This study investigates how beginning learners of Japanese language (L2 Japanese) develop the durational features of an intervocalic consonant. Acoustic analyses were conducted on speech data collected from Australian learners of Japanese over a sixteen month period at the early stages of learning. The durations of the intervocalic consonant, and the component durations, voice onset time (VOT) ...

This paper translates the implications of the “do-it-yourself” (DIY) culture of the “new learning” paradigm which is emerging due to digital technology and the Internet into the context of second language (L2)-pedagogy. It demonstrates the relevance of the DIY metaphor to the modern learning context while drawing on theoretical and CALL developments which problematise concepts such as text, eng...

On the basis of a set of well-controlled sentences varying in sentence type, tone identity, and focus position, the present study compared F0 characteristics of Mandarin speech between native speakers and two groups of L2 learners whose native languages were Cantonese and English, respectively. The results showed systematically that most L2 errors in the F0 manifestations of tone, intonation, a...

In Dörnyei’s (2009a) theorizing, motivation is conceptualized to be generated by discomfort associated with the learner’s experience of a discrepancy between their current L2 self, and their ideal L2 self. However, in the L2 Motivational Self System, this discrepancy is not operationalized. A questionnaire containing measures of current L2 selves was administered to two cohorts of students lear...

One of the basic questions of bilingual research is to what extent the bilingual’s two phonetic systems influence each other, a question that has occupied a prominent place in bilingual research almost from the outset of the field (see, for example, Weinreich, 1953). Recent studies in bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA) demonstrate that, at least in simultaneous bilingual acquisition, i...

Introduction From Guesswork to Inquiry: A Rationale “Why am I learning this language? How is my language learning affected by my attitudes and my context?” For the average second language (L2) learner, these questions are probably not often considered in such an explicit fashion. For L2 educators and L2 motivation researchers, however, these student-centered questions are urgent and ever-presen...

This study examined the role of procedural memory in adult second language (L2) development. Participants were trained on an artificial language under either explicit or implicit conditions. Development in the L2 was assessed by grammar tests at two time points. Measures of procedural memory were administered and were used to create high and low procedural groups. Results revealed an advantage ...

An important area of development for second language (L2) students is learning how to share ideas with an audience through writing. Some researchers suggest that writing is a primary language skill that holds greater challenges for L2 learners than speaking, listening, or reading (Bell & Burnaby, 1984; Bialystok, 1978; Brown & Yule, 1983; Nunan, 1989; White, 1981). Writing skills are especially...

     This project investigates the relationship between lexical semantics and causative morphology in the acquisition of causative/inchoative-related verbs in English as a foreign language by Iranian speakers. Results of translation and picture judgment task show although L2 learners have largely acquired the correct lexico-syntactic classification of verbs in English, they were constrained by ...

This study examines the links between L2 linguistic knowledge, L2 listening strategy use, self-determined motivation, and L2 listening anxiety relative to L2 listening proficiency. Prior theoretical and empirical work suggests that these variables are interrelated in complex ways, and this hypothesis is tested here using structural equation modeling with a sample of 300 high school foreign lang...