We investigated how grapheme familiarity and grapheme-phoneme correspondence (GPC) congruence affect adult learners’ ability to make use of orthographic input (OI) during phono-lexical acquisition. Native English speakers, with no Russian experience (naïve) or learners of Russian, heard auditory forms, saw pictured meanings, and saw written input either in a No Orthography condition or an Orthography condition for words that contained unfamiliar Cyrillic graphemes, familiar graphemes and congruent GPCs, and familiar graphemes and incongruent GPCs. Naïve participants evidenced incongruent GPC interference effects. Experienced learners acquired targetlike GPCs, although beginner learners did not. In a separate experiment, naïve learners were exposed to an intervention to mitigate effects of OI; the interventions did not improve test accuracy. Results support previous findings that incongruent GPCs interfere with phono-lexical acquisition. We also found evidence that target language experience mitigates negative effects of OI, but interventions may not sufficiently aid naïve learners’ phono-lexical acquisition.

Using advanced quantitative methods, this article demonstrates that cumulative exposure to the school language is the best language experience predictor of proficiency in that language (as indexed by sentence repetition, lexical semantic, and discourse semantic tasks) in a highly diverse group of 5- to 7-year-old bilingual children in monolingual education. An objective method is proposed to identify the amount of school language experience beyond which bilingual children are likely to perform within the monolingual range, and show that relative passivity in the home language does not translate into better school language proficiency. Socioeconomic status is shown to interact in complex ways with language exposure, such that it is only above a certain level of exposure to the school language that the benefits of a more privileged background have a tangible impact on school language proficiency. To tease apart the effect of environmental predictors from the effect of cognitive factors, memory and cognitive flexibility measures are included as covariates in all analyses.

I investigated the trajectory of processing variability, as measured by coefficient of variation (CV), using an intentional word learning experiment and reanalyzing published eye-tracking data of an incidental word learning study (Elgort et al., 2018). In the word learning experiment, native English speakers (N = 35) studied Swahili-English word pairs (k = 16) before performing 10 blocks of animacy judgment tasks. Results replicated the initial CV increase reported in Solovyeva and DeKeyser (2018) and, importantly, captured a roughly inverted U-shaped development in CV. In the reanalysis of eye-tracking data, I computed CVs based on reading times on the target and control words. Results did not reveal a similar inverted U-shaped development over time but suggested more stable processing of the high-frequency control words. Taken together, these results uncovered a fuller trajectory in CV development, differences in processing demands for different aspects of word knowledge, and the potential use of CV with eye-tracking research.

This study is the first to compare objective and subjective measures of explicit and implicit knowledge under learning from incidental exposure. An experiment was conducted, during which L1 English speakers were trained on a semiartificial language, Japlish. A measure of explicit knowledge and a recently proposed measure of implicit knowledge (i.e., an untimed auditory grammaticality judgment and a word-monitoring task) were applied to gauge the two types of knowledge at two testing sessions, and their results were compared with those of subjective measures of awareness. Results revealed clear discrepancies between the two measurement approaches in terms of their sensitivity. In particular, while the subjective measures varied in identifying explicit and implicit knowledge of various Japlish constructions, the objective measures indicated that most of the knowledge was explicit, and development of implicit knowledge (measured by the word-monitoring task) was minimal, only manifested in detecting a case-missing violation at the delayed posttest. The results are discussed with reference to the current literature on explicit and implicit learning and knowledge, and it is concluded that the criterion of (un)awareness might not be by itself sufficient to provide a full account of L2 knowledge developed under incidental conditions.

The main purpose of the current study was to examine the relative significance of vocabulary knowledge (VK) and syntactic knowledge (SK) in second language (L2) listening ability, while accounting for the effect of several cognitive and affective factors. A total of 263 English-as-a-foreign-language learners took a standardized listening test (IELTS), as well as a battery of nine linguistic (two aural SK tests and two aural VK tests—covering both breadth and depth of VK), cognitive (two working memory tests and a metacognitive knowledge questionnaire), and affective measures (two L2 listening anxiety questionnaires). Structural equation modeling analysis revealed that both VK and SK were significant predictors of L2 listening ability; however, VK was a stronger predictor with an effect size being almost twice as much as the one for SK (.55 vs. .28). The results also showed that metacognitive knowledge, working memory, and L2 listening anxiety are significant predictors of L2 listening ability.

This meta-analysis investigated the overall effects of glossing on L2 vocabulary learning from reading and the influence of potential moderator variables: gloss format (type, language, mode) and text and learner characteristics. A total of 359 effect sizes from 42 studies (N = 3802) meeting the inclusion criteria were meta-analyzed. The results indicated that glossed reading led to significantly greater learning of words (45.3% and 33.4% on immediate and delayed posttests, respectively) than nonglossed reading (26.6% and 19.8%). Multiple-choice glosses were the most effective, and in-text glosses and glossaries were the least effective gloss types. L1 glosses yielded greater learning than L2 glosses. We found no interaction between language (L1, L2) and proficiency (beginner, intermediate, advanced), and no significant difference among modes of glossing (textual, pictorial, auditory). Learning gains were moderated by test formats (recall, recognition, other), comprehension of text, and proficiency.

This review examines and integrates studies of second language (L2) vocabulary instruction with adult learners in a laboratory setting, using a framework provided by a modified version of the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994), the Revised Hierarchical Model-Repetition Elaboration Retrieval. By examining how various training methods promote or fail to promote the development of high-quality orthographic, phonological, and meaning representations, and strong connections between these representations, we reconceptualize the current body of knowledge, and highlight gaps in the existing literature. We review evidence that training methods that only promote L1 to L2 form connections (e.g., massed repetition) are generally ineffective, but can become highly effective when paired with methods that also strengthen L2 form-meaning connections (e.g., spaced repetition training with retrieval practice or semantic elaboration requiring user-generated responses). We discuss the implications of these findings for researchers and educators interested in improving L2 vocabulary learning outcomes.

Factors that affect comprehension of accented English (e.g., Harding, 2011) have been well studied, but little research examines how listeners’ proficiency affects their sensitivity to second language (L2) accent. The current study investigated the effect of test takers’ English proficiency on their comprehension ratings and ability to correctly transcribe different World Englishes accents. Ten speakers from six countries with different L1 backgrounds (i.e., North American, British, Indian, South African, Chinese, and Spanish) with varying degrees of intelligibility provided speech samples. Ninety-two listeners from South Korea at three different proficiency levels listened to speech stimuli and determined their comprehension of the content as well as the intelligibility of the speech. The results showed that listeners were differentially affected by nonnative English accented varieties, based on both the intelligibility level of the speaker and the proficiency level of the listener. These findings have implications for the assessment and instruction of listening skills in global contexts.