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Teachers and parents intuitively judge the ‘level’ of the child and the ‘level’ of the text and try to match them; they know that overestimation or underestimation of either will be met with restle...

This article presents a self-paced reading study comparing the online processing of interclausal discourse relations in native speakers of English and German. The study aims to contribute to two ov...

Evidence from the contemporary translation services market and many centuries of translation practice demonstrate that translation into a non-native language (L2 translation) can be performed effec...

The study examines phases in developing specification of grammatical marking of emergent clause-combining (CC) as indicative of children’s growing ability to integrate two or more independent predi...

Because innovations in media technologies affect all aspects of our daily lives, multimodal and computational literacies are becoming increasingly important as a way to empower English as a Foreign...

Experimental studies show that children have greater difficulty with wh-extraction from object position than subject position, arguably an intervention effect (e.g., Relativized Minimality). In thi...

Previous research has shown that talker identity and speaking style affect the processing of morphosyntactic violations. The present study examined whether speaking style modulates comprehension an...

Previous research suggests that toddlers can rely on distributional cues in the input to track adjacent and nonadjacent grammatical dependencies. It remains unclear whether toddlers understand the ...

Conflicting ways to understand the nature of paragraphs, including their purpose and structure, have been central to composition theory for many decades. Yet English teachers across countries are e...

Children’s sentence interpretations often lack flexibility. For example, when French-speaking adults and children hear ambiguous wh-questions like Where did Annie explain that she rode her horse?, ...

Understanding that people’s ideas may be false is a challenging step in Theory of Mind (ToM) development, which is accomplished around the age of 4–5 years old by typically developing (TD) children...

This study reports findings from two truth value judgment experiments to address two research questions on Mandarin: (i) whether children and adults have the knowledge of the structural constraint ...

Narratives have been extensively studied in recent decades, but studies investigating differences and similarities in the narrative features from a cross-cultural or cross-linguistic point ...

15-month-olds behave as if they comprehend filler-gap dependencies such as wh-questions and relative clauses. On one hypothesis, this success does not reflect adult-like representations but rather ...

Using an oral sentence production task, we investigated how preschoolers (N = 28) produce agreement with complex noun phrases and compared their performance to college students (N = 32) to ...

Researchers and language teachers have become increasingly aware of the importance of multi-word items in developing fluency and sounding native-like in English. Nevertheless, understanding and usi...

Research suggests that certain characteristics of survey items may impact participants’ responses. In this study we investigated the impact of several of these characteristics: vague wording, quest...

The Discontinuity Model (DM) described in this article proposes that adults can learn part of L2 morphosyntax twice, in two different ways. The same item can be learned as the product of generation...

We examined French-learning toddlers’ sensitivity to Subject-Verb agreement with conjoined subjects. In French, a conjoined NP triggers plural agreement even when made up of individual singular NPs...

Corpora are well-known for the affordance to make linguistic regularities salient. Since the coinage of the term ‘data-driven learning’ (DDL) in the 1990s, much has been done to investigate the eff...

Through two elicited production experiments we investigated how preschool Italian-speaking children access the left periphery of the clause with respect to topics in Clitic Left Dislocation (ClLD) ...

Metalinguistic knowledge is regarded as an important factor in the development of writing. However, little attention has been paid to the metalinguistic knowledge of L2 writers in non-anglophone co...

In vocabulary research there has been a shift from focusing on single words to considering multiword sequences, such as collocations. Despite the general consensus among language researchers that c...

Previous research indicates that the development of mood selection in Spanish spans several years and ends in the mastery of mood selection with sentential complements to express complex semantic m...

The main objective of this article is to demonstrate with the help of learner corpus data the practical relevance of the phraseological dimension of language for writing assessment in higher educat...

This study measured the effectiveness of three tasks (cloze, editing and writing) on the learning of phrasal verbs for students learning English as a foreign language (EFL). A total of 72 l...

Software can facilitate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ self-correction of their free-form writing by detecting errors; this article examines the proportion of errors which software can detect. A corpus of 13,644 words of written English was created, comprising 90 compositions written by Spanish-speaking students at levels A2-B2 (inclusive) of the Common European Framework. A total of 1,310 language errors were detected by the researcher. It was found that approximately 21% of these errors were spelling errors. A further 58% were characterised as either two-word phrases (45%), three-word phrases (9%), or four- and five-word phrases (4%) which are either absent from or rare in a large corpus of English which is known to be correct. The nature of software which can detect such words and phrases and bring them to students’ attention with a view to self-correction is briefly described. Of the remaining 21% of errors not detected by such software, most were found to be either errors of te...

Speakers use speech and gestures to represent referents in discourse. Depending on referents’ information status, in speech speakers will vary richness of expression (e.g., lexical noun phrase [NP]/pronoun), nominal definiteness (indefinite/definite), and grammatical role (subject/object). This study tested whether these three linguistic markers of information status interact with presence of gestures and gestural viewpoint (observer/character). The results show that gestures are more frequent with less accessible referents expressed with richer spoken forms but that richness of expression does not interact with viewpoint. In contrast, nominal definiteness and grammatical role interact with both presence and viewpoint of gestures. Gestures occur mainly with indefinite lexical NPs and objects. Character viewpoint gestures occur mainly with indefinite lexical NPs and objects plus predicates. The results shed light on when and how speakers use gestures in connected discourse and specifically highligh...

The article focuses on the omission of locative prepositions in child Russian. We report on two experiments: a production task and a comprehension task. Results from the elicited production task sh...

Previous research has shown that information referring to a named character or to information in the main clause of a sentence is more accessible and facilitates the processing of anaphoric references. We investigated whether the use of such cues are maintained in healthy aging. We present two experiments investigating whether information contained in the main clause of a sentence is more accessible compared with information contained in the subordinate clause. We present two further experiments that explored whether proper names act as controllers of discourse focus. Experiment 1 showed that information contained in the subordinate clause of a sentence decreased the processing efficiency of anaphoric references (more so for older adults), and Experiment 2 found that main clauses facilitated probe recognition. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that named characters increased the processing efficiency of anaphoric references and facilitated probe recognition (younger adults only), whereas older adults dis...

Statements containing quantity information are commonplace. Although there is literature explaining the way in which quantities themselves are conveyed in numbers or words (e.g., many, probably), there is less on the effects of different types of quantity description on the processing of surrounding text. Given that quantity information is usually conveyed to alter our understanding of a situation (e.g., to convey information about a risk), our understanding of the rest of the quantified statement is clearly important. In this article texts containing quantified statements expressed numerically versus verbally are compared in two text change experiments to assess how the entire quantified noun phrase is encoded in each case. On the basis of the results it is argued that numerical quantifiers place focus on the size of a subset, whereas verbal quantifiers are better integrated with nouns leading to more focus on the subset itself.

Taking a Teacher Language Awareness (TLA) perspective, this paper examines how the concept of deixis is employed in oral discourse in two secondary science and mathematics classes in the southwestern part of the US. Drawing on audio and videotaped data from two classrooms, we examine how verbal deixis, or words and phrases that cannot be fully understood without additional context, serves as a potential resource for the organisation of learning processes. We further consider how deixis may act as an impediment to the organisation of learning processes. We outline implications for preparation of teachers of English Language Learners in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics areas, with a specific focus on middle and high school science and mathematics.

Source-based writing research has received much attention in recent years, which generally shows that both novice and expert EFL (English as a foreign language) writers have difficulties in writing from sources. As many Chinese institutes of higher education attach increasingly more importance to publications in international journals, citation and plagiarism become critical issues for both student and teacher researchers as well as the institutes. Nevertheless, not much research can be found on the issues with Chinese students, especially undergraduate students. The present study thus investigated Chinese undergraduate EFL learners’ perceptions of plagiarism and use of citations in their course papers. A total of 141 students from a highly prestigious university answered an open-ended questionnaire and 97 of them submitted course papers. Major findings were: (1) the students had a (fairly) good knowledge of plagiarism and identified various reasons for plagiarism in academic writing, (2) they used summary the most often when citing from sources, followed by paraphrase and quotation, and (3) they mainly used single-source citations to primarily support their own ideas, position an author’s opinions and/or findings, and acknowledge the author’s ideas. These findings reveal a general overview of students’ perceptions of plagiarism and use of citations in their course papers, thus providing implications for formal classroom instruction of writing from sources.

When again modifies an English goal-PP construction, the sentence is ambiguous between a repetitive and a restitutive reading. Interestingly, languages vary in whether their counterpart to English ...

In discourse processing, speakers collaborate toward a shared mental model by establishing and recruiting prominence relations between different discourse referents. In this article we investigate to what extent the possibility to infer a referent’s existence from preceding context (as indicated by the referent’s information status as inferred or brand-new) and a referent’s unique identifiability (as indicated by a referent’s uniqueness status) affect (1) ambiguous pronoun resolution in comprehension and (2) the bias to mention a referent again and make it topic in discourse planning. In Experiment 1, a visual-world eye-tracking experiment, we found that ambiguous pronouns are more likely to be interpreted as linked to the direct object of the preceding sentence when the associated referent was inferred and unique than when it was inferred and non-unique. For brand-new referents, uniqueness status did not affect ambiguous pronoun resolution. In Experiment 2, a story continuation experiment, we fou...

While there is widespread agreement on the expected benefits of hands-on access to corpora for language learners, reports abound of the difficulties involved in realising those benefits in practice. A particular focus of discussion is the challenge of transferring the skills of the corpus linguist to learners, so that they can explore this type of monolingual and unmediated resource effectively in a ‘learner-as-researcher’ or ‘learner-as-detective’ role. In this paper, we present a positive experience of an apprenticeship in corpus use, which we attribute to a training approach that seeks to exploit the unmediated nature of corpora rather than treating it as a problem for learners. Our approach is not aimed at equipping learners with skills that will allow them to derive rules from the systematic analysis of corpus data. Instead we aim to inculcate in our students a propensity for open-ended searches, and an observe-and-borrow-chunks mentality, oriented to copying models from a corpus to enrich an...

Inspired by Syrett (2013), three experiments explored children’s ability to distinguish attributives (e.g., “three-pound strawberries,” where MPs as adjectives signal reference to attributes) versus pseudopartitives (e.g., “three pounds of strawberries,” where MPs combine with of to signal part-whole relations). Given the systematic nature of the syntax-semantics mapping, we asked whether children are able to use syntax to interpret how entities are quantified. In Experiment 1, four- and five-year-olds were asked to choose between two characters for the one who was selling appropriate items matching an attributive or pseudopartitive expression. In Experiment 2, children of the same age heard items described with a phrase using either an attributive, a pseudopartitive, “each” (“each weighs three pounds”), or “all together” (“all together they weigh three pounds”). At test, with some items removed, children were asked whether the same phrase applied to the remaining items (e.g., “Does Dora still hav...

The scores from vocabulary size tests have typically been interpreted as demonstrating that the target words are “known” or “learned.” But “knowing” a word should entail the ability to use it in real language communication in one or more of the four skills. It should also entail deeper knowledge, such as knowing the word’s derivative forms or collocations. However, little is known about how informative various vocabulary item formats are about lexical employability or mastery of aspects of word knowledge. That is, we have little idea about what score interpretations are warranted from various item formats. This article reports on two initial studies that investigated four form-meaning item formats (multiple matching, multiple-choice, and two types of cloze) to determine how informative they can be about lexical employability and knowledge of derivatives and collocations. Results showed that the four formats performed poorly and that it may not be warranted to interpret scores from these formats as...

Speakers typically design definite referring expressions to uniquely identify the intended referent with respect to the alternatives in the referential context, and addressees interpret these expressions with respect to the contextual alternatives. Although it is clear that the relevant context includes entities in the immediate context, less clear is how the historical discourse context affects language interpretation in the moment. This article presents the results of two experiments that examine interpretation of definite referring expressions in cases where the local context has recently changed. In Experiment 1 eye-tracked participants followed an experimenter's instructions to click on objects multiple times each. When expressions were over-modified for the immediate context (e.g., the striped shirt, when the shirt would suffice), referential interpretation was significantly facilitated when that expression had been previously used in a supporting context. By contrast, interpretation of nonmodified ...

Phrasal verbs are a notoriously difficult feature of English for most second language and foreign language learners to master. Different sources, such as movies, music, games and books, can provide learners with exposure to the most common phrasal verbs in English. This study aims to investigate the degree to which music can play a role in exposing learners to phrasal verbs through analyzing their frequency in song lyrics from different genres (i.e., Pop, Rock, Hip-hop and Metal). For this purpose, a corpus of 400 song lyrics by different artists from these four genres was searched for all existing phrasal verbs. The resulting list of phrasal verbs was compared to Garnier and Schmitt’s (2014) Phrasal Verb Pedagogical List in order to determine their value for learners. Further comparisons were subsequently drawn to determine which genre could be of greater use to language learning and instruction. The results revealed that song lyrics can potentially be a beneficial source for learning these const...

This article investigates infant comprehension of filler-gap dependencies. Three experiments probe 15- and 20-month-olds’ comprehension of two filler-gap dependencies: wh-questions and relative clauses. Experiment 1 shows that both age groups appear to comprehend wh-questions. Experiment 2 shows that only the younger infants appear to comprehend relative clauses, while Experiment 3 shows that when parsing demands are reduced, older children can comprehend them as well. We argue that this discontinuous pattern follows from an offset in the development of grammatical knowledge and the deployment mechanisms for using that knowledge in real time. Fifteen-month-olds, we argue, lack the grammatical representation of filler-gap dependencies but are able to achieve correct performance in the task by using argument structure information. Twenty-month-olds do represent filler-gap dependencies but are inefficient in deploying those representations in real time.

The progression from receptive vocabulary knowledge to productive word use in language learning to date is unclear. Vocabulary size has been the primary focus of receptive and productive vocabulary research. The present study looks at the internal structure of vocabulary knowledge along the receptive and productive continuum within a multi-aspect framework informed by Nation [2001. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press] and Coxhead [2007. Factors and aspects of knowledge affecting second language word use in writing. In Teaching and Learning Vocabulary in Another Language, ed. P. Davidson, C. Coombe, D. Lloyd and D. Palfreyman, 331–42. Dubai, UAE: TESOL Arabia]. It explores the relationship between receptive knowledge of meaning, form, word class, collocation and association and productive vocabulary knowledge, in particular the controlled productive word use in sentence writing, with a multi-task approach. Participants are 620 Year 8 English as a foreign language learners from two secondary schools in China. Results provide empirical evidence to the multi-aspect construct of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. The study describes the contribution of each aspect to controlled productive word use in context, and offer insights into the use of existing vocabulary assessment instruments to attain this goal. The findings have important pedagogical implications for vocabulary teaching and learning, as well as for instruments selection for vocabulary knowledge assessment and research purpose.

I examined students' discourse while working in pairs at the computer in an eighth-grade mathematics class to understand how students kept track of the people and things they discussed. I found that students most often referenced themselves and objects within the environment, through references to shared knowledge and the representations on the computer screen. Through these references, students communicated themselves as agents doing mathematical work situated through the use of the programming environment. This study contributes to articulating the complexity of students' mathematical discourse when they work with peers, using technology, for doing mathematics.

The correct use of frequently occurring word combinations represents an important part of language proficiency in spoken and written discourse. This study investigates the use of English-language recurrent word combinations in low-level and high-level L2 English academic essays sourced from the Canadian Academic English Language (CAEL) assessment. Quantitative and qualitative measures of analysis were used to investigate how L2 English writers of differing proficiency levels made use of recurrent word combinations in their writing. Results indicate that low-level writers tend to use more stance and discourse-organizing expressions in their essays, and more of these identified expressions also appear in the articles included as part of the test materials (i.e., suggesting that low-level writers used verbatim copying as a test-taking strategy). High-level writers were found to be less dependent on the included reading articles and made greater use of referential bundles in their writing.

This article discusses the depoliticization of the language of social justice, multiculturalism, and multicultural education in this moment of neoliberalism and multiculturalism, and in each section includes both national and international examples of depolicizaton to point out the pervasiveness of depolicization throughout the world. Additionally, the article argues that depolicization operates when words and phrases such as “more for less” are constructed to imply justice for the least among us and when economic competitiveness is represented as serving the common good.

This study investigated the effect of formulaic language on L2 learners’ ability to decode words in listening texts. One possibility was that formulas would facilitate listening by reducing the need to process every word of the sequences. However, a contrasting possibility was that the commonly reduced nature of formulaic words would hinder performance. Words from targeted sections of two texts of different levels of difficulty were identified as formulaic or non-formulaic. To gather the data, participants transcribed these targeted sections in the texts through a technique known as paused transcription. Analysis of these transcriptions suggested that the presence of formulas did not advantage the listeners in identifying words in general. However, it did advantage them in identifying function words, but only on the more challenging text. It was concluded that in this cognitively demanding environment of the challenging text, where listeners’ attention likely shifted to the content words to extrac...

In this paper, we explore the results of a short-term concept-based pedagogical intervention on the learning of declension as a meaning-making resource among US university learners of German. The pedagogical approached derived its principles from Vygotskian sociocultural psychology, namely the role of explicit, scientific (i.e., abstract and holistic) concepts in promoting development. The pedagogical approach centered on the teaching of the concept of focus, which was supported with lessons on word movement and its functions in German in comparison to English, as well as the role of morphology (i.e., declension) in assigning roles to determiner phrases in German. Results show that students made significant gains in their ability to interpret the roles of determiner phrases in German sentences by attending to morphology, and they began to attempt to mark determiner phrases at a significantly higher rate following the intervention in a writing task. We discuss the results in relation to pedagogical and the...

The acquisition of linguistic structures that require perspective-taking at the level of message generation is challenging. We investigate use of progressive aspect in L2 event encoding, using a sentence priming paradigm. We focus on Dutch, in which use of progressive aspect is optional. The progressive consists of a prepositional phrase (‘aan het,’ at-the), plus a verbal infinitive. We ask, to what extent L2 speakers, in comparison to native speakers, show priming effects in relation to form (prepositional phrase) or conceptual (progressive aspect) prime sentences. In native Dutch speakers we find a priming effect for the ‘progressive prime,’ compared to a ‘neutral prime’ (aspectually neutral event description). In L2 speakers this effect was absent. For the form prime, no priming effects were obtained in native speakers, rather, we find evidence for a partial blocking effect in L2 speakers. Results suggest that the strength of the link between concept and form of progressive aspect differs in native and...

This article explores English-speaking children’s acquisition of raising structures with an experiencer (e.g., John seems to Mary to be happy). We review and address previously unnoticed issues in the methodologies of existing studies testing the acquisition of raising, thus providing a more reliable picture of children’s abilities with respect to raising. We then present three experimental studies, which reveal that children’s purported difficulty with raising is significantly reduced when the experiencer is fronted to the beginning of the sentence (e.g., To Mary, John seems to be happy) and when the experiencer is pronominal (e.g., John seems to her to be happy). While the acquisition of this construction has been argued to be delayed due to grammar-internal reason, we propose an alternative account that attributes the difficulty to a performance limitation, responsible for intervention effects observed in a variety of other structures.