Grammatical agreement phenomena such as verbal number have long been of fundamental interest in the study of second language (L2) acquisition. Previous research from the perspective of sentence processing has documented nativelike behavior among nonnative participants but has also relied almost exclusively on grammar violation paradigms. The present investigation examined the online comprehension of subject-verb number agreement by native and nonnative speakers of Mexican Spanish using the more subtle agreement attraction paradigm, with stimuli grammatical in both conditions, in addition to a nonlocal grammaticality paradigm. The results of a self-paced reading experiment confirmed that nonnatives can acquire nativelike online sensitivity to verbal number agreement, even without grammar errors, and that such sensitivity develops only at very high levels of L2 proficiency.

To what extent do second language (L2) learners benefit from instruction that includes corrective feedback (CF) on L2 speech perception? This article addresses this question by reporting the results of a classroom-based experimental study conducted with 32 young adult Korean learners of English. An instruction-only group and an instruction + CF group were exposed to five 1-hr form-focused lessons that drew learners’ attention to the nonnative phonemic contrast /i/-/ɪ/, but only the instruction + CF group was given relevant feedback. Forced-choice identification tasks were completed by participants in a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest. The two groups showed similar accuracy on the pretest; however, the instruction + CF group outperformed the instruction-only group on the immediate and delayed posttests as well as on unfamiliar words. The significant predictors for these differences turned out to be perceptual accuracy vis-à-vis /ɪ/-natural and /ɪ/-synthesized sounds. These findings are discussed in terms of the pivotal role played by CF in developing accuracy in L2 speech perception.

This article reports on a study that investigated the effects of two feedback exposure conditions on the acquisition of two Turkish morphemes. The study followed a randomized experimental design with an immediate and a delayed posttest. Forty-two Chinese-speaking learners of Turkish were randomly assigned to one of three groups: receivers, nonreceivers, and control. All learners performed three communication games with a Turkish native speaker in which their errors on the Turkish plural and locative morphemes were treated according to their group assignment. The receivers’ errors were corrected through explicit correction. The nonreceivers were allowed to hear the feedback provided to the receivers; however, they did not receive feedback on their own errors. The learners in the control group neither received feedback on their own errors nor were allowed to hear the feedback other learners received. Results indicated that feedback exposure condition has an effect on the extent to which learners benefit from feedback but that this effect may be moderated by linguistic structure.

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.

This study investigates the influence of grammatical role and discourse-level cues on the interpretation of different pronominal forms in native speakers of French, native speakers of Turkish, and Turkish learners of French. In written questionnaires, we found that native speakers of French were influenced by discourse-level cues when interpreting ambiguous overt subject pronouns in French, whereas native speakers of Turkish were mainly influenced by a syntactic cue—subjecthood—when interpreting null subjects (pro) in Turkish translation equivalents. When interpreting implicit subjects of nonfinite dependent clauses (PRO), native speakers of both French and Turkish were influenced by subjecthood. Finally, Turkish learners of French were influenced by discourse-level cues in the interpretation of overt pronouns as well as PRO and showed no subject preference in either case. These results are in line with approaches to second language (L2) acquisition that stress the role of discourse-level principles in the processing and use of a L2 (Clahsen & Felser, 2006; Klein & Perdue, 1997).