Due to the special (procedural) nature of the language (verbal communication) ‘knowledge’, the dominant trends in applied linguistics research in the last few decades have been advocating ‘acquisition’ rather than ‘learning’ activities where the main focus in SL & FL education should be on ‘meaning’ while some ‘focus-on-form’ being justified. But the ‘form’ to be ‘focused-on’ is mostly misconce...

English language teaching (ELT) writing practitioners have long attempted to improve EFL/ESL learners’ competence in writing with recourse to either instruction or feedback. Likewise, researchers have, to date, mainly focused on either of these treatments to enhance language learners’ composing ability. Which treatment leads to more significant improvements is, however, unclear. Moreover, of th...

Abstract This study combines explicit (pen-and-paper) and sensitive (time-pressured) measures to gauge the impact of three instructional interventions (contextualized input with meaning-focused activities, contextualized word-focused decontextualized exercises) on learning 20 L2 French target verbs. Participants ( N = 313, L1 Dutch) completed a combination (form recognition, meaning recall, gra...

The goal of this thesis is to explore how foreign language learning can be facilitated through the use of intelligent computer-assisted language learning (ICALL) based on natural language processing (NLP) methods. ICALL was provided in the form of a task-based dialog system that gives corrective feedback.We investigated how different parameters of the interaction affect the learning progress. B...

In L2 development, the cognitive complexity of tasks plays a crucial role in task performance and language features produced. However, there have only been few studies addressing the impact of task complexity on EFL learners' attention to L2 system and form-focused self-repairs (FFS).This study explores the role of increasing cognitive task complexity in EFL learners' form-focused attention (FF...

this study investigated the relative effects of deductive and inductive form-focused instruction (ffi) on the acquisition of 4 non-generic definite article uses(cultural, situational, structural, and textual) as assessed by explicit and implicit outcome measures. the tests utilized to assess efl learners' acquisition of definite article uses were timed and untimed grammaticality judgment tests....

Framed in Complexity Theory, this paper presents a multi-case study of Chinese university English teachers’ cognitions and practices about form-focused instruction language teaching. Four teachers, including two novice teachers experienced ones, were involved the study. A triangulation method, semi-structured interviews, classroom observations stimulated recall was used to examine compare their...

Focus on form has received considerable attention as researchers and theorists have enthusiastically embraced an integration of meaning-focused and form-focused instruction in the L2 classroom. Therefore, the present paper is an attempt to delve deeply into elucidating different taxonomies subsumed under the specious polarization of Focus on Form (FoF) and Focus on Forms (FoFs). It then offers ...