Using electrophysiological methods, Second Language Acquisition researchers have uncovered significant information about the neural correlates of late-learned additional language (L2) processing. An overarching question in much of this research is whether L2 learners show ‘nativelike’ event-related potential (ERP) patterns for grammar and semantic processing. The conclusions from early work on this question indicated that L2 ERP patterns can change qualitatively over time, for example as L2 proficiency increases, and that L2 learners do tend to show ‘nativelike’ ERP responses for some linguistic structures, particularly at higher proficiency. Certainly, whether L2 learners can achieve native speaker-like processing and behaviour has implications for the L2 classroom. This paper presents a review of L2 ERP individual differences research on grammar and semantic processing and highlights implications for L2 research and teaching. We focus the review on recent work that has examined individual differences in L2 ERPs, an area of research that may be especially fruitful for advancing knowledge of L2 neurocognition in classroom learners.

This article examines the responses that two groups of beginners of Italian in Canada (n=30) and in Italy (n=30) contributed to a multimodal exercise, where six culturally-based Italian gestures were presented alone and in combination with mini-dialogues. The main goal of this study was to encourage Italian L2 pedagogy to become more oriented towards the teaching of the pragmatics of body movements occurring during interactions. This work advocates that it is important to promote awareness of the pragmatic roles of the body from the early stages of language development to better prepare L2 learners in the recognition of the nonverbal contents communicated in a target language. One of the main results of this study suggests that combining target gestures with speech is a necessary pedagogical approach to enable the understanding of the semantics and the pragmatics of multimodal messages in L2 communication.

Working collaboratively in Second/Foreign Language Learning Edited by María del Pilar García Mayo (2021) Berlin: De Gruyter, 274pp.

Key Questions in Language Teaching: An Introduction By A. G. Benati (2020) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 214pp.

This study is motivated by the dearth of research in pragmatic instruction in Italian as a foreign language (IFL) with beginner learners. Based on the limitations in the way IFL textbooks present requests, instructional material was designed with the following objectives: to improve learners’ pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competences and to raise their awareness of request realisation across different contexts. The material, designed for a 60-minute pedagogical intervention, was then used in an Italian language school in Sao Paulo with five intact classes of beginner Brazilian learners of Italian. We implemented a pre- and post-test quasi-experimental methodological design, where three classes were randomly selected to serve as the experimental group, and two classes served as the control group. The data collected through written DCTs and simplified retrospective questionnaires revealed that the learners in the experimental group showed a more significant improvement in their socio pragmatic, pragmalinguistic and metapragmatic competence compared to the control group. These results suggest a positive effect of consciousness-raising activities on learners’ declarative knowledge in the short term.

Time-course data are temporal data that can be explored statically as an outcome measure of accuracy or dynamically from evolutionary and developmental perspectives. The present study examines the development and evolution of accuracy throughout the time-course of a pre-test/treatment/post-test study of instructed second language acquisition. The treatment is processing instruction (PI), which has a long history of positive results. PI research has overwhelmingly compared pre-test with post-test accuracy scores. The present study provides a fine-grained analysis as accuracy evolved and developed sentence by sentence. We analyse two sentence types: baseline active sentences and the target of instruction, passive sentences. Participants were divided into two groups, higher/lower prior knowledge, based on their pre-test scores processing passive sentences. Typically, PI research excludes higher prior knowledge participants, but here they are a comparison group. Our base measurement of development is an accuracy trend, defined as at least three correct answers in a row. We found that the number and length of accuracy trends increased over the time-course of the study and are affected by both sentence type and prior knowledge. The higher prior knowledge group always seems to have the advantage. Both prior knowledge groups benefit from instruction, but in different ways. We also found individual differences within the lower prior knowledge group: some participants benefited a great deal from instruction, some very little, and for some their accuracy with the baseline active sentences was temporarily destabilised.

This short report summarises a current quasi-experimental investigation into the effect of developmentally moderated focus on form instruction (DMFonF; Di Biase 2002, 2008) in an EFL classroom in an Indonesian kindergarten. DMFonF is an instructional approach which combines Pienemann's (1984) teachability hypothesis within Processability Theory (Pienemann 1998, 2011) with Long's (1991) focus on form (FonF) feedback. Specifically, the current study focuses on the acquisition of English plural marking on nouns. One first-year Indonesian kindergarten class (K1) and one second-year kindergarten class (K2) participated in the study. Children in both K1 and K2 were assessed at the beginning of the study and all of them, bar one exception, were found to be at the lexical stage; that is, they produced only single words and formulaic expressions in English without any grammatical markings. Analyses for K1 after one semester of instruction with DMFonF indicated that all the children acquired lexical plural marking and nine out of ten children also acquired phrasal agreement between quantifiers and nouns. A comparison of these results with K2 children (who were one year ahead in their meaning-based instruction) suggests that DMFonF instruction is effective in promoting grammatical development in the second language acquisition of kindergarten children.

Absolute beginners rapidly solve several word learning problems after minimal exposure to second language speech. In this article, we report on laboratory research that supports this claim. Explaining second language acquisition is a goal of foundational research. While our findings are consistent with the generativist enterprise, generativists have been content to describe what learners have acquired while avoiding discussion of the ‘how’. We describe a specific generativist approach (the Autonomous Induction Theory) that directly addresses the role of specific learning mechanisms proposed by cognitive psychology. In contrast to alternative non-generative approaches, the Autonomous Induction Theory offers a constrained theory of language acquisition. Both the data from laboratory settings and the theoretical explanations of how adult learners learn have potential implications for language teaching. One should not, however, make teaching recommendations directly from laboratory results. Rather, the findings should be reinterpreted as a research agenda for the classroom, one that recognises its complexities. In this paper, we make several proposals as to how to get from laboratory findings to a classroom-based research agenda.

This is an experimental study on the effect of explicit and implicit classroom input on the acquisition of English generics by L1-Najdi Arabic speakers. Following a feature-based contrastive analysis, acquisition difficulties are predicted with indefinite singular and bare plural contexts. The experiment included fifty-four students divided into two experimental groups and one uninstructed control group. One experimental group received implicit input by using genre analysis of texts reinforced with generic noun phrases (NPs), and the other group received explicit grammatical ‘focus on form’ on generics. Two instruments were used: a forced choice task and a sentence repetition task conducted as pre-tests, post-tests and delayed post-tests. The results showed a significant increase in the total scores of both experimental groups, but a long-term effect was only found with the explicit group. The forced choice task showed significant improvement in the explicit group’s accuracy on generic indefinite singular and bare plural contexts and long-term improvement on the bare plural. The explicit group’s results on the repetition task show temporary improvement in the generic indefinite singular post-test. In general, the results suggest that explicit input is more effective than implicit input. Implications on acquisition difficulties and instruction are discussed.