Twenty-five years ago, the publication of an article by Pallier, Colomé, and Sebastián-Gallés (2001) launched a new and rapidly evolving research program on how second language (L2) learners represent the phonological forms of words in their mental lexicons. Many insights are starting to form an overall picture of the unique difficulties for establishing functional and precise phonolexical representations

This study investigates how second language (L2) learners engage in prediction based on their processing goals. While prediction is a prominent feature of human sentence comprehension in first–language speakers, it remains less understood when and how L2 learners engage in predictive processing. By conducting a visual–world eye–tracking experiment involving Chinese–speaking L2 learners of Korean, we

The present study aims to meta-analyze the reliability of second language (L2) reading assessments and identify the potential moderators of reliability in L2 reading comprehension tests. We examined 3,247 individual studies for possible inclusion and assessed 353 studies as eligible for the inclusion criteria. Of these, we extracted 150 Cronbach’s alpha estimates from 113 eligible studies (years 1998–2024)

This study closely replicates Wong, Zhao, & MacWhinney (2018), who found that cognitive linguistics–inspired instruction (i.e., schematic diagram feedback) demonstrated a superiority effect over traditional instruction (i.e., rule and exemplar feedback or corrective feedback) on the translation test but not the cloze test. While the original study adopted the null hypothesis testing approach, the current

Al-Hoorie et al. (2024: Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 1–23) illuminate a validation crisis within the second language (L2) Motivational Self System (L2MSS), revealing empirical flaws in its current measurement. Their analysis indicates a persistent lack of discriminant validity among the system’s constructs, issuing a fundamental challenge in distinguishing the concepts. These findings, echoing

People are frequently concerned about the impressions they make on others (referred to as metaperceptions), but their insights are often inaccurate. Illustrating the phenomenon called the liking gap, speakers interacting in their first language (L1) and second language (L2) tend to underestimate how much they are liked by their interlocutor, and these judgments often predict their desire to engage

Is it possible to acquire a sensitivity to a regularity in language without intending to and without awareness of what it is? In this conceptual replication and extension of an earlier study (Williams, 2005) participants were trained on a semiartificial language in which determiner choice was dependent on noun animacy. Participants who did not report awareness or recognition of this rule were nevertheless

Considering the undeniable importance of examining the role of domain- and skill-specific individual difference factors in second-language (L2) writing research, this study examined the possible roles of English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners’ ideal L2 writing self and growth L2 writing mindset in their L2 writing grit, which may in turn contribute to their L2 writing achievement (WA). Data were

Theories of learning and attention predict a positive relationship between reading times on unfamiliar words and their learning; however, empirical findings of contextual learning studies range from a strong positive relationship to no relationship. To test the conjecture that longer reading times may reflect different cognitive and metacognitive processes, the need to infer novel word meanings from

Over the past decades, bilingualism researchers have come to a consensus around a fairly strong view of nonselectivity in bilingual speakers, often citing Van Hell and Dijkstra (2002) as a critical piece of support for this position. Given the study’s continuing relevance to bilingualism and its strong test of the influence of a bilingual’s second language on their first language, we conducted an approximate

High variability phonetic training using perceptual tasks such as identification and discrimination tasks has often been reported to improve L2 perception. However, studies comparing the efficacy of different tasks on different measures are rare. Forty-four Catalan/Spanish bilingual learners of English were trained with identification or categorical discrimination tasks and were tested on both measures

This study examines the effects of task complexity on second language (L2) pronunciation accuracy and global pronunciation measures in pronunciation-unfocused tasks and assesses the relationship between acoustic and listener-based pronunciation measures. Eighty-two Catalan/Spanish learners of English performed simple and complex versions of a problem-solving monologic speaking task, for which the oral

Based on correlational and factorial analysis of data collected from 384 middle and high school students in South Korea, Al–Hoorie et al. (2024) claimed the existence of a discriminant validity crisis within the L2 motivational self-system research tradition and advocated for abandoning research in this area. In this response, we critically examined the evidence presented, re-analyzed their data, and

This paper reports a replication of part of Tavakoli and Foster’s (2008) investigation into the influence of narrative task design on second language (L2) oral performance. The initial study found in part that narratives with both foreground and background information elicited significantly greater syntactic complexity than those with only foreground information. This close replication adds the variable

This study aimed to investigate the relationship between lexical coverage and TV viewing comprehension. Previous studies have indicated that 95% to 98% of lexical coverage may be needed for reading comprehension (Hu & Nation, 2000). To understand informal listening passages, lower coverage figures (95%-90%) may suffice. However, no study has researched the lexical coverage needed to understand audiovisual

An important issue in second-language acquisition concerns the role of explicit information (EI) and how it is affected by individual differences. The present study explored this question through a partial replication and extension of Fernández (2008: Experiment 2), which investigated the effects of EI in processing instruction (PI) for the Spanish present subjunctive. This replication compared training

This study investigated whether structural priming, as a reflection of error-driven learning mechanisms, could facilitate second language (L2) learning of the dative alternation in Mandarin. We sought evidence of learning from both priming and acceptability judgment data. Participants were 25 native speakers and 41 classroom learners (CLs). After a priming session in which participants predicted and

The last three decades have seen significant development in understanding and describing the effects of task complexity on learner internal processes. However, researchers have primarily employed behavioral methods to investigate task-generated cognitive load. Being the first to adopt neuroimaging to study second language (L2) task effects, we aimed to provide novel insights into the neural correlates

Previous research has indicated that explicit information (EI) about either the first language (L1) or second language (L2) along with task-essential practice can facilitate L2 learning (e.g., Fernández, 2008; McManus, 2022). However, little research has examined L1–L2 contrastive EI with L1/L2 practice. Targeting plural-marking accuracy, the present study sought to fill this gap by exposing 127 Japanese

This study aimed to closely replicate Wiseheart et al. (Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 19(1), 141–146, 2016) by investigating the transferability of language-switching skills to nonlinguistic task switching. Current evidence is mixed and there is a need to conduct robust replications in this area. Bilingual (n = 31) and monolingual (n = 47) young adults characterized stimuli by either colour

Research on mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) has revealed that high rates of attrition among users can undermine the potential benefits of this learning method. To explore this issue, we surveyed 3,670 adult MALL users based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and also conducted an in-depth analysis of their historical app usage data. The results of hierarchical

This study examined the role of discourse organization in second language (L2) comprehensibility ratings. Twelve English for Academic Purposes teachers listened to 60 L2 speech samples elicited through a TOEFL–type integrated speaking task, evaluating each sample for comprehensibility and coherence (perceived interconnectedness of ideas). The samples were analyzed for the occurrence of discourse features

The study aimed to examine the interrelationships between growth mindset, L2 aptitude, L2 grit, and L2 achievement, while also exploring the moderating role of gender in these interactions. A sample of 236 English-major students participated in the study by completing a language aptitude test and a questionnaire. The results of path analyses indicated that both aptitude and L2 grit similarly and positively

This study was an approximate replication of Rothman (2011),examining the determiner phrase syntax of a large sample (n = 211) of L3 learners of Portuguese who spoke English and Spanish. Rothman (2011) investigated whether L3 Italian or Brazilian Portuguese speakers are differently impacted by another known Romance Language, if it was their L1 or L2. The original study concluded that groups did not

Most words in a language have more than one meaning. Yet, few studies have explicitly examined the acquisition of secondary meanings of L2 words and the extent to which polysemy and homonymy affect vocabulary learning. This study explores the effect of polysemy and homonymy on the deliberate acquisition of the form–meaning connections of L2 words. Thirty-six EFL learners (compared with a control group

This study investigates whether second language (L2) learners’ language development and accuracy in production are comparable across oral and written modalities on the basis of Pienemann’s processability theory (PT). Eighty-seven English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, from high beginner to advanced levels, completed comparable speaking and writing tasks designed to elicit particular morphosyntactic

Manual production enhances learning and recall of signs by hearing second language learners; however, the mechanisms enabling this effect are unclear. We examined whether the motor encoding (somatosensory feedback) that occurs during sign production benefits learning and whether it interacts with sign iconicity, which also enhances learning. American Sign Language (ASL) signs varying in iconicity were

This study examined the effects of distributed practice on second language (L2) speech fluency development. A total of 116 Japanese L2 learners of English were randomly divided into experimental or control conditions. Learners assigned to the experimental groups engaged in four fluency training sessions either in a short-spaced (1-day interval) or long-spaced (7-day interval) condition. Although different

This study closely replicates the analyses of the third research question in Römer and Berger (2019), which reported that the associations between verbs and verb argument constructions (VACs) used by German and Spanish learners of English move closer to a native usage norm as the learners’ proficiency increases. This study conducted the same correlation analyses from the original study but with a substantially

This paper reports a complete secondary analysis of Jeon and Yamashita’s (2022) systematic review to build the second language (L2) model of the simple view of reading (SVR). The same meta-analytic methodologies were maintained, with the exception of applying meta-analytic structural equation modeling (MASEM). This study successfully replicated some of the aggregated correlations but not others, owing

Darcy et al. (2016) examined the relationship between language abilities and general cognition, or specifically, how inhibitory control might relate to L2 speech perception and production. Given that their findings unexpectedly indicated a stronger relationship between inhibitory control and perception in comparison to inhibitory control and production, and because inhibitory control was measured using

This study is a close replication of Kanwit and Geeslin (2014), a variationist investigation of the interpretation of verbal moods in adverbial clauses in Spanish. Whereas the first language (L1) of the second-language participants in the initial study was English, we explore whether Kanwit and Geeslin’s results extend to other L1 populations—Swedish and French learners of Spanish. Participants in

Elicited imitation (EI) tasks are a practical tool for measuring second language (L2) knowledge and skills. In this study, we implemented a web-based EI task that measures English morphosyntactic knowledge and compared its measurement properties to a traditional laboratory-based EI. A cohort of 149 L2 English learners engaged in the web-based EI task, and 151 participants completed a traditional lab-based

This study expands on previous research into filler-gap dependency processing in second language (L2) English, by means of a replication of Canales’s (2012) self-paced reading study. Canales, among others, found that advanced L2-English speakers exhibited the same processing behavior that Stowe (1986) found for native English processing: On encountering a filler, they posited gaps in licensed positions and

Boduch-Grabka and Lev-Ari (2021) showed that so-called “native” British-English speakers judged statements produced by Polish-accented English speakers as less likely to be true than statements produced by “native” speakers and that prior exposure to Polish-accented English speech modulates this effect. Given the real-world consequences of this study, as well as our commitment to assessing and mitigating

The use of connectives has been considered important for assessing the cohesion of written texts (Crossley et al., 2019). However, existing connective-based indices have not systematically addressed two issues of ambiguity, namely, that between discourse and non-discourse use of polysemous word forms and that in terms of the specific discourse relations marked by polysemous discourse connectives (Pitler

Digital educational game-based apps can be effective in helping young children develop language skills, particularly when paired with formal instruction. However, we need to know more about how educational games benefit learning in the absence of formal instruction, given children’s proficiency with and willingness to use mobile devices anytime, anywhere. This study uses a randomized controlled trial

Multilingualism in the context of academic publishing involves beliefs and actions manifested through publications in multiple languages. However, a systematic analysis of how academic journals practice multilingualism has been scant. Therefore, the present study analyzed how indexed journals of applied linguistics promote and practice multilingualism following their scopes and language policies (LPs)

As part of ongoing efforts to characterize the extent to which tasks and interaction-driven language learning are influenced by individual differences (IDs), task-based researchers have thus far examined variables like learners’ levels of L2 anxiety, motivation, cognitive creativity, working memory capacity, and aptitude. Building on a tradition of prior syntheses in task-based language teaching (TBLT

A growing body of evidence demonstrates that individual differences in declarative memory may be an important predictor of second language (L2) abilities. However, the evidence comes from studies using different declarative memory tasks that vary in their reliance on verbal abilities and task demands, which preclude estimating the size of the relationship between declarative memory and L2 learning

Usage-based theory has proposed that learning of linguistic constructions is facilitated by input that contains few high-frequency exemplars, in what is known as a skewed (or Zipfian) input distribution. Early empirical work provided support to this idea, but subsequent L2 research has provided mixed findings. However, previous approaches have not explored the impact that cognitive traits (e.g., working

It has been proposed that second language (L2) learners differ from native speakers in processing due to either influence from their native language or an inability to integrate information from multiple linguistic domains in a second language. To shed new light on the underlying mechanism of L2 processing, we used an event-related potentials (ERP) paradigm to examine the processing of sentences with

Researchers in second language (L2) and education domain use different statistical methods to assess their constructs of interest. Many L2 constructs emerge from elements/parts, i.e., the elements define and form the construct and not the other way around. These constructs are referred to as emergent variables (also called components, formative constructs, and composite constructs). Because emergent

This study investigates the extent to which (a) Spanish heritage (HL) and second language (L2) writers’ linguistic complexity differs across register contexts and (b) Spanish proficiency and writing motivational beliefs differentially affect HL and L2 writers’ performance. Participants were 58 HL and 54 L2 Spanish learners who completed two persuasive writing tasks—the Email to Friend and Letter to

The study evaluated whether the direction (inhibitory or facilitative) of the phonological neighborhood density effect in English spoken word recognition was modulated by the relative strength of competitor activation (neighborhood type) in two groups of English-dominant learners of Spanish who differed in language experience. Classroom learners and heritage learners of Spanish identified spoken English

The present study uses self-paced reading as a measure of online processing and an acceptability judgement task as a measure of offline explicit linguistic knowledge, to understand L2 learners’ comprehension processes and their awareness of subtle differences between the modal auxiliaries may and can. Participants were two groups of university students: 42 native speakers of English and 41 native speakers

There has been increasing interest in the effects of note taking in second language (L2) research. However, no meta-analysis has been conducted to examine the relationship between note taking and learning through exposure to L2 input. We retrieved 28 effect sizes from 21 studies (N = 1992) to explore the overall effects of note taking as well as to examine the extent to which the effectiveness of note

Despite the widespread use and effectiveness of the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT) composite score in predicting individual differences in L2 achievement and proficiency, there has been little examination of MLAT subtests, although they have potential for illuminating components of L2 aptitude and the mechanism of prediction. Here we use regression commonality analysis to decompose the predictive

This meta-analysis synthesized 35 English studies (130 effect sizes, N = 1,981) that employed online tasks to investigate the processing of multiword sequences (MWSs). We examined (a) to what extent MWSs enjoy a processing advantage over novel word combinations; (b) how such a processing advantage is moderated by statistical regularities (i.e., phrasal frequency, association strength), MWS type, and

Concerns have recently been raised about the validity of scales used in the L2 motivational self system tradition, particularly in relation to sufficient discriminant validity among some of its scales. These concerns highlight the need to systematically examine the validity of scales used in this tradition. In this study, we therefore compiled a list of 18 scales in widespread use and administered

Usage-based theories hold that mental representation of language is shaped by a lifetime of usage. Both input to which first language (L1) and second language (L2) users are exposed and their own language production affect their construction learning and entrenchment. The present study investigates L2 users’ knowledge of two introductory-it variants, Adj-that (e.g., it is clear that …) and Adj-to (e

We present a learner corpus-based study of English article use (“a”/“the”/Ø) by L2 learners with four typologically distinct first languages (L1s): German and Brazilian Portuguese (both have articles), Chinese and Russian (no articles). We investigate several semantic and morphosyntactic factors—for example, specificity, prenominal modification that can affect article use. Our analysis of 660 written

The present study revisits the differential roles of form, meaning, and use aspects of phonological vocabulary knowledge in L2 listening proficiency. A total of 126 Japanese English-as-a-foreign-language listeners completed the TOEIC Listening test, working memory and auditory processing tests, the Metacognitive Awareness Listening Questionnaire, and several tasks designed to tap into three broad aspects

To test the contributions of processing to L2 syntax learning, this study explores (cross-) linguistic and cognitive predictors of sentence reanalysis in the L2 comprehension of relative clauses among low-intermediate L1 German adolescent learners of L2 English. Specifically, we test the degree to which L2 comprehension is affected by L2 proficiency, reanalysis ability in a related, earlier-acquired

This study examined how linguistic complexity features contribute to second language (L2) processing effort by analyzing the Dutch English-L2 learners’ eye movements from GECO and MECO, two eye-tracking corpora. Processing effort was operationalized as reading rate, mean fixation duration, regression rate, skipping rate, and mean saccade amplitude. In Study 1, the lexical, syntactic, and discoursal

This Introduction to the special issue first elaborates on the rationale for advocating the inclusion of L2 writing in SLA individual differences (IDs) research and subsequently provides an overview of empirical work on IDs in the domain of writing, with a focus on cognitive IDs and specifically working memory. Against this background, we synthesize the focus, structure, and contents of the special

This article revisits the role of cognitive individual differences in creating synergies between second language (L2) writing and second language acquisition research that were proposed by Kormos (2012). It takes stock of the advances in research findings, in the past decade, on the role of working memory and language learning aptitude in L2 writing processes and performance. The article offers an

This study examined the extent to which L2 writers with varied working memory display differential pausing and revision behaviors at different periods during writing. The participants were 30 advanced Chinese L2 users of English, who wrote an argumentative essay. While composing, participants’ keystrokes and eye-gaze movements were recorded to capture their pausing, revision, and eye-gaze behaviors

This study examined the independent effects of working memory (WM) and the interactive effects of WM/L2 proficiency and WM/task complexity on L2 written performance. The study followed a within–between-participant factorial design, with two levels of task complexity as the within-participant variable and L2 proficiency and WM as between-participants variables. The outcome measure was L2 writing performance

This paper examines how research in second language acquisition has approached the study of cognitive individual differences in the process and product of L2 writing from a theoretical and empirical perspective, paying special attention to the three empirical studies included in this special issue. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section examines the cognitive abilities that have