Lexically-based Language Teaching: Metaphor For Enhancing Learning

Acknowledgements Introduction PART ONE - BACKGROUND Introduction 1. Second language acquisition research: an overview PART TWO - THE DESCRIPTION OF LEARNER LANGUAGE Introduction 2. Learner errors and error analysis 3. Developmental patterns: order and sequence in second language acquisition 4. Variability in learner language 5. Pragmatic aspects of learner language PART THREE - EXPLAINING SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: EXTERNAL FACTORS Introduction 6. Social factors and second language acquisition 7. Input and interaction and second language acquisition PART FOUR - EXPLAINING SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: INTERNAL FACTORS Introduction 8. Language transfer 9. Cognitive accounts of second language acquisition 10. Linguistic universals and second language acquisition PART FIVE - EXPLAINING INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Introduction 11. Individual learner differences 12. Learning strategies PART SIX - CLASSROOM SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Introduction 13. Classroom interaction and second language acquisition 14. Formal instruction and second language acquisition PART SEVEN - CONCLUSION Introduction 15. Data, theory, and applications in second language acquisition research Glossary Bibliography Author index Subject index

Focusing on two types of corrective feedback strategies in second language classrooms, namely recasts and prompts, the current paper claims that the comparative effectiveness of recasts and prompts is an area of great research value, for the following reasons: (1) theoretically, studies in this area can inform the issues such as the roles of input and output in second language learning and the cognitive roles of recasts and prompts in language learning; (2) pedagogically, research findings in this area may provide second language teachers with useful advice concerning their classroom error correction. Based on a critical review of existing research findings, two distinct research gaps are discussed: (1) the effect of recasts and prompts in promoting the learning of new linguistic features has rarely been explored and awaits future research attention; (2) the effect of recasts and prompts has rarely been examined from learners’ own perspectives and more studies in this direction are needed.

Second language learning outcomes are highly variable, due to a variety of factors, including individual differences, exposure conditions, and linguistic complexity. However, exactly how these factors interact to influence language learning is unknown. This paper examines the relationship between these three variables in language learners. Native English speakers were exposed to an artificial language containing three sentence patterns of varying linguistic complexity. They were randomly assigned to two groups – incidental and instructed – designed to promote the acquisition of implicit and explicit knowledge, respectively. Learning was assessed with a grammaticality judgment task, while subjective measures of awareness were used to measure whether exposure had resulted in implicit or explicit knowledge. Participants also completed cognitive tests. Awareness measures demonstrated that learners in the incidental group relied more on implicit knowledge, whereas learners in the instructed group relied more on explicit knowledge. Overall, exposure condition was the most significant predictor of performance on the grammaticality judgment task, with learners in the instructed group outperforming those in the incidental group. Performance on a procedural learning task accounted for additional variance. When outcomes were analysed according to linguistic complexity, exposure condition was the most significant predictor for two syntactic patterns, but it was not a predictor for the most complex sentence group; instead, procedural learning ability was.

This presentation deals with input processing theory (hereafter IP theory) of VanPatten (2002a, 2002b, 2004, and 2009) and VanPatten and a number of his collaborates (e.g. VanPatten and Cadierno, 1993a, and 1993b; Wong and VanPatten, 2003). For this it explains the importance of input in discussions of language learning especially the learning of a second or foreign language. Then an elaboration of IP theory will be presented, theoretical and pedagogical implications of this theory for second language acquisition (SLA) will be pinpointed, and finally criticisms on IP will be discussed.

The purpose of this study is to explore how English language learners' (ELLs) consultation of monolingual and bilingual dictionaries could influence their second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition. Although research has empirically indicated that dictionary use could possibly affect learners' second language acquisition (SLA) in various ways, inconclusive results can still be found pertaining to ELLs' L2 vocabulary acquisition based on their dictionary use. In order to bridge this gap, sixty-four ELLs were recruited and divided into two groups for this experimental study. Through both quantitative and qualitative analyses, the researcher examined how the consultation of monolingual and bilingual dictionaries could influence L2 lexical teaching and learning utilizing a 13,944-word lemmatized High Frequency Word List (HFWL) from the British National Corpus (BNC). The findings suggest that the consultation of monolingual dictionaries promoted students' L2 vocabulary acquisition, learning interest, confidence and positive attitude more effectively than that of bilingual dictionaries. Learners were also revealed to be cognizant of the salience of L2 exposure that monolingual dictionaries possess for reifying their L2 awareness and lexical development in an authentic fashion. Based on the outcomes yielded from this investigation, pedagogical and theoretical implications are discussed.

In this paper we want to focus on the so called vehicular use of second languages - i.e. the use of a second language in teaching knowledge in different fields -, in order to evaluate its effectiveness as an educational approach in early foreign language teaching. We will analyse the advantages of the vehicular use of languages in the perspective of teaching languages in the kindergarten school, considering in particular the parallelism between first and second language acquisition. Then, we will suggest some practical considerations to follow and implement this approach, also illustrating a concrete experience.

Reviewed by: Second language acquisition by Roumyana Slabakova Tania Ionin Second language acquisition. By Roumyana Slabakova. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. xxi, 483. ISBN 9780199687275. $40. Introduction This book is a textbook of second language acquisition (SLA) written within the theoretical framework of the generative approach to SLA research. The intended readers are advanced undergraduate students and graduate students who have some background in linguistics, in particular in syntax and semantics. The text is intended first and foremost for students with a prior background in generative linguistics. While the main linguistic concepts are explained when they are introduced, such explanations are necessarily brief, and students with no prior background in linguistics would find the more technical parts of the text somewhat difficult to follow. However, students or other readers who have a general interest in language and/or language acquisition, but lack a background in generative linguistics, should still be able to follow the main concepts presented in the book. This textbook is quite unique in that, while its focus is on theoretical research on SLA, it explicitly makes the link to potential pedagogical relevance of the research findings. Brief summary The book consists of thirteen chapters, divided into three parts. Each chapter ends with a section of exercises; at the end of the book are a glossary, references, and an index. Part I, ‘Language’, provides a brief overview of the relevant background information that readers need to have in order to fully appreciate the rest of the book. Ch. 1, ‘Language architecture’, lays out the central argument of generative linguistics for the innateness of language and introduces the reader to several famous proposals on the structure of the language faculty. Ch. 1 then addresses the task faced by a second language learner and lays out the logic of the methodology used in generative SLA research. Ch. 2, ‘Language variation’, walks the reader through the history of the generative study of language variation, from principles and parameters through the minimalist program. Like Ch. 1, Ch. 2 ends by considering the implications of the theoretical linguistic research for the learning task of a second language learner. The goal of Ch. 3, ‘The psychological reality of language in use’, is to prepare the reader for later chapters that address second language processing by reviewing the central models and findings of the literature on language processing and psycholinguistics more generally. Part II, ‘Language acquisition’, has the goal of placing the study of SLA into the study of language acquisition as a whole by considering a number of different language-acquisition scenarios. The focus of this part is on the respective contributions of age of acquisition and of input quantity and quality to the task of language acquisition. Ch. 4, ‘The critical period hypothesis’, goes over the history of critical period studies and addresses the debate about the existence of critical or sensitive periods in SLA. This chapter also considers the role of input, bringing together a number of quite distinct phenomena, including variable input, comparisons between heritage speakers and second language learners, and variability among native speakers at different educational levels. Ch. 5, ‘First language acquisition, two first languages’, provides an overview of the process of first language acquisition; most of the chapter is devoted to monolingual first language acquisition, but the last section discusses simultaneous bilinguals, who form a natural link between monolinguals and adult second language learners. In Ch. 6, ‘Child second language, multilingual and heritage language acquisition, language attrition’, a variety of other types of language acquisition scenarios are discussed. Throughout this chapter, and especially in the last section, the focus is, once again, on the relative contributions of age of acquisition and input quantity and quality to the outcome of the language acquisition process. The position taken in this chapter, and [End Page e198] throughout the rest of the book, is that the effects of age can potentially be overridden by rich input, and that universal grammar remains active in SLA by adults. Part III, ‘Second language acquisition’, is the heart of the book. In addition to providing an overview of SLA research in the core areas of linguistics (with the one exception of...

The lack of informed knowledge about listening subskills and their relationships has hindered the development of the diagnostic English language track assessment (DELTA) in three participating Hong Kong universities. This study investigates English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' listening proficiency development in understanding different spoken genres in the Hong Kong Chinese tertiary contexts. It aims to: i) identify the subskills and/or cognitive processes that underlie student performance on the DELTA listening component; ii) examine the difficulty levels of the DELTA listening subskills, and, consequentially, their hierarchical order; iii) investigate the impact of text type on difficulty level and the hierarchical order of the subskills; and iv) infer principles underlying the development of listening proficiency in the Hong Kong tertiary education contexts. A multi-method approach was employed for data collection and analysis. The primary quantitative data were derived from the DELTA listening component items answered by 2830 Chinese ELF learners who studied in their first or second year in the DELTA participating universities in the 2013-14 academic year. The item pool included 207 multiple-choice questions (MCQ) from 33 texts of three text types – conversation, interview and lecture. Each MCQ is intended to measure a particular listening subskill, including: 1) identifying specific information (SSK1); 2) understanding main idea and supporting ideas (SSK2); 3) understanding information and making an inference (SSK3); 4) interpreting a word or phrase as used by the speaker (SSK4); 5) inferring the attitude or intention of the speaker (SSK5); and 6) inferring the speaker's reasoning (SSK6). By adopting inter-related Rasch analyses using Winsteps and Facets, all test items were calibrated and analysed to determine their difficulty measures and their respective difficulties across the three text types. Qualitative Stimulated Recall Protocol (SRP) discussions were then conducted with 62 examinees of varying estimated listening abilities one month later, in a simulated test situation, where the test-taking process was video-recorded and the participants were asked to recall and to verbalise their thought processes and strategies they used to answer each question. The SRP results reveal an array of both cognitive processes and test-taking strategies in the listening comprehension and test-answering process. Firstly, various combinations of cognitive processes were utilised by both the high and low ability examinees to answer questions targeting the same listening sub-skill; however, the dominant cognitive process that was reported to have been used to answer each question corresponded with the particular listening subskill intended by DELTA item writers. Secondly, an array of test-taking strategies best identified as elimination, and guessing, were reported as used by examinees during the test. While this finding might not be surprising given the exam-oriented atmosphere prevailing in Hong Kong secondary school education, it alerted the researcher to scrutinise the validity of the DELTA listening component. The most striking observation from the listening test analysis is that, the DELTA listening subskills are measurably separable from each other, and a hierarchical pattern is established. In terms of their interaction with text type, the results showed that SSK1 and SSK6 were, respectively, the easiest and the most difficult subskills, whereas the hierarchical orders of the other four subskills varied across the three text types. More generally, these findings provide empirical evidence for the proposition that EFL listening comprehension is composed of multiple listening subskills, which operate interactively and interdependently in the listening process. The results regarding the difficulty level and the hierarchy of listening subskills corroborate the findings of prior research that low-level processing, such as identifying specific information, poses less challenge than high-level processing, such as summarising and inferencing. Because of the complexity in the interaction between text type and listening subskills, it is difficult to identify an overarching hierarchical order of the six listening subskills across the three text types. A general pattern, however, is that the difficulty increased from SSK1, SSK2 to SSK6 irrespective of the text type, and this corresponds to the general subskill hierarchy. The study will benefit teachers and students with diagnostic profiling and bridge the gap in diagnostic test design with targeted items of appropriate difficulty for predicting learners' listening development. It will extend second language acquisition theory with a hierarchical trajectory of listening proficiency growth. Limitations and future research recommendations are discussed.

After the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Applied Linguistics took a social turn and made the sociocultural perspective its primary point of investigation, SLA researchers became more interested in the link between identity (class, culture, race, gender, sexuality, etc.) and language learning. Hence, the present study aimed at identifying the impact of identity aspects on the Iranian learners' English language achievements of the students of Medicine at Yasuj University of Medical Sciences (YUMS). Likewise, the study attempted to find the impact of demographic factors on language achievement and aspects of identity among Iranian EFL learners. To fulfill the objectives and find answers to the posed questions, a questionnaire representing aspects of identity and consisting of 45 Likert items (personal: 10 items + social: 7 items + collective: 8 items + relational: 10 items + special: 10 items) was distributed among 76 language learners majoring in Medicine at YUMS. Both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were run on the data. The results demonstrated no significant relationship between language achievement and the aspects of identity. To be exact, the present paper revealed that none of the identity aspects was a predicting variable for language achievement in the Iranian academic context. Among the demographic factors, only gender could account for two aspects of identity, namely, personal and relational identities. Evidently, the results were local not universal.

This bibliometric study investigates research trends and scholarly developments in the application of acoustic approaches to second language acquisition and learning (SLA). In recent years, the use of phonetic analysis, acoustic feedback, and speech technologies has played an increasingly important role in understanding how learners perceive and produce speech in a second language context. Despite the growing body of research, a comprehensive overview of the global patterns, influential works, thematic structures, and collaboration networks in this field remains limited. To address this gap, this study employed a bibliometric approach using data retrieved from the Scopus database between 2010 and June 2025. The search strategy utilized seven targeted keywords second language acquisition, learning, language, acoustic study, phonetic analysis, phonetic, and speech sounds resulting in a final dataset of 580 documents. Analytical tools including Scopus Analyzer, OpenRefine, and VOSviewer were used to clean, process, and visualize the data through descriptive metrics and network maps. The findings indicate a significant increase in publication output, particularly between 2020 and 2024, reflecting a rising interest in integrating acoustic and phonetic tools in SLA research. The research output was primarily concentrated in the social sciences and arts and humanities, with meaningful contributions from computer science and psychology. Highly cited keywords such as "speech perception," "phonetics," and "bilingualism" highlight the interdisciplinary focus of the field, while the co-authorship network shows strong international collaboration led by countries such as the United States, China, and the United Kingdom. This study contributes by identifying dominant research directions and offering a foundational reference for future investigations. It further underscores the value of bibliometric methods in tracing the evolution of acoustic-based SLA research and highlights the potential for technological innovations to support language learning practices.

Second language acquisition has become a big issue in recent years and it leads to the study of transfer. As there are many problems faced by the lecturers deal with the students’ pronunciation, then this paper is aimed at revealing and describing the errors in pronouncing English sounds made by the English learners because of the negative transfer from their first language (L1). Mix method was used in this study, it began with the qualitative one and then to know the percentage of each data, quantitative one was applied. The data were got from the recording of speaking activities and interview and then it was transcribed into broad transcription. This study does not include the narrow transcription, therefore no suprasegmental features found in this paper. The results of this study revealed that most of the students made some errors in pronouncing English sounds which they cannot found in their first language such as the sound /ae/, /∫/, /θ/, /ð/, and /ʒ /. The result is hoped to be able to give some input to the English teacher and lecturer on the common errors made by the students in pronouncing English sounds and lead them to improve their teaching methods in order to help their students in pronouncing new sounds found in the target language. Keywords: Error, language transfer

This study focuses on how communicative competence should be developed through effective reading. The basic idea of developing communicative competence comes from different points. For instance, syllabus may not give much concern and sufficient activities to improve learners’ communicative competence in all cases. In addition to the problems of pronunciation, stress, intonation, grammatical structures and vocabulary of English language, this may be attributed to the lack of listening materials and limited exposure to conversational English. The direct cause may be rooted in the methods, strategies, activities and the characteristics of effective reading, deveolping students’ communicative competence, determining to what extend effective reading helps in developing learners’ communicative competence. The tool used for collecting data for this study is a questionnaire which is base on 13 statements. The sample of the study consists of 50 teachers of English at the basic level chosen randomly from teachers of English at AlShagra in the South of Khartoum state. SPSS programmed was used to analyze the data. The analysis of the data leads to the fact that communicative competence can be successfully developed through effective reading. Most of English language teachers are unqualified and untrained, the lack of continuous follow-up of teachers and parents. In the light of the results reached so far, it is recommended that communicative competence should be developed through effective reading, communicative competence should be given more attention in the present syllabus and students should be given adequate opportunities to practice English in authentic communicative situations. Also teachers and parents should follow-up closely and encourage learners to develop their language.

The present dissertation focuses on the role of cognitive individual difference factors in the acquisition of second language vocabulary in the context of intelligent computer assisted language learning (ICALL). The aim was to examine the association between working memory and declarative memory and the learning of English phrasal verbs in a web-based ICALL-mediated experiment. Following a pretest-posttest design, 127 adult learners of English were assigned to two instructional conditions, namely meaning-focused and form-focused conditions. Learners in both conditions read news texts on the web for about two weeks; learners in the form-focused condition additionally interacted with the texts via selecting multiple-choice options. The results showed that both working memory and declarative memory were predictive of vocabulary acquisition. However, only the working memory effect was modulated by the instructional context, with the effect being found exclusively in the form-focused condition, and thus suggesting the presence of an aptitude-treatment interaction. Finally, findings also revealed that learning during treatment in the form-focused group was nonlinear, and that paying attention to form and meaning simultaneously impeded global reading comprehension for intermediate, not advanced learners. From a theoretical perspective, the findings provide evidence to suggest that individual differences in both working memory and declarative memory affect the acquisition of lexical knowledge in ICALL-supported contexts. Methodologically, the current study illustrates the advantages of conducting interdisciplinary work between ICALL and second language acquisition by allowing for the collection of experimental data through a web-based, all-encompassing ICALL system. Overall, the present dissertation represents an initial attempt at characterizing who is likely to benefit from ICALL-based interventions.

La tecnología ha tenido un gran impacto en la educación en los últimos veinte años. Con el desarrollo de nuevas tecnologías, se puede decir que la Adquisición de una Segunda Lengua (A2L) ha adoptado la Enseñanza Asistida por Ordenador (EAO) como una nueva y útil herramienta. Las diferentes aplicaciones y efectos de las computadoras en el aprendizaje y la enseñanza de un idioma pueden ser relacionadas con la adquisición de una segunda lengua, especialmente con el número de las aplicaciones de las computadoras en un ambiente de aprendizaje de un idioma. El propósito principal de este ensayo es explorar las conexiones existentes entre la Adquisición de una Segunda Lengua y la Enseñanza Asistida por Ordenador. Primero se muestran los antecedentes históricos de la EAO. Después las implicaciones y aplicaciones de la EAO sobre la A2L son discutidas. Asimismo la evaluación de la EAO en relación con la A2L y el futuro de la EAO son también analizados. Una de las principales conclusiones es que hay conexiones significativas y pertinentes entre la Adquisición de una Segunda Lengua y la Enseñanza Asistida por Ordenador.

In order to improve the second language learning, this research is based on the research result of Lu (2004) to analyze the Spanish learners' compositions of NCKU with the functions in Concordance and statistical software to compare with the modern corpus of Real Academia Espanola (RAE) to understand the general situation of the learning of collocation and its differences with the natural language. The results are: firstly, there is no significant relationship of frequently used vocabulary between the natural language and the learners'. Secondly, the most frequently used collocation by learners is the combination with NP. Considering the result of this research, we recommend that teachers should modify the teaching materials and class design on the base of the natural language, and especially put emphasis on the non-nouns' collocation.