Second-language (L2) acquisition is generally thought to be constrained by maturational factors that circumscribe a critical period for nativelike attainment. Consistent with the maturational view are age effects among learners who begin L2 acquisition prior to, but not after, closure of the putative critical period. Also favoring the maturational account is the scarcity of late L2 learners at ...

This study examines the roles of proficiency and working memory (WM) capacity in second-/foreignlanguage (L2) learners’ processing of agreement morphology. It investigates the processing of grammatical and ungrammatical shortand long-distance number agreement dependencies by native English speakers at two proficiencies in French, and the relationship between their proficiency and WM capacity in...

In this study an attempt was made to construct a multi-factor model predicting the development of reading literacy in the upper grades of primary school in the Netherlands for subgroups of 729 first language (L1) learners and 93 second language (L2) learners. Following a longitudinal design, it was explored to what extent the variation in reading literacy development in L1 and L2 from grade 4 t...

We investigated the influence of English proficiency on ERPs elicited by lexical semantic violations in English sentences, in both native English speakers and native Spanish speakers who learned English in adulthood. All participants were administered a standardized test of English proficiency, and data were analyzed using linear mixed effects (LME) modeling. Relative to native learners, late l...

Based on the controversial beliefs among L2 teachers about effective corrective feedback (CF) strategies, recast and prompts as 2 kinds of CF have drawn the attention of L2 researchers(e.g., Braidi, 2002; Iwashita, 2003; Loewen & Philp, 2006; Panova & Lyster, 2002; Sheen, 2004). Despite these numbers of studies, debate continues to exist about their usefulness as a CF technique. Whereas recasts...

Strategies play an important role in learning a second or foreign language (L2). The aim of the current study was to develop and evaluate a co-sharing-based strategy learning system for L2 vocabulary learning known as “Mywordtools.” Mywordtools is designed specifically for lexical learning, enabling learners to use the currently available vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs) as well as e-tools...

In the Simple View of Reading proposed by Hoover and Gough (1990), reading comprehension is conceived as the product of word decoding and listening comprehension. It is claimed that listening comprehension or the linguistic processes involved in the comprehension of oral language strongly constrain the process of reading comprehension. In several studies, evidence for this theoretical framework...

although the majority of linguists believing in chomskyan revolution have no doubt about the presence of ug in ll acquisition, its availability in l2 acquisition _in general, and in adult l2 acquisition in particular, is controversial. on the one hand, there are proponents of the access to ug in l2 acquisition, lidia white for example, says: therange of option available to the second language l...

To determine when and how L2 learners start to process L2 words affectively and semantically, we conducted a longitudinal study on their interaction in adult L2 learners. In four test sessions, spanning half a year of L2 learning, we monitored behavioral and ERP learning-related changes for one and the same set of words by means of a primed lexical-decision paradigm with L1 primes and L2 target...

This study examined whether processing ambiguous sentences containing relative clauses (RCs) following a complex determiner phrase (DP) by Persian-speaking learners of L2 English with different proficiency and working memory capacities (WMCs) is affected by semantic priming. The semantic relationship studied was one between the subject/verb of the main clause and one of the DPs in the complex D...