Previous studies have shown that reading is an important source of incidental second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition. However, we still do not have a clear picture of what happens when readers encounter unknown words. Combining offline (vocabulary tests) and online (eye-tracking) measures, the incidental acquisition of vocabulary knowledge from reading and the online reading of unknown lexical items were examined. L2 English learners read a story containing unknown items while their eye movements were recorded. After eight exposures, L2 readers recognized the form and the meaning of 86% and 75% of the target nonwords, respectively, whereas they recalled the meaning of 55% of the nonwords. After three to four encounters, nonwords were read significantly faster, and by eight encounters they were read in a similar manner to previously known real words. Results also showed a positive relationship between new vocabulary learning outcomes and online reading, with longer reading times associated with higher vocabulary recall test scores. The study was also conducted with first language (L1) readers to provide baseline data for comparison. Results confirmed the L2 findings while also indicating an interesting L1-L2 distinction in the rate rather than in the ultimate outcome of the acquisition process.

Conducted in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classrooms at the university level in China, this quasi-experimental study compared the effects of three different corrective feedback treatments on 72 Chinese learners’ use of regular and irregular English past tense. Three classes were randomly assigned to a prompt group, a recast group, or a control group and then participated in form-focused production activities that elicited the target forms. In the two feedback groups, teachers consistently provided one type of feedback (i.e., either recasts or prompts) in response to learners’ errors during the activities, whereas in the control group, the teacher provided feedback only on content. Pretests, immediate posttests, and delayed posttests administered 2 weeks after the treatment assessed participants’ acquisition of regular and irregular past tense forms in both oral and written production. Comparisons of group means across testing sessions using a repeated-measures ANOVA consistently revealed large effects for time. Post hoc within-group analyses of the eight immediate- and delayed-posttest measures revealed significant gains by the prompt group on all eight measures, the recast group on four, and the control group on three. The effects of prompts were larger than those of recasts for increasing accuracy in the use of regular past tense forms, whereas prompts and recasts had similar effects on improving accuracy in the use of irregular past tense forms.

Although claims about explicit and implicit language knowledge are central to many debates in SLA, little research has been dedicated to measuring the two knowledge types (R. Ellis, 2004, 2005). The purpose of this study was to validate the use of the battery of tests reported in Ellis (2005) to measure implicit and explicit language knowledge. Whereas Ellis (2005) tested only second-language (L2) learners (of English), this study tested both L2 and heritage language (HL) learners (of Spanish). Results showed that test scores loaded on a two-factor model, as in Ellis (2005), thereby providing construct validity for the tests, on a population of HL learners who have little explicit knowledge by virtue of the environment in which they acquired Spanish.

In view of the theoretical claim that comprehensible input is not sufficient for successful second language acquisition, but that opportunities for nonnative speakers (NNSs) to produce comprehensible output are also necessary (Swain, 1985), the present study sought to describe how second language learners responded linguistically when native speakers signaled difficulty in understanding them and to compare types and frequencies of the learners' responses in relation to different native-speaker (NS) signal types and different communication tasks.

The NS signals differed in the extent to which they offered nonnative speakers an open-ended request for clarification or a model to repeat or acknowledge. The tasks differed in the degree of control they gave to NSs and NNSs over the preciseness and relative quantity of information needed to carry them out, and were as follows: (a) an “information-gap” task, in which the NNSs drew their own original picture and then described it to the NSs, who had to reproduce the picture solely on the basis of the NNSs' description; (b) a “jigsaw” task, in which the NNSs and NSs were required to reproduce an unseen sequence of pictures by exchanging their own uniquely held portions of the sequence; and (c) a discussion, in which the NNSs and NSs were told to share their views on the language-learning contributions of the other two communication tasks. Each task was carried out by 10 NNS–NS dyads.

Results of the study provided empirical validation for the theoretical construct of comprehensible output and revealed the extent to which its production by NNSs was influenced by the linguistic demands of NS signals of comprehension difficulty and communication tasks. Additional analyses of data indicated that the gender of participants in each dyad played an important role in these results.

This study examines style shifting in the use of three past tense morphemes (regular past, irregular past, and past copula) by 17 intermediate L2 learners of English. It differs from previous studies in that style shifting is examined within a single discourse mode—narrative discourse—according to the amount of planning time made available. Data were collected under three conditions: (a) planned writing, (b) planned speech, and (c) unplanned speech. Different patterns of style shifting were observed for three morphemes, suggesting that the nature of the linguistic feature under investigation is a determining factor. For regular past, greatest accuracy was most evident in planned writing and least evident in unplanned speech, with planned speech intermediate. Little style shifting took place in irregular past, whereas style shifting for past copula occurred only between planned speech and unplanned speech. The three conditions produced different accuracy orders for regular and irregular past, suggesting that the so-called “natural” order may not be a stable phenomenon. The paper concludes with a number of important questions requiring further investigation.

Efforts to gather data of various sorts—demographics, language-learning history, contact with native speakers, use of the language in the field—as they relate to participants in SLA research studies are inherent to understanding more about language acquisition and use. Scholars frequently develop questionnaires of their own, which are rarely shared widely in the profession. Consequently, much time and effort is invested in reinventing the process of gathering the types of data that are commonly needed.This research was funded in part by a grant to Barbara F. Freed from the Council for International Educational Exchange (New York), in part by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada to Norman Segalowitz, and in part by a grant from the Dean's Office, Faculty of Arts and Science, at Concordia University to Segalowitz.

Four groups of second language (L2) learners of English from different language backgrounds (Chinese, Japanese, German, and Greek) and a group of native speaker controls participated in an online reading time experiment with sentences involving long-distance wh-dependencies. Although the native speakers showed evidence of making use of intermediate syntactic gaps during processing, the L2 learners appeared to associate the fronted wh-phrase directly with its lexical subcategorizer, regardless of whether the subjacency constraint was operative in their native language. This finding is argued to support the hypothesis that nonnative comprehenders underuse syntactic information in L2 processing.Theodore Marinis is now working at the Centre for Developmental Language Disorders and Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, and Leah Roberts is at the Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen. The research reported here was supported by the Leverhulme Trust (grant no. F/00 213B to H. Clahsen, C. Felser, and R. Hawkins), which is gratefully acknowledged. We thank Bob Borsley, Roger Hawkins, Andrew Radford, the audiences at EUROSLA 12, the 24th Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft Meeting, the 27th annual Boston University Conference on Language Development, EUROSLA 13, three anonymous SSLA reviewers for helpful comments and discussion, and Ritta Husted and Michaela Wenzlaff for helping with the data collection. We also wish to thank Ted Gibson and Tessa Warren for making their prepublication manuscript available to us.

The study reported in this paper examined the effect of second language (L2) experience on the production of L2 vowels for which acoustic counterparts are either present or absent in the first language (L1). The hypothesis being tested was that amount of L2 experience would not affect L1 German speakers' production of the “similar” English vowels /i, l, ∈/, whereas English language experience would enable L1 Germans to produce an English-like /æ/, which has no counterpart in German. The predictions were tested in two experiments that compared the production of English /i, l, ∈, æ/ by two groups of L1 German speakers differing in English language experience and an L1 English control group. An acoustic experiment compared the three groups for spectral and temporal characteristics of the English vowels produced in /bVt/ words. The same tokens were assessed for intelligibility in a labeling experiment. The results of both experiments were largely consistent with the hypothesis. The experienced L2 speakers did not produce the similar English vowels /i, l, ∈/ more intelligibly than the inexperienced L2 speakers, not did experience have a positive effect on approximating the English acoustic norms for these similar vowels. The intelligibility results for the new vowel /æ/ did not clearly support the model. However, the acoustic comparisons showed that the experienced but not the inexperienced L2 speakers produced the new vowel /æ/ in much the same way as the native English speakers.

Recasts have continued to be the object of intensive empirical and theoretical inquiry following Nicholas, Lightbown, and Spada's (2001) review. The current article identifies a number of problems with this research and the supporting theory. These problems concern the fact that recasts can take many different forms and perform a variety of functions (not all corrective), which makes definition difficult. Also, recasts, when corrective, can vary in terms of whether they constitute an implicit or explicit corrective strategy and in whether they afford negative or positive evidence. Researchers have almost exclusively examined recasts from a cognitive perspective, ignoring their social and sociocognitive aspects. The significance of learner repair following recasts also remains controversial. Little is currently known about the role that the learner's developmental readiness plays in determining whether recasts work for acquisition. Researchers have not clearly distinguished between intensive and extensive recasts, nor have they considered their differential benefits. The acquisitional value of recasts in comparison to other forms of corrective feedback might have been overestimated. This article emphasizes the need for research that examines the specific properties of recasts and the social and instructional conditions in which they occur.We would like to thank various people for their comments on draft versions of this article: Rob Batstone, Shawn Loewen, Alison Mackey, Jenefer Philp, Elaine Tarone, and two anonymous SSLA reviewers.

The conditions (implicit or explicit) under which exposure to L2 input takes place and the level of awareness raised while processing input may be strongly related to the learning process. This study investigates how intake was affected both by awareness and by the conditions under which a problem-solving task was performed. Spanish conditional sentences were presented to learners through five different degrees of explicitness, which were the result of combining the factors [±formal instruction] and [±directions to search for rules]. Intake was measured through a multiple-choice recognition test administered immediately after the experimental task. Level of awareness was assessed by means of think-aloud protocols collected during input processing. Results indicate that (a) the degrees of explicitness had a differential effect on intake, (b) the higher the level of awareness demonstrated, the stronger the effect on intake, and (c) the conditions under which the task was administered influenced the way information was processed.

This study examines how two types of word knowledge, word associations and grammatical suffix knowledge, change over time both receptively and productively. Ninety-five secondary and postsecondary Japanese students were tested on three word associations and inflectional and derivational suffixes for each of 20 verbs, once near the beginning of their academic year and once near the end. The results showed their average vocabulary gain was 330 words. The students showed rather poor knowledge of the allowable suffixes for the verbs, especially the derivative suffixes. Likewise, the subjects did not show very good mastery of the verbs' word associations. Even for verbs rated as known, the students as a group were able to produce only about 50% of the word associations possible on the test as judged by native speaker norms. Word association knowledge and suffix knowledge were shown to correlate with each other and with total vocabulary size. The subjects overall had from 19 to 25 percentage points more receptive knowledge than productive knowledge.

A meta-analysis was conducted to examine the construct validity of language aptitude by synthesizing the existing research that has been accumulated over the past five decades. The study aimed to provide a thorough understanding of the construct by aggregating the data reported in the primary research on its correlations with other individual difference variables and with second language (L2) achievement. A total of 66 studies were retrieved that contributed effect sizes based on 109 unique samples and 13,035 foreign language learners. The results revealed that (1) aptitude was independent of other cognitive and affective factors: it was distinct from motivation, had a negative correlation with anxiety, and overlapped with, but was distinguishable from, intelligence; (2) executive working memory was more strongly associated with aptitude and aptitude components than phonological short-term memory; (3) aptitude measured using full-length tests was a strong predictor of general L2 proficiency, but it had low predictive validity for vocabulary learning and L2 writing; and (4) different aptitude components demonstrated differential predictive validity for different aspects of learning. The findings are useful for tackling a number of conundrums surrounding language aptitude and shed light on how to reconceptualize the construct and reorient the research.

This study replicates VanPatten and Cadierno (1993) in an attempt to determine whether or not explicit information given to learners receiving processing instruction is responsible for the beneficial effects of instruction. Fifty-nine subjects were divided into three groups: (1) one receiving processing instruction in object pronouns and word order in Spanish as in VanPatten and Cadierno (1993), (2) another receiving explanation only with no activities or practice, (3) and another receiving only the structured input activities with no explanation. A pretest/post-test assessment was used involving two tests, an interpretation test and a sentence-level production test. Results showed that the beneficial effects of instruction were due to the structured input activities and not to the explicit information (explanation) provided to learners.

Since the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH) was first put forward in 2006, it has inspired a growing body of research on grammatical processing in nonnative (L2) speakers. More than 10 years later, we think it is time for the SSH to be reconsidered in the light of new empirical findings and current theoretical assumptions about human language processing. The purpose of our critical commentary is twofold: to clarify some issues regarding the SSH and to sketch possible ways in which this hypothesis might be refined and improved to better account for L1 and L2 speakers’ performance patterns.

Studies in SLA have debated the importance of context of learning in the process of developing linguistic skills in a second language (L2). The present paper examines whether study abroad, as it provides opportunities for authentic L2 context, facilitates the acquisition of Spanish phonology. The corpus of this investigation is composed of speech samples from 46 students of Spanish: 26 studying abroad in Spain and 20 in a regular classroom environment in the United States. The students read a paragraph with 60 target words including segments such as word-initial stops (i.e., [p t k]),Throughout the article a phonetic representation of all sounds following the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is presented. Phonetic (instead of phonological) representations avoid making assumptions about underlying L2 representations. intervocalic fricatives (i.e., [ ]), word-final laterals (i.e., [l]), and palatal nasals (i.e., ). The findings reveal the following patterns for both regular classroom and study abroad students across time: (a) similar gain in the case of voiced initial stops and word-final laterals, (b) lack of gain in the case of intervocalic fricatives, and (c) high levels of accuracy in the case of the palatal nasal in the pretest. Concerning the external data, the following factor groups predicted phonological gain among all learners: years of formal language instruction, reported use of Spanish before the semester, reported use of Spanish outside the classroom during the semester (days), reported use of Spanish outside the classroom during the semester (hours), gender, entrance Oral Proficiency Interview, exit Oral Proficiency Interview, and level at which formal instruction began.

Incidental focus on form overtly draws learners' attention to linguistic items as they arise spontaneously—without prior planning—in meaning-focused interaction. This study examined the effectiveness of incidental focus on form in promoting second language (L2) learning. Seventeen hours of naturally occurring, meaning-focused L2 lessons were observed in 12 different classes of young adults in a private language school in Auckland, New Zealand. A total of 491 focus-on-form episodes (FFEs) were identified and used as a basis for individualized test items in which participants who participated in specific FFEs were asked to recall the linguistic information provided in them. The results revealed that learners were able to recall the targeted linguistic information correctly or partially correctly nearly 60% of the time 1 day after the FFE, and 50% of the time 2 weeks later. Furthermore, successful uptake in a FFE was found to be a significant predictor of correct test scores. These results suggest that incidental focus on form might be beneficial to learners, particularly if they incorporate the targeted linguistic items into their own production.This research was supported, in part, by a scholarship from the Foundation for Science, Research, and Technology, New Zealand. The author would like to thank the teachers and participants who kindly gave of their time to participate in this study. The author would also like to thank Rod Ellis, Catherine Elder, Helen Basturkmen, Rosemary Erlam, Jenefer Philp, and the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their valuable input and feedback on this study. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Applied Linguistics in 2002 (Salt Lake City, UT) and at AILA 2002 (Singapore).

Two experiments examined the learning of form-meaning connections under conditions where the relevant forms were noticed but the critical aspects of meaning were not. Miniature noun class systems were employed, and the participants were told that the choice of determiner in noun phrases depended on whether the object was “near” or “far” from the subject of the sentence. What they were not told was that the choice of determiner also depended on the animacy of the noun. Most participants remained unaware of this correlation during the training and test tasks; yet when faced with a choice between two determiners for a noun, they chose the one that was appropriate to the noun's animacy at significantly above-chance levels, even though that combination had never been encountered during training. This ability to generalize provided evidence of learning form-meaning connections without awareness. In both experiments, there was a correlation between generalization test performance and knowledge of languages that encode grammatical gender. This points to the importance of prior knowledge in implicit learning.Many thanks to Ronald Leow, Daphnée Simard, and the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

This study investigates whether proficient second language (L2) speakers of Spanish and English use the same parsing strategies as monolinguals when reading temporarily ambiguous sentences containing a complex noun phrase followed by a relative clause, such as Peter fell in love with the daughter of the psychologist who studied in California. Research with monolingual Spanish and English speakers (e.g., Cuetos & Mitchell, 1988) has suggested that, whereas English speakers show a bias to interpret the relative clause locally (i.e., to attach the relative clause to the noun immediately preceding it), Spanish speakers reading Spanish equivalents of English sentences attach the relative clause to the first noun in the complex noun phrase (i.e., nonlocal attachment). In this study, I assess whether speakers whose native language (L1) and L2 differ with respect to processing strategies were able to employ each strategy in the correct context. To this end, L1 Spanish–L2 English and L1 English–L2 Spanish speakers read ambiguous sentences in their L1 and L2. Data collection was carried out using a pencil-and-paper questionnaire and a self-paced reading task. Analyses of both sets of data revealed that both groups of speakers favored local over nonlocal attachment when reading in their L1 and L2. The results are discussed in the context of models that assume the existence of a fixed, universal set of parsing strategies. The implications of L2 parsing research for the field of SLA are also discussed.

The present study explores the relative efficacy of recasts over metalinguistic feedback on the learning of the English that-trace filter and how working memory capacity (WMC) is related to the extent to which learners can benefit from recasts and metalinguistic feedback. Fifty-four Korean English as a foreign language (EFL) learners from six intact classes at a university formed two experimental groups (recasts and metalinguistic feedback) and one control group and carried out two first language (L1) working memory (WM) span tasks (reading span and operation span tasks). The two experimental groups participated in two information gap activities over two treatment sessions, during which they were required to ask questions involving the that-trace filter and received corrective feedback (either recasts or metalinguistic feedback) on their erroneous utterances. Two dependent variable measures (a written production test and a grammaticality judgment test) were administered in each test session (pretest and immediate posttest). Results showed that recasts were as effective as metalinguistic feedback in facilitating the acquisition of the target construction. This may, to some extent, be attributable to the blocking of modified output opportunities specifically designed in this study to prevent modified output from playing a potential role as a confound. Also, individual differences in WMC significantly predicted, and thus mediated the effects of, recasts but not metalinguistic feedback, on the acquisition of the that-trace filter. This suggests that executive attention or attention control (considered as a critical component of WMC) is involved in the noticing of recasts, but not in the noticing of metalinguistic feedback.

This article reports an experimental study of the differential effects of premodified input, interactionally modified input, and modified output on the comprehension of directions in a listen-and-do task and the acquisition of new words embedded in the directions. The modified output group achieved higher comprehension and vocabulary acquisition scores than either of the input groups. There was no difference between the premodified and interactionally modified input groups. The advantage of the modified output group is explained in terms of the qualitatively superior dialogic interaction that occurred in this condition rather than in terms of actual language production.