While many second language (L2) acquisition studies analyze the effects that the first language (L1) has on L2 development, less common are studies that examine the converse situation: does acquisition of an L2 impact the L1? This study examines the effects of L2 acquisition on L1 use by looking at the L1 phonological productions of advanced L2 learners vis-à-vis the production of monolingual s...

This longitudinal study tracked the neuro-cognitive changes associated with second language (L2) grammar learning in adults in order to investigate how L2 processing is shaped by a learner's first language (L1) background and L2 proficiency. Previous studies using event-related potentials (ERPs) have argued that late L2 learners cannot elicit a P600 in response to L2 grammatical structures that...

There has been much recent work investigating second language (L2) acquisition of English articles by speakers of article-less L1s (Huebner 1983, Master 1987, Parrish 1987, Thomas 1989, Kaneko 1996, Leung 2001, Ionin, Ko and Wexler 2004, Hawkins et al. 2006, Ko, Ionin and Wexler 2006, Ionin, Zubizarreta and Bautista Maldonado 2008, Trenkic 2008, among others). Examining L2-learners production o...

Our study uses event-related potentials (ERP) to investigate two factors in the second language (L2) processing of agreement: the role of number and gender features in the native language (L1), and the impact of individual differences between learners. Previous ERP studies investigating L2 agreement vary as to whether they find native-like processing (e.g., Rossi et al., 2006; Tokowicz and MacW...

People are constrained by their culture and social life when telling stories. A second language learner then cannot be expected to tell stories in the target language without cross-cultural effects that influence the way of narration. The present study examined the role of the first language (L1) and second language (L2) in the organization of narratives by focusing on Persian speakers’ and EFL...

the aim of the current study was to examine the effect of metacognitive instruction on efl learners’ metacognitive awareness of listening strategies, listening comprehension, and oral language proficiency. fifty students of two upper-intermediate english courses participated in the study and were sampled as the experimental and control groups. for sixteen weeks the experimental group participat...

It is unclear what roles native language (L1) and second language (L2) play in the perception of lexical tones in a third language (L3). Listeners with different language backgrounds use different F0 cues in tonal perception. While English listeners use F0 height, Mandarin listeners rely more on F0 direction. The present study addresses whether knowledge of Mandarin as an L2 results in listener...

A response signal, speed–accuracy tradeoff (SAT) variant of a same–different category task was used to examine how experience affects the speed and accuracy of retrieving conceptual information in first (L1) and second (L2) languages. Conceptual retrieval was evaluated in three bilingual groups: 10 balanced bilinguals with equal proficiency in Russian (L1) and English (L2); 9 Russian-dominant b...

the present study sought to investigate the acquisition of referential, quasi and expletive subject pronouns, three different types of obligatory subjects in english, by adult persian speaking l2 learners of english at different stages of l2 acquisition. a grammaticality judgment test and a translation test were designed and developed to elicit the participants' knowledge of obligatory subjects...

This study examines how listener judgments of second language speech relate to individual differences in listeners’ phonological memory, attention control, and musical ability. Sixty native English listeners (30 music majors, 30 nonmusic majors) rated 40 nonnative speech samples for accentedness, comprehensibility, and fluency. The listeners were also assessed for phonological memory (serial re...