For some, research in learning and teaching of a second language (L2) runs the risk of disintegrating into irreconcilable approaches to L2 learning and use. On the one side, we find researchers investigating linguistic-cognitive issues, often using quantitative research methods including inferential statistics; on the other side, we find researchers working on the basis of sociocultural or sociocognitive views, often using qualitative research methods including case studies and ethnography. Is there a gap in research in L2 learning and teaching? The present article developed from an invited colloquium at the 2013 meeting of the American Association for Applied Linguistics in Dallas, Texas. It comprises nine single-authored pieces, with an introduction and a conclusion by the coeditors. Our overarching goals are (a) to raise awareness of the limitations of addressing only the cognitive or only the social in research on L2 learning and teaching and (b) to explore ways of bridging and/or productively appreciating the cognitive-social gap in research. Collectively, the nine contributions advance the possibility that the approaches are not irreconcilable and that, in fact, cognitive researchers and social researchers will benefit by acknowledging insights and methods from one another.

Evidence of learning following incidental exposure has been found for aspects of nonnative syntax in adults (Rebuschat & Williams, 2006, 2012; Williams & Kuribara, 2008). However, little research has tested delayed effects of learning under an incidental condition or moved beyond word order. This study investigated learning of third language (L3) morphosyntax (word order and case marking) under an incidental exposure condition. Participants were second language Spanish learners exposed auditorily to a semiartificial language, Japlish, during a semantic plausibility judgment task. Performance following exposure to L3 Japlish was assessed with acceptability judgment and picture-matching tasks that were administered immediately after exposure and 2 weeks later. Results on immediate tests showed a significant learning effect on acceptability judgment but none for picture matching. At delayed testing, results showed maintenance of the learning effect on acceptability judgment and significantly improved performance on picture matching. Results additionally showed that many of the learners arrived at the correct Japlish word-order rule; fewer did so for case marking. Follow-up analyses indicated that this rule knowledge, as measured by debriefing information, was important for performance on both assessment tasks, particularly at delayed testing. The results suggest that learning of L3 structures can take place following incidental exposure, that such learning is durable and undergoes improvement, and that development of reportable rule knowledge may also play an important role.

Theoretical claims about the benefits of corrective feedback have been largely premised on learners’ noticing of feedback (e.g., Gass & Mackey, 2006; Long, 1996; Schmidt, 1990, 1995; Swain, 1995), and findings have demonstrated that both the feedback target (Mackey, Gass, & McDonough, 2000) and the mode of provision (Lai & Zhao, 2006) can affect learners’ accurate perception of feedback. The current study extended this research by investigating learners’ perception and use of feedback provided in task-based interaction in both computer-mediated (CMC) and face-to-face (FTF) modes. Utilizing stimulated recall, the study examined if 24 intermediate-level learners of Spanish as a foreign language accurately noticed feedback as feedback, if they noticed the feedback target, and if the environment in which they interacted (CMC vs. FTF) made a difference in their accuracy. The study also investigated if modality affected opportunities for modified output immediately following feedback and if learners used those opportunities differently according to mode. Results demonstrated that, overall, learners did notice feedback as feedback in both modes. Contrary to expectations, there were no statistical differences between modes in feedback perception accuracy. Significant differences were found, however, in learners’ opportunities for and use of feedback depending on the interaction environment and the type of error being addressed.

Previous studies (Barcroft & Sommers, 2005; Sommers & Barcroft, 2007) have demonstrated that variability in talker, speaking style, and speaking rate positively affect second language vocabulary learning, whereas variability in overall amplitude and fundamental frequency (F0) do not, at least for native English speakers. Sommers and Barcroft (2007) hypothesized that English speakers do not benefit (with regard to second language vocabulary learning) from amplitude and F0 variability because these are not phonetically relevant to them. The present study further tested this hypothesis by examining effects of F0 variability among adults who speak a tone language (Zapotec-Spanish bilinguals) and those who do not speak a tone language (Spanish speakers with substantial knowledge of English). Participants attempted to learn 24 Russian words while hearing the words and viewing their corresponding pictures. Three levels of F0 variability were compared. Fundamental frequency variability significantly improved vocabulary learning for speakers of the tone language (Zapotec) but not for the Spanish speakers. This result provides strong evidence that effects of acoustic variability on learning new word forms depend on phonetic relevance.

This study investigates subject pronominal expression in second language Chinese and compares learner usage with patterns found in their first language. The results show that (a) overt pronouns are used more for singular, +animate subjects than plural, –animate ones; (b) switch in subject surface form favors overt pronouns; (c) English and Russian speakers use overt pronouns more than Korean and Japanese speakers; (d) statements favor overt pronouns most, followed by questions and then imperatives; (e) females use overt pronouns more than males; (f) conversations slightly favor overt pronouns, whereas narratives favor null pronouns; (g) higher proficiency learners across language groups use more null subject referents than do lower proficiency learners; and (h) nonspecific subject referents promote null subjects. Comparison results show that learner patterns are similar to those of their native speaker peers on most dimensions explored except that they tend to overuse overt pronouns. That is, the learners have acquired the subject pronoun use pattern in Chinese rather successfully but need to further develop their sociolinguistic competence regarding null pronoun usage.

The current study examined how form-focused instruction (FFI) with and without corrective feedback (CF) as output enhancement facilitated second language (L2) perception of Mandarin tones at both the phonetic and phonological levels by 41 Cantonese learners of Mandarin. Two experimental groups, FFI only and FFI-CF, received a 90-min FFI treatment designed to encourage them to notice and practice the categorical distinctions of Mandarin tones through a range of communicative input and output activities. During these activities, the instructors provided CF only to students in the FFI-CF group by recasting and pushing them to repair their mispronunciations of the target features (i.e., output enhancement). The control group received comparable meaning-oriented instruction without any FFI. The effectiveness of FFI was assessed via a forced-choice identification task with both trained and untrained items for a variety of tonal contrasts in Mandarin (high-level Tone 1 vs. mid-rising Tone 2 vs. high-falling Tone 4). According to statistical comparisons, the FFI-only group attained significant improvement in all lexical and tonal contexts, and such effectiveness was evident particularly in the acquisition of Tone 1 and Tone 4—supposedly the most difficult instances due to their identical phonological status in the learners’ first language, Cantonese. The FFI-CF group, however, demonstrated marginally significant gains only under the trained lexical conditions. The results suggest that FFI promotes learners’ attentional shift from vocabulary to sound learning (generalizable gains in trained and untrained items) and facilitates their access to new phonetic and phonological categories. Yet the relative advantage of adding CF to FFI as output enhancement remains unclear, especially with respect to the less experienced L2 learners in the current study.

Conventional expressions, a subset of multiword units, are the target of the current study, which aims to address questions concerning native and nonnative speakers’ knowledge and processing of a set of such strings. To this end, 13 expressions identified as conventional in the southwest of France were tested in an online contextualized naturalness judgment task, which was administered to 20 French natives, 20 long-stay (i.e., >1 year in the southwest of France) Anglophone nonnative speakers of French, and 20 short-stay (i.e., 4–6 months in the same region) Anglophones. The naturalness judgments provided by the participants revealed that all groups judged the conventional expressions similarly and significantly differently from the matched conditions, which involved grammatical but not conventional strings. The reaction time results suggested that conventional expressions have a mental correlate for both natives and nonnatives, although the processing patterns recorded differed for the two groups. The reaction time results are argued to be most consistent with a pragmatic competence model of conventional expression processing.

This article reports an empirical study in which we explored the role played by two forms of feedback—error correction and model texts—on child English as a foreign language learners’ reported noticing and written output. The study was carried out with 11- and 12-year-old children placed in proficiency-matched pairs who engaged in a three-stage collaborative writing task involving (a) spontaneous noticing of linguistic problems while composing, (b) comparison of their texts with the feedback provided, and (c) rewriting of their original output. Results indicate that although the children noticed and later incorporated mainly lexical features into their output, gains in the linguistic acceptability and comprehensibility of their revised texts showed an advantage for error correction over models. Learners in the error correction condition reported more noticing of grammar at the comparison stage, which later emerged in their revisions. The potential effects of both feedback strategies on children’s reported noticing and output production are discussed, and conclusions are drawn for the role of feedback in children’s classroom second language acquisition.

This study examined how native speakers of Australian English and French, nontone languages with different lexical stress properties, perceived Mandarin tones in a sentence environment according to their native sentence intonation categories (i-Categories) in connected speech. Results showed that both English and French speakers categorized Mandarin tones primarily on the phonetic similarities of the pitch contours between the Mandarin tones and their native i-Categories. Moreover, French but not English speakers were able to detect the fine-detailed phonetic differences between Tone 3 (T3) and Tone 4 (T4; i.e., low or low-falling tone vs. high-falling tone), which suggests that the stress differences between these languages may affect nonnative tone perception: English uses lexical stress, whereas French does not. In the discrimination task, the French listeners’ performance was better than that of the English listeners. For each group, discrimination of the Tone 1 (T1)–T4 and Tone 2 (T2)–T3 pairs was consistently and significantly lower than that of the other tone pairs, and the difference between T1-T4 and T2-T3 was significant. Discrimination of the Mandarin tone pairs was not fully predicted by pairwise categorizations to native i-Categories, however. Some discrimination differences were observed among tone pairs showing the same assimilation patterns. Phonetic overlaps in native i-Category choices for the Mandarin tones, strength of categorization (So, 2012), and tonal coarticulation effects (Xu, 1994, 1997) may offer possible accounts of these discrepancies between categorization and discrimination performance. These findings support the perceptual assimilation model for suprasegmentals (So & Best, 2008, 2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2013), extended to categorization of nonnative tone words within sentence contexts to native i-Categories.

Participants learned foreign vocabulary by means of the paired-associates learning procedure in three conditions: (a) in silence, (b) with vocal music with lyrics in a familiar language playing in the background, or (c) with vocal music with lyrics in an unfamiliar language playing in the background. The vocabulary to learn varied in concreteness (concrete vs. abstract) and phonological typicality of the foreign words’ forms (typical vs. atypical). When tested during and immediately after training, learning outcomes were poorer in the familiar language music condition than in the unfamiliar language music and silence conditions, but this effect was short-lived, as shown in a delayed test 1 week after training, on which the effect was no longer found. Learning outcomes were better for concrete words than for abstract words and better for typical foreign forms than for atypical ones. Contrary to the adverse effects of familiar language music, the effects of concreteness and typicality were lasting. We explain the interference effect in the familiar language music condition in terms of the workings of the phonological loop, a component of working memory involved in vocabulary acquisition (e.g., Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990).

This study examines the development of speech rhythm in second language (L2) learners of typologically different first languages (L1s) at different levels of proficiency. An empirical investigation of durational variation in L2 English productions by L1 Mandarin learners and L1 German learners compared to native control values in English and the learners’ L1s showed that the L1 groups followed comparable developmental paths in their acquisition of vocalic variability and accentual lengthening. However, the two L1 groups diverged in the proportion of vocalic materials in their L2 utterances, exhibiting L2 acquisition patterns that are consistent with direct transfer from the L1. The results support a multisystemic model of L2 rhythm acquisition in which the various linguistic-systemic properties that contribute to speech rhythm are acquired at different proficiency levels and depend on different acquisition processes with respect to L1 influence and universal effects. We conclude that theories of L2 phonology need to be able to accommodate the multisystemic nature of L2 prosodic acquisition. Additionally, L2 phonological acquisition theories, and SLA theories more generally, should take into account the nonuniform manner in which the various prosodic properties of the interlanguage reflect L1 transfer effects as well as universal constraints on acquisition.

The present study fills a need for investigations of learner and native speaker (NS) interpretation of the Spanish subjunctive in contexts that allow variation. The analysis compares responses by NSs and three levels of learners on a written interpretation task in which each item contained a temporal indicator (cuando “when”, después de que “after”, or hasta que “until”) and in which verbal mood, verbal morphological regularity, the order of clauses, and the temporal indicator were manipulated. Participants indicated their interpretation of each item by selecting that the event happened habitually or had not yet occurred, or that both were possible. Results show that NSs’ and highly advanced learners’ interpretations corresponded with verbal mood, whereas intermediate learners patterned separately. Using models generated with binomial regressions, the current study proposes stages of development for the interpretation of adverbial clauses that are essential for the growing number of theoretical approaches to language variation.

The current study addresses an aspect of second language (L2) phonological acquisition that has received little attention to date—namely, the acquisition of allophonic variation as a word boundary cue. The role of subphonemic variation in the segmentation of speech by native speakers has been indisputably demonstrated; however, the acquisition of allophonic cues in L2 phonology remains underexplored. We examine here L2 learners’ acquisition and perception of noncontrastive acoustic differentiation at word boundaries in English. Fifty French-speaking students of English were tested on their ability to differentiate potentially ambiguous phrases in which word boundaries are marked by the word-initial aspiration of plosives (e.g., Lou stops vs. loose tops) or prevocalic glottal stops (e.g., tea mat vs. team at). Participants showed greater sensitivity to the presence of glottal stops than aspiration, suggesting that glottal stops may represent a more perceptually salient segmentation cue for learners than aspiration. We discuss the implications of these results regarding the role of first language transfer versus the universality of some segmentation cues.

It is well established that part of native speaker competence resides in knowledge of conventionalized word combinations, or nativelike selections (NLSs). This article reports an investigation into the receptive NLS knowledge of second language (L2) users of English in both the United Kingdom and Poland and the influence of a variety of independent variables on this knowledge. Results indicate that only an early start (< 12 years old) in an immersion setting guarantees nativelikeness. Long exposure in late starters brings moderate gains in both settings but not to nativelike levels; positive feelings toward the L2 and motivation to interact in it bear little to no relationship with NLS; phonological short-term memory (pSTM) is the only predictor of NLS ability in immersion late starters, with no effect found in a foreign language setting. Our results suggest that NLS is subject to age effects and that, for late starters, a good pSTM and L2 immersion are necessary for the acquisition of this dimension of L2 knowledge.

This study examined the event-related potentials (ERPs) elicited by focus processing among first language (L1) speakers and second language (L2) learners of French. Participants read wh-questions containing explicit focus marking, followed by responses instantiating contrastive and informational focus. We hypothesized that L2 proficiency would modulate nativelikeness in L2 processing. For the L1 and L2 groups, widespread word-long positive shifts reflected the processing of nouns receiving informational and contrastive focus. Nouns receiving contrastive focus showed an increased anterior negativity compared to informational focus for both groups. Second language proficiency modulated the amplitude of this negativity effect, and subgroup analyses of low- and high-proficiency L2 learners showed no significant effect of focus condition among low-proficiency learners. This modulatory relationship between L2 proficiency and nativelikeness of processing is consistent with the dynamic sequence of L2 ERPs observed for morphosyntactic processing and extends those findings to the syntax-pragmatics interface phenomenon of focus processing.

We report three experiments that explore the effect of prior linguistic knowledge on implicit language learning. Native speakers of English from the United Kingdom and native speakers of Cantonese from Hong Kong participated in experiments that involved different learning materials. In Experiment 1, both participant groups showed evidence of learning a mapping between articles and noun animacy. In Experiment 2, neither group showed learning of a mapping between articles and a linguistically anomalous concept (the number of capital letters in an English word or that of strokes in a Chinese character). In Experiment 3, the Chinese group, but not the English group, showed evidence of learning a mapping between articles and a concept derived from the Chinese classifier system. It was concluded that first language knowledge affected implicit language learning and that implicit learning, at least when natural language learning is concerned, is subject to constraints and biases.

A remarkable example of Spanish-Italian contact is the Spanish variety spoken in Buenos Aires (Porteño), which is said to be prosodically “Italianized” due to migration-induced contact. The change in Porteño prosody has been interpreted as a result of transfer from the first language (L1) that occurred when Italian immigrants learned Spanish as a second language (L2; McMahon, 2004). This article aims to examine if and to what extent prosodic features that are typical of Italian show up in Porteño and in L2 Castilian Spanish produced by Italian native speakers. Specifically, we investigated speech rhythm and the realization of yes-no questions in Porteño and L2 Castilian Spanish in comparison to Italian and L1 Castilian Spanish. We hypothesized that Italian, Porteño, and L2 Castilian Spanish would exhibit similar rhythm patterns, showing high values for the percentage of vocalic material, the variation coefficient of vocalic intervals, and the speech-rate-normalized pairwise variability index for vowels as well as high frequencies of rising prenuclear accents, with the peak located at the end of the syllable (L+H*) and falling final contours in yes-no questions, in contrast to Castilian Spanish. The results confirm our predictions for speech rhythm but not entirely for the intonation of yes-no questions.

This study investigated the effect of the first language (L1) on the visual word recognition of inflected nouns in second language (L2) Finnish by native Russian and Chinese speakers. Case inflection is common in Russian and in Finnish but nonexistent in Chinese. Several models have been posited to describe L2 morphological processing. The unified competition model (UCM; MacWhinney, 2005) predicts L1-L2 transfer, whereas processability theory (Pienemann, 1998) posits a universal hierarchy in L2 acquisition regardless of the L1. The morphological decomposition deficiency hypothesis (Ullman, 2001b; VanPatten, 2004) claims that nonnatives cannot morphologically decompose words. Finally, DeKeyser (2005) proposes that morphophonological transparency affects nonnative processing. The current study explores which model best accounts for the processing of L2 Finnish by native Russian and Chinese speakers. The materials included simple nouns, transparently inflected nouns, and semitransparently inflected nouns. The results showed that Finns and Russians had longer reaction times (RTs) for morphologically complex nouns, but Chinese had longer RTs for semitransparent nouns. The RT results support the UCM by showing a L1-L2 transfer. Furthermore, transparency influenced word recognition among nonnatives; they made the most errors with semitransparent nouns.