Studies of first and second language acquisition have indicated that when verbal morphemes first appear, they tend to mark aspectual distinctions in non-native-like ways. This study tested the hypothesis that in L2 acquisition, verbal morphemes initially mark lexical aspect—the temporal features inherent in the semantics of a predicate, independent of the time line—regardless of their function in the target language. To reduce the subjectivity that has weakened previous studies, operational tests—which entailed inserting a base-form verb phrase into a frame and then judging whether the result is acceptable—were used to determine lexical aspect for each of over 550 verb tokens in the corpus, based on an interlanguage sample from a native speaker of Spanish. The results of a chi-square test allow rejection of the null hypothesis—that lexical aspect and morphology are independent—at the .001 confidence level. Past marking was found to correlate with punctual aspect, -ing with durative.

Morphophonological alternations in English words such as able versus ability involve changes in both stress and vowel quality. This study examined how native speakers of Spanish and English produced four such morphologically related English word pairs. Degree of stress and vowel quality was assessed auditorily and instrumentally. Stress placement generally seemed to constitute less of a learning problem for the native Spanish speakers than vowel reduction. The results suggest that Englishlike stress placement is acquired earlier than vowel reduction and that the ability to unstress vowels is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for vowel reduction. The magnitude of stress and vowel quality differences for the four word pairs suggests that L2 learners acquire stress placement and vowel reduction in English on a word-by-word basis.

Three experiments investigated the relationship between memory for input and inductive learning of morphological rules relating to functional categories in a semiartificial form of Italian. A verbatim memory task was used as both the vehicle for presenting sentences and as a continuous measure of memory performance. Experiments 2 and 3 introduced increasingly explicit manipulations of attention to form compared to Experiment 1. In all experiments there were strong relationships between individual differences in memory for input as measured early in the experiment and eventual learning outcomes, and in Experiments 2 and 3 learning form-form (but not form-function) rules was related to vocabulary learning efficiency (taken as a measure of phonological long-term memory ability). These relationships along with the lack of an effect of feedback in Experiment 3 suggest that subjects tended to adopt a data-driven, as opposed to conceptually driven, mode of learning. However, the fact that the introduction of highlighting and vocabulary pretraining in Experiment 2 had a large impact on learning without improving early memory is taken to suggest that knowledge of distributional rules does not simply emerge out of memory encodings of the relevant forms but depends upon the appropriate allocation of attention over relationships between input elements at the time of encoding.

Linguistic analyses suggest that the nongeneric use of the English definite article the falls into four major categories: cultural, situation, structural, and textual. This study aims to determine whether these uses present different levels of difficulty for ESL students and whether they are acquired at the same time. The instrument consisted of 91 sentences containing 60 deleted obligatory uses of the (15 per category) and, as control items, 40 zero articles (10 per category) where the is not allowed. The participants (41 low-, 49 intermediate-, and 38 advanced-level students) were instructed to read the sentences and insert the wherever they deemed necessary. Statistical analyses of the participants' performance indicate the following: (a) The four nongeneric uses pose different levels of difficulty, which suggests that ESL acquisition of the is use dependent and follows a natural order; (b) The participants' performance on the suppliance of the in obligatory contexts for all four uses improved significantly with proficiency level, whereas the overuse of the followed a different pattern: an initial worsening followed by an improvement as the subjects' proficiency level increased. Pedagogical implications, including instructional sequence and strategies for the various uses of the, are discussed.

Production of English grammatical morphemes has provided a fruitful data base for language acquisition research. However, questions have been raised as to how these data can best be analyzed to represent subjects' actual use of morphemes (Andersen 1977, Hakuta 1976, Hatch and Wagner-Gough 1976, Lightbown, Spada, and Wallace 1980, Stauble 1981). In the following study, application of different methods of morpheme quantification to the spontaneous speech data of 18 adults acquiring English as a second language led to conflicting interpretations regarding their morpheme production.

Application of two alternative methods of morpheme quantification—one by suppliance in obligatory contexts, the other by target-like use—resulted in substantially different percentages of accuracy for subjects' production of the morphemes progressive -ing, progressive auxiliary, and past irregular. Another set of methods, used to analyze plural -s—quantification by noun tokens and by noun types—yielded contradictory findings regarding subjects' production of this morpheme.

Results of this study demonstrate that data can be described in various ways depending on how morphemes are quantified. As a consequence of applying different analyses to the same data base, conflicting interpretations about subjects' interlanguage can occur.

This study examined an integrated process model of second language motivation based on the framework of self-determination theory (SDT). Specifically, this research investigated the extent to which satisfying basic psychological needs (BPN) are related to SDT orientations and, in turn, to the effort expended and how these factors relate collectively to vocabulary knowledge. Revised scales assessing students’ BPN (the Basic Psychological Needs of Second Language Scale) and SDT orientations (the Self-Determination Theory of Second Language Scale) were considered and tested using a higher-order confirmatory factor analysis solution. The results of the structural model showed that BPN were only directly related to vocabulary knowledge, which indicated their direct importance for the attainment of the vocabulary. No other indirect effects through SDT orientations or effort were identified. Nonetheless, SDT orientations were both directly and indirectly linked to vocabulary knowledge over and above the role of expended effort. The results elucidated motivational pathways that yielded pedagogical implications for language learning.

Formulaic language represents a challenge to even the most proficient of language learners. Evidence is mixed as to whether native and nonnative speakers process it in a fundamentally different way, whether exposure can lead to more nativelike processing for nonnatives, and how L1 knowledge is used to aid comprehension. In this study we investigated how advanced nonnative speakers process idioms encountered in their L2. We used eye-tracking to see whether a highly proficient group of L1 Swedes showed any evidence of a formulaic processing advantage for English idioms. We also compared translations of Swedish idioms and congruent idioms (items that exist in both languages) to see how L1 knowledge is utilized during online processing. Results support the view that L1 knowledge is automatically used from the earliest stages of processing, regardless of whether sequences are congruent, and that exposure and advanced proficiency can lead to nativelike formulaic processing in the L2.

This study investigated the cognitive processes underlying pauses at different textual locations (e.g., within/between words) and various levels of revision (e.g., below word/clause). We used stimulated recall, keystroke logging, and eye-tracking methodology in combination to examine pausing and revision behaviors. Thirty advanced Chinese L2 users of English performed a version of the IELTS Academic Writing Task 2. During the writing task, participants’ key strokes were logged, and their eye movements were recorded. Immediately after the writing task, 12 participants also took part in a stimulated recall interview. The results revealed that, when participants paused at larger textual units, they were more likely to look back in the text and engage in higher-order writing processes. In contrast, during pauses at lower textual units, they tended to view areas closer to the inscription point and engage in lower-order writing processes. Prior to making a revision, participants most frequently had viewed the text that they subsequently revised or their eye gazes had been off-screen. Revisions focused more on language- than content-related issues, but there was a smaller difference in the number of language- and content-focused stimulated recall comments when larger textual units were revised.

The traditional implicit learning literature has focused primarily on the abstraction of statistical regularities in form-form connections. More attention has been recently directed toward the implicit learning of form-meaning connections, which might be crucial in the acquisition of natural languages. The current article reports evidence for implicit learning of a mapping between a novel set of determiners and thematic roles, obtained using a newly developed reaction time methodology. The results conclude that contextually derived form-meaning connections might be implicitly learned.

This study investigated whether a word-learning method in which learners infer the meaning of unknown words from the context, subsequently verify the meaning with the aid of a word list, and finally memorize the meaning (“meaning-inferred method”) leads to better retention than one in which the meaning of unknown words is given in the form of a translation so that learners can immediately start memorizing (“meaning-given method”). Additionally, the learning effect of the various stages of the meaning-inferred method (inferring, verifying, and memorizing) was investigated. In all cases the amount of time invested was recorded. The most important findings were: (a) The meaning-inferred method leads to a similar level of retention as the meaning-given method, but the former is considerably more time-consuming and therefore less efficient; and (b) each separate stage of the meaning-inferred method leads to retention, but the learning effect of memorizing is the greatest, and the learning effect of verifying is about the same as that of inferring.

Repair, defined in this paper as modifications of trouble sources which have manifested themselves in the discourse, is an important activity in FL learning and communication, both in educational and non-educational contexts. It is argued that studies of repair in the FL classroom should include all repair activity rather than focus on one specific repair type, viz., the teacher's correction of learners' errors. In this study the four repair types suggested by Schegloff, Jefferson, and Sacks (1977) are analyzed, and a further distinction is made according to whether the trouble source is produced by the teacher or a learner. It is shown that different preferences for repair patterns vary with the type of classroom activity (language-centered vs. content-centered activities), and it is discussed how these preferences relate to repair in non-educational learner-native speaker discourse.

This study examined the differential effects of systematic perception and production practice and the role of musical ability in learning Mandarin tone-words by native English-speaking adults in a training study. In this study, all participants (N = 38; 19 for each practice group) were first taught declarative knowledge of Mandarin tones and of the target words on the first day. They had to reach criterion performance on the test of vocabulary before they started to engage in either perception or production practice on the second day. Each participant went through three practice sessions on three separate days. Immediate posttests assessing learning outcomes in both perceptive and productive skills were administered on the last day. Musical tonal ability tests were administered to all participants and used as a covariate. The results showed that performance was far worse when participants were tested on the reverse skill than when they were tested on the practiced skill in terms of both error rates and reaction times, providing strong support for the skill-specificity hypothesis. Musical tonal ability was found to correlate with accuracy performance in both tone-word perception and production.

This study examines the transferability of five Japanese indirect request strategies to corresponding English request contexts. Pragmatic transferability was operationally defined as transferability rate. This rate was established through the summation of the perceived contextual appropriateness of a Japanese request and the perceived similarity in contextual appropriateness between a Japanese request and its English equivalent. The Japanese request strategies were found to be differentially transferable. The learners' transferability perception was influenced by their L2 proficiency; however, there was no definite tendency for a positive correlation nor for a negative correlation between L1 transfer and proficiency. Furthermore, the transferability of each L1 request strategy seemed to be determined by the interaction between the politeness and conventionality encoded in each strategy and the degree of mitigation required in each imposition context.

This study offers methodological synergy in the examination of factorial structure in second language (L2) research. It illustrates the effectiveness and flexibility of the recently developed exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM) method, which integrates the advantages of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) into one complete measurement model. Two sets of data were collected using the L2 Passion Scale, which measures a dualistic model of passion. Study 1 participants were 220 L2 students. A comparison was made between the CFA and the ESEM models. The results demonstrated the superiority of the ESEM method relative to CFA in terms of better goodness-of-fit indices and realistic correlated factors. These results were replicated in another sample of 272 L2 students, providing support for the predictive validity using a structural ESEM model. Guidelines are provided and Mplus syntax files (codes) are included to help analysts apply the methods. We also make the data available publicly. Overall, this research demonstrated the usefulness of ESEM for examining the construct, discriminant, and convergent validity of L2 scales over CFA.

Language learners’ mindsets–their beliefs about whether language is a fixed aptitude that is immutable or a malleable capacity that can be developed–are associated with achievement goals, language-use anxiety, reappraisals of challenges, and persistence. This study integrates these mindset-related constructs to identify mindset-system profiles among foreign language learners. A latent profile analysis of 234 university students in foreign language courses revealed three distinct profiles. The fixed (21.8%) and growth (20.5%) profiles showed distinct and contrasting patterns of goals, reappraisals, anxiety, and persistence. However, most learners (57.7%) endorsed a mixed profile. Although mindsets alone did not predict grades, students in the growth profile were consistently most engaged and achieved the highest grades, suggesting that mindsets function as a system, in concert with related factors. This person-centered approach enhances our understanding of the complexity and functions of the mindset system, as well as the motivation of learners with mixed mindsets.

This paper calls attention to an increasingly prominent field of interest within second language acquisition research and pedagogy, namely, that of pragmatic ability. It focuses on an area within pragmatics, that of speech acts, considers the processes underlying the performance of such speech acts, and looks at the effects of explicit instruction in this area. The paper starts by asking what speech act ability entails. Several basic distinctions are made in the description of speech acts, such as that between sociocultural and sociolinguistic ability. Second, directions of previous research describing speech acts are indicated and directions yet to be taken are pointed out. Difficulties in researching oral speech act performance are noted, and verbal report is recognized as one of a limited number of research tools available for investigating cognitive processes involved in speech act production. The paper then reviews four studies that utilize verbal report to gain at least some access to the underlying processes. Finally, the paper looks at previous research on the tutored and untutored acquisition of speech acts and provides suggestions for future research.

This article investigates how lexical and syntactic differences in L1 and L2 grammatical gender affect L2 predictive gender processing. In a visual-world eye-tracking experiment, 24 L1 Russian adult learners and 15 native speakers of German were tested. Both Russian and German have three gender classes. Yet, they differ in lexical congruency, that is, whether a noun (“house”) is assigned to the same or a different gender class. Further, gender is syntactically realized on postnominal suffixes in Russian but on prenominal articles in German. For adjectives, both Russian and German mark gender on suffixes. In predictive gender processing, we find interactions of proficiency and congruency for gender-marked articles. Advanced L2 learners show nativelike gender prediction throughout. High-intermediate learners display asymmetries according to syntactic and lexical congruency. Predictive gender processing obtains for all nouns in the (syntactically congruent) adjective condition, yet only for lexically congruent nouns in the (syntactically incongruent) article condition.

There are indications that a determined effort toward theory construction is currently being mounted in SLA (Gregg, 1989, 1990; Long, 1990; Spolsky, 1989). This raises a number of epistemological issues, one of which is the question of multiple theories and lack of convergence (and the related question of distinguishing science from nonscience–and from nonsense). In a field where there are many different therorise, is the relationship between them one of complementarity or of opposition? Are there criteria for appraisal and choice? Issues relating to theory construction have received considerable attention in the literature (e.g., Lightbown, 1984; McLaughlin, 1987). This article aims to build on such initiative asking: (a) Are there multiple theories of SLA? (b) Is it a problem? and (c) what criteria have SLA researchers used to appraise and choose between theories, and how compelling are they? Following this, consideration is given to top-down and bottom-up approaches to SLA theory construction. I conclude by advancing the modest claim that rationality in SLA therory construction is possible, in spite of insistent problems.

This paper discusses some possibilities and limitations of laboratory research methods for testing theories of second language acquisition. The paper includes a review of 20 experimental lab studies. The review focuses on the motivation for conducting lab studies, the use of artificial or semiartificial language structures, and various design features (including pre- and posttesting, number of subjects, random subject assignment, between- and within-subjects comparisons, treatment materials and procedures). The paper calls for lab studies addressing issues central to SLA theory (“learning” vs. “acquisition”) and ends with some methodological recommendations, concerning the length of experimental treatments, the use of grammaticality judgment tasks, the measurement of reaction times, and the use of retrospective interviews.

This study investigated the effects of a group of task factors on advanced English as a second language learners’ actual and perceived listening performance. We examined whether the speed, linguistic complexity, and explicitness of the listening text along with characteristics of the text necessary for task completion influenced comprehension. We also explored learners’ perceptions of what textual factors cause difficulty. The 68 participants performed 18 versions of a listening task, and each task was followed by a perception questionnaire. Nine additional students engaged in stimulated recall. The listening texts were analyzed in terms of a variety of measures, utilizing automatized analytical tools. We used Rasch and regression analyses to estimate task difficulty and its relationship to the text characteristics. Six measures emerged as significant predictors of task difficulty, including indicators of (a) lexical range, density, and diversity and (b) causal content. The stimulated recall comments were more reflective of these findings than the questionnaire responses.