Recently there has been some debate about the appropriacy of different lexical units in pedagogy and research (e.g., Brown et al., 2020; Dang & Webb, 2016a; Kremmel, 2016; Laufer & Cobb, 2020; McLean, 2018; Nation, 2016; Nation & Webb, 2011; Vilkaitė-Lozdienė & Schmitt, 2020). The lexical unit (word types, lemmas, flemmas, word families) needs to be considered when developing wordlists, vocabulary tests, and vocabulary learning programs. It is also central to the lexical profiles of text and corpora, which indicate the vocabulary learning targets associated with understanding different types of discourse. Perhaps most importantly, the lexical unit of words found in vocabulary learning resources such as word lists and tests may affect their pedagogical value. The aim of this article is to highlight aspects of research and pedagogy that are affected by lexical units and describe issues that should be considered when operationalizing words in studies of vocabulary and learning resources.

This study addresses the question of whether observed differences in the use of the strategy of monitoring (as defined by Krashen) is related to four rather stable cognitive styles. Subjects were 40 Spanish-speaking adults in a university ESL program. Each subject's use of monitoring was assessed by comparing the degree of correctness s/he demonstrated with respect to one morpheme, third-person-singular s, in elicited speech, taken to represent his/her acquired knowledge of the morpheme, and on three writing tasks—fill-in-the-blank, proofreading, and composition—taken to represent acquired knowledge modified by conscious application of the third-person-singular rule. It was hypothesized that the most monitoring would occur on the fill-in-the-blank test, and the least on the composition. The cognitive styles hypothesized to be related to monitor use were field independence, reflection, flexible control, and preference for processing information by written word.

No significant differences in the amount of monitoring on the three written tasks were noted. Field independence was positively related to the amount of monitoring on all written tasks, and reflection weakly but positively related to the amount of monitoring on the proofreading task. Implications for further research are discussed.

The current study examined the occurrence and benefits of linguistic alignment in two modalities, face-to-face (FTF) and synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC), focusing on stranded prepositions in relative clauses. It further examined how learner characteristics (i.e., working memory, language proficiency, previous knowledge of the target structure) mediate the effects of linguistic alignment. Ninety-four Korean students were assigned to one of the following groups: FTF alignment, SCMC alignment, FTF control, and SCMC control. The alignment experimental groups completed two alignment sessions, finished three stranded preposition tests, and carried out a running span test and cloze test over three weeks. Results indicated not only that linguistic alignment occurred in both FTF and SCMC modes but also that alignment was facilitated significantly more in the SCMC than FTF interactions. Furthermore, the findings suggest immediate and delayed learning effects in both modalities, and that learners’ prior knowledge of the target structure was significantly associated with the occurrence of alignment.

This paper argues that crossing the boundaries between sociolinguistics and second language acquisition (SLA) is essential to both fields of study (Giacalone Ramat, 1995; Preston, 1993). Specifically, data collected in an investigation of the SLA of copula choice by 77 English-speaking learners of Spanish are examined in terms of similarities to data collected in studies of language change (Gutiérrez, 1992; Silva-Corvalán, 1994). The variables used to analyze these data, Frame of Reference and Susceptibility to Change, have been shown to be useful for examining the process of the extension of estar to new [copula + adjective] contexts from a sociolinguistic perspective. The application of these variables to SLA data allows an investigation of the mirror-image relationship predicted to exist between the process of language loss and the process of language acquisition.

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.

In this focused methodological synthesis, the sample construction procedures of 110 second language (L2) instructed vocabulary interventions were assessed in relation to effect size–driven sample-size planning, randomization, and multisite usage. These three areas were investigated because inferential testing makes better generalizations when researchers consider them during the sample construction process. Only nine reports used effect sizes to plan or justify sample sizes in any fashion, with only one engaging in an a priori power procedure referencing vocabulary-centric effect sizes from previous research. Randomized assignment was observed in 56% of the reports while no report involved randomized sampling. Approximately 15% of the samples observed were constructed from multiple sites and none of these empirically investigated the effect of site clustering. Leveraging the synthesized findings, we conclude by offering suggestions for future L2 instructed vocabulary researchers to consider a priori effect size–driven sample planning processes, randomization, and multisite usage when constructing samples.

This article reports on the design and use of a profiler for lexical sophistication (i.e., use of advanced vocabulary), which was created to assess the lexical richness of intermediate and advanced Swedish second language (L2) learners’ French and Italian. It discusses how teachers’ judgments (TJs) of word difficulty can contribute to the methodology for lexical profiling and compares two methods, one purely frequency based and one modified on the basis of TJs of word difficulty. It has been suggested elsewhere that factors other than frequency play an important role in vocabulary acquisition. Here it is argued that cognates and thematic vocabulary related to teaching materials, although infrequent in target language (TL) corpora, should not necessarily be considered advanced and that analyses of learners’ lexical sophistication would benefit from integrating these aspects. In this study, the frequency-based method normally used in lexical profiling was modified by recategorizing some low-frequency words considered easy by many teachers. On the basis of the TJs, a basic vocabulary, which consisted mainly of high-frequency words but also of cognates and thematic words, was defined, which was based on the fact that teachers judged certain low-frequency cognates and thematic words as relatively easy. Using the modified method, learners’ lexical profiles were found to be more homogeneous within groups of learners at specific proficiency levels. The superiority of the new method over the purely frequency-based one was shown when comparing effect sizes. It is argued that this method gives a more correct picture of advanced L2 lexical profiles.

The purpose of this descriptive cross-sectional study was to describe and rate the writing of Hispanic students in a bilingual program and to compare their writing with that of Hispanic students in a submersion program and with native English speakers in a regular program. Five dependent variables were investigated: rhetorical effectiveness, overall quality of writing, productivity, syntactic maturity, and error frequency. Analyses of variance for both grade and program revealed that the sixth graders had significantly higher scores than did the fourth graders on all of the dependent variables except for error frequency. The students in the regular program had significantly higher scores on rhetorical effectiveness and overall quality of writing than did the submersion program students and the bilingual program students; they also made significantly fewer errors than did the bilingual program students. The bilingual program students had significantly higher scores on syntactic maturity and productivity than did the submersion program students. Results suggest that students who learn to write in their L1 before learning to write in their L2 will write just as effectively in their L2 as those students who learn to write only in their L2.

This study examines how Keenan and Comrie's (1977) noun phrase accessibility hierarchy (NPAH) intersects with the typological characteristics of Korean in the acquisition of relative clauses (RCs). Korean has two types of RC constructions: head-external and head-internal. The head-external relative has its head to the right of the RC, whereas the head-internal relative has its lexical head in the RC and is marked by the complementizer kes. In first language development, it has been observed the head-internal type emerges earlier than the head-external type. The current study investigates how the use of the two types of RCs interacts with the NPAH, with a focus on subject (SU) and direct object (DO) RCs in Korean second language development. Oral production data were collected from 40 learners of Korean as a foreign language. The results showed that there was an advantage for SU over DO in the head-external RC and that the head-external construction was preceded by headless and head-internal constructions. The results suggest that a head-external RC in Korean involves the syntactic mechanism of linking the head and the gap relation, whereas this might not be the case for a head-internal RC.The authors would like to thank Yasuhiro Shirai, Stephen Matthews, Virginia Yip, and the anonymous SSLA reviewers for their valuable input and feedback on this paper. Any errors, of course, are our own.

This paper compares the foregrounding strategies of native speakers of English and advanced learners of ESL. Fifteen native speakers and thirty-five advanced learners produced on-line (play-by-play) descriptions of the unfolding action in an animated videotape. A methodology for the quantitative analysis of discourse production is described which permits the explicit identification of foreground-background information and its interaction with both native speaker and interlanguage syntaxes. Results show that: (1) Native speakers and learners exhibit one universal discourse strategy in retreating to a more pragmatic mode of communication under the severe communicative stress of on-line description, as revealed through the systematic loss of the coding relations ordinarily holding between foreground-background information and clause independence/tense-aspect; (2) Learners also exhibit a learner-specific general communication strategy in which significant events are described but nonsignificant events avoided.

Interaction research has come a long way since its beginnings nearly 25 years ago. The aim of this special issue is to demonstrate how the methodological boundaries of interaction research continue to be expanded with the use of new and interesting methodological angles and techniques. Our goal is to further our insights into the question that seems to be paramount in the interaction field at the moment—namely, how does interaction work to bring about positive effects on second language (L2) learning? The articles collected here suggest that new methodologies promise to open up avenues of research that will allow us to gain insights into the interaction-learning relationship.Our intent in this special issue is to show some of the current methodological techniques being used to provide insights about how interaction works to promote L2 learning. We would like to thank the contributing authors who have made interesting and worthwhile contributions to help us attain this goal as well as the SSLA editorial team for all their help in bringing this issue to completion.

A second language can be learned inside and outside the classroom. In this study we investigated the English and French vocabulary knowledge of 110 Dutch-speaking children (age 10–12), who received 100 hours of instruction in French, whereas their contact with English came from out-of-school exposure only. We examined the role of individual differences (out-of-school exposure and gender) and word-related variables (cognateness, frequency, and language). The children completed a receptive vocabulary test in English and French and filled in a questionnaire. The results showed that the children had a larger vocabulary knowledge in English than in French, illustrating the power of contextual language learning. Word learning was influenced by the amount of exposure, word frequency, and cognateness. Additionally, English words were easier to learn than French words for the participants we tested. Our results point to the need for out-of-school exposure to supplement language learning in the classroom.

This study contributes to a central debate within contemporary generative second language (L2) theorizing: the extent to which adult learners are (un)able to acquire new functional features that result in a L2 grammar that is mentally structured like the native target (see White, 2003). The adult acquisition of L2 nominal phi-features is explored, with focus on the syntactic and semantic reflexes in the related domain of adjective placement in two experimental groups: English-speaking intermediate (n = 21) and advanced (n = 24) learners of Spanish, as compared to a native-speaker control group (n = 15). Results show that, on some of the tasks, the intermediate L2 learners appear to have acquired the syntactic properties of the Spanish determiner phrase but, on other tasks, to show some delay with the semantic reflexes of prenominal and postnominal adjectives. Crucially, however, our data demonstrate full convergence by all advanced learners and thus provide evidence in contra the predictions of representational deficit accounts (e.g., Hawkins & Chan, 1997; Hawkins & Franceschina, 2004; Hawkins & Hattori, 2006).

This study focused on an instructional component often neglected when teaching the pronunciation of English as either a second, foreign, or international language—namely, the suprasegmental feature of lexical stress. Extending previous research on collaborative priming tasks and task repetition, the study investigated the impact of task and procedural repetition on eliciting target-stress patterns during collaborative priming tasks. It employed a pretest-posttest design with 57 Korean high school students who were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a control, priming with task repetition, and priming with procedural repetition. Learners participated in a pretest, two priming sessions, and two posttests over a 4-week period. Learners’ ability to produce target-stress patterns was measured through sentence read-aloud tasks. The task repetition group repeated the same primes and prompts twice, whereas the procedural repetition group performed priming tasks with different primes and prompts during two sessions. Results indicate that the amount of primed production was significantly more than unprimed production. Additionally, both experimental conditions promoted learners’ accurate production of target-stress patterns, though, in relation to long-term impacts, repeating the same task (i.e., same procedure and same content) twice was more effective than repeating the procedure for a second time with different content. The results are discussed in light of pronunciation teaching using auditory priming tasks.

A frequently discussed hypothesis concerning the source of cross-linguistic communication difficulty in written discourse is conflicting organizational patterns (Kaplan, 1966, 1987). Extending the argument to oral discourse, Young (1982) argued that spoken English discourse produced by Chinese speakers evidenced a discourse-level topic-comment structure that native English speakers find difficult to follow. However, Tyler (1988) argued that the perception of incoherence might better be understood as the cumulative result of interacting miscues at the discourse level, that is, miscues in syntactic incorporation, lexical discourse markers, tense/aspect, and lexical The study reported here aims at testing these competing hypotheses. One hundred fifteen subjects rated four versions of the Chinese-produced English discourse presented in Young's study for comprehensibility. Results indicated that the effect of discourse miscues on comprehensibility was highly significant (F = 70, p <.0001). However, there was no significant effect for order of ideas (F = .47, p <.49).

Input variability is key in many aspects of linguistic learning, yet variability increases input complexity, which may cause difficulty in some learning contexts. The current work investigates this trade-off by comparing speaker variability effects on L2 vocabulary learning in different age groups. Existing literature suggests that speaker variability benefits L2 vocabulary learning in adults, but this may not be the case for younger learners. In this study native English-speaking adults, 7- to 8-year-olds, and 10- to 11-year-olds learned six novel Lithuanian words from a single speaker, and six from eight speakers. In line with previous research, adults showed better production of the multispeaker items at test. No such benefit was found for either group of children, either in production or comprehension. Children also had greater difficulties in processing multiple-speaker cues during training. We conclude that age-related capacity limitations may constrain the ability to utilize speaker variability when learning words in a new language.

This article seeks to illuminate the degree of position-based variation observed in the acquisition of new segments in a second language and to explain such variability as the consequence of phonetic constraints; this approach contrasts with much previous research that has used typological markedness to the same end. Specifically, it is proposed that learners will have the least difficulty acquiring sounds that involve novel combinations of voicing and manner in positions that favor the phonetic implementation of these sounds. Moreover, on the assumption that not all parameters can be mastered simultaneously, it is predicted that learners will first acquire aspects of a segment's articulation that are perceptually salient and articulatorily easier. The data come from a study of the acquisition of French by 20 intermediate- and advanced-proficiency English-speaking learners of French. Acoustic analysis of the data reveals asymmetries that favor accuracy with manner in onsets versus more targetlike realization of voicing in codas, in which devoicing exists in the input. Beyond demonstrating the role of phonetic principles in determining position-based variation, the findings contribute to our understanding of the acquisition of new consonantal contrasts by providing empirical evidence from a non-Germanic language to bear on this line of inquiry.

Meta-analytic reviews collect available empirical studies on a specified domain and calculate the average effect of a factor. Educators as well as researchers exploring a new domain of inquiry may rely on the conclusions from meta-analytic reviews rather than reading multiple primary studies. This article calls for caution in this regard because the outcome of a meta-analysis is determined by how effect sizes are calculated, how factors are defined, and how studies are selected for inclusion. Three recently published meta-analyses are reexamined to illustrate these issues. The first illustrates the risk of conflating effect sizes from studies with different design features; the second illustrates problems with delineating the variable of interest, with implications for cause-effect relations; and the third illustrates the challenge of determining the eligibility of candidate studies. Replication attempts yield outcomes that differ from the three original meta-analyses, suggesting also that conclusions drawn from meta-analyses need to be interpreted cautiously.

A growing field of research has made use of a semiartificial language paradigm to investigate the role of awareness in L2 acquisition. A central and empirically still unresolved issue in this field concerns the possibility of learning implicitly, that is, without intention to learn and without awareness of what has been learned. Up until now, studies on implicit learning have mainly been conducted in laboratory settings under highly controlled conditions with university students as participants. The present study investigated whether and to what extent the results obtained in such settings can be extrapolated to the general population. Building on Williams (2005), we designed two crowdsourcing experiments that examined the learning of novel form-meaning mappings under incidental conditions in 163 participants. Our design allowed us to disentangle the effects of awareness at the level of noticing and understanding. The results of the two experiments demonstrated the implicit learning effect outside the lab in a more varied sample of participants and indicated that awareness at both levels appears to have a facilitative effect on learning outcomes.

Network analysis is a method used to explore the structural relationships between people or organizations, and more recently between psychological constructs. Network analysis is a novel technique that can be used to model psychological constructs that influence language learning as complex systems, with longitudinal data, or cross-sectional data. The majority of complex dynamic systems theory (CDST) research in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) to date has been time-intensive, with a focus on analyzing intraindividual variation with dense longitudinal data collection. The question of how to model systems from a structural perspective using relation-intensive methods is an underexplored dimension of CDST research in applied linguistics. To expand our research agenda, we highlight the potential that psychological networks have for studying individual differences in language learning. We provide two empirical examples of network models using cross-sectional datasets that are publicly available online. We believe that this methodology can complement time-intensive approaches and that it has the potential to contribute to the development of new dimensions of CDST research in applied linguistics.