The present study aims to sensitize SLA researchers to the importance of documenting and controlling for their participants’ proficiency in the target language, with the goal of establishing more robust proficiency assessment standards in experimental research. First, this article presents a survey of recent (2000–2008) foreign and second-language (L2) acquisition studies that show that such standards have yet to be met. Second, it demonstrates the validity, reliability, and practicality of a cloze (i.e., fill-in-the-blank) test designed to discriminate among L2 learners of French at different proficiency levels. Subject and item analyses are performed on the cloze test scores of 169 L2 learners of French from various language backgrounds. The relationship between these scores and the learners’ language background is examined. Cutoff points between proficiency levels are identified in the data. The test then is shared with scholars so that those working with a similar population of L2 learners of French can also use it.

Word association responses in first-language (L1) Spanish and second-language (L2) English were investigated by means of response latencies and types of associative response produced. The primary aims were to establish whether (a) some response types are produced more often or faster than others, (b) participants’ L2 response time profiles mirror those of their L1, and (c) participants’ L2 association responses are mediated by their L1 and modulated by proficiency. Results indicate that responses are faster when a double association link is produced—that is, when the response is associated by form and meaning (postman → postbox) or meaning and collocation (spider → web). L2 response time profiles broadly mirror those of the L1, although L2 times are generally slower. A significant priming effect from L1 translation equivalents of cues used in the L2 association task was observed, suggesting L1 mediation in the production of L2 associative responses. Findings are discussed in light of the revised hierarchical model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994). New approaches to modeling and understanding the bilingual lexicon are also suggested.

The present study is concerned with the upper limits of SLA—specifically, mastery of the syntax-discourse interface in successful endstate learners of second-language (L2) French (near-native speakers). Left dislocation (LD) is a syntactic means of structuring spoken French discourse by marking topic. Its use requires speakers to coordinate syntactic and pragmatic or discursive knowledge, an interface at which L2 learners have been shown to encounter difficulties (e.g., Sorace, 1993; Sorace & Filiaci, 2006). The data come from (a) an 8.5-hr corpus that consists of recordings of 10 dyadic conversations between near-native and native speakers of French and (b) two contextualized paper and audio tasks that tested intuitions and preferences regarding LD. Analyses of the near-native speakers’ production of LDs, the syntactic properties of their LDs, and their use of LDs to promote different types of discourse referents to topic status suggest that their mastery of this aspect of discourse organization converges on that of native speakers.

Improvement in second-language (L2) perception has been posited to occur early in L2 learning when the L2 vocabulary is still small, whereas a large L2 vocabulary curtails perceptual learning (the perceptual assimilation model for SLA [PAM-L2]; Best & Tyler, 2007). This proposition is extended by suggesting that early L2 lexical development facilitates the establishment of phonological categories in a manner analogous to children’s first-language (L1) acquisition before as opposed to after the vocabulary spurt. According to this view, L2 speech should be assimilated more consistently to L1 phonological categories and cross-boundary contrasts should be discriminated more accurately by learners with larger L2 vocabularies. To test this proposition, a novel whole-system approach to evaluate perception of L2 vowels in two experiments was applied. In Experiment 1, Japanese learners of Australian English (AusE) with less than 12 weeks of L2 learning in Australia completed labeling and goodness ratings on all AusE vowels, selecting from among all monomoraic and bimoraic Japanese vowels and vowel combinations. They also discriminated four L2 vowel contrasts, representing a range of PAM-L2 contrast types, and completed a L2 vocabulary size assessment. Learners with larger vocabularies had more consistent L2-L1 vowel assimilation and more accurate cross-boundary discrimination than those with smaller vocabularies, supporting the proposition that lexical development assists L2 phonological acquisition. Experiment 2 compared the perception of AusE vowels by Japanese learners after only 4–8 weeks in Australia with their perception after 6–8 months of L2 exposure. The results also supported the predicted positive association between L2 vocabulary size and L2 vowel perception rather than a general prediction of increased exposure duration leading to improved perception.