This study explores the construct of lexical sophistication and its applications for measuring second language lexical and speaking proficiency. In doing so, the study introduces the Tool for the Automatic Analysis of LExical Sophistication (TAALES), which calculates text scores for 135 classic and newly developed lexical indices related to word frequency, range, bigram and trigram frequency, a...

BACKGROUND Primary-school teachers are expected to detect problems related to language function, but the teachers' evaluations may be heavily influenced by gender and classroom behaviour. AIM To investigate the relationship between language problems (LPs) and behaviour-emotional problems as rated by primary-school teachers. METHODS All participants participated in a population-based study, ...

The present study examined to what extent proficiency in a non-native language influences speech perception in noise. We explored how English proficiency affected native (Swedish) and non-native (English) speech perception in four speech reception threshold (SRT) conditions, including two energetic (stationary, fluctuating noise) and two informational (two-talker babble Swedish, two-talker babb...

This paper describes a novel method to improve the performance of second language speech recognition when the mother tongue of users is known. Considering that second language speech usually includes less fluent pronunciation and more frequent pronunciation mistakes, I propose using a reduced phoneme set generated by a phonetic decision tree (PDT)-based top-down sequential splitting method inst...

It remains to be elucidated how cortical activations are modulated by factors of age, proficiency, and language task demands when mastering first language (L1) and a second language (L2). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we tested subjects aged 13 (the age 13 group) and 19 (the age 19 group), thereby comparing the cortical activations involved in past-tense verb identification with ...

In 2000 Census microdata, various outcomes of second-generation immigrants are related to their parents' age at arrival to the United States, and in particular whether that age fell within the "critical period" of language acquisition. We interpret this as an effect of the parent's English-language skills and construct an instrumental variable for parental English proficiency. Estimates of the ...

An EEG coherence study was performed with a twofold objective: first, to scrutinize the theoretical concept of "cortical efficiency" in connection with second language (L2) acquisition and, second, to detect cooperations between cortical areas in specific frequency bands indicative for highly proficient L2 processing. Two groups differing only in their level of L2 proficiency were contrasted du...

Title of Document: THE INFLUENCES OF APTITUDE, LEARNING CONTEXT, AND LANGUAGE DIFFICULTY CATEGORIZATION ON FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY. Thomas R. Wagener, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Directed By: Dr. Steven J. Ross, Second Language Acquisition This research investigates the ability of predictive measures to differentiate level of language proficiency among learners across languages, language ca...

Language proficiency is predicted to modulate orthographic-semantic association in second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition, in accordance with the assumptions of the Developmental Bilingual Interactive-Activation model (BIA-d) (Grainger et al., 2010). The current study explored this modulation during pre-attentive L2 orthographic perception. ERPs were recorded from Chinese-English bilingual...