical language models. Recurrent neural networks are trained on either a Dutch corpus, an English corpus, or the two corpora combined (i.e., the bilingual network...

The present study examined the neural basis of phonological processing in Chinese later acquired as a second language (L2). The regularity effect of Chinese was selected to elucidate the addressed phonological processing. We recruited a group of alphabetic language speakers who had been learning Chinese as L2 for at least one year, and a control group of native Chinese speakers. Participants fr...

The importance of reading proficiency in a second language (L2) is growing worldwide. Reading L2 involves many questions about the abilities comprehension, including metacomprehension, core ability native speakers (L1) that allows them to be aware their comprehension level and regulate learning. However, its link has not been sufficiently researched. This study examines relationship between sco...

The significance and effectiveness of pre-reading activities in the contexts of both ESL and EFL has been acknowledged by many researchers. If students lack the required background knowledge, a teacher must activate students’ background knowledge or offer background information prior to reading a text. The present study aimed at investigating the role of pre-reading questions plus extensive rea...