This longitudinal case study tracks an adult second-language (L2) learner’s quality and quantity of encounters with 20 vocabulary items in an English for Academic Purposes course over 3 months. The learner completed pretest and posttest vocabulary knowledge interviews, submitted course materials and notes for analysis, and was observed during class lessons. The results show that frequency of en...

This paper reports on the development and the initial evaluation of a dictation&spelling prototype exercise for second language (L2) learners of Swedish based on text-to-speech (TTS) technology. Implemented on an already existing Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) platform, the exercise has not only served as a test case for TTS in L2 environment, but has also shown a poten...

Based on a corpus of 223 argumentative essays written by English as a foreign language learners, this study shows that spelling errors, whether detected manually or automatically, are a reliable predictor of the quality of L2 texts and that reliability is further improved by subcategorizing errors. However the benefit derived from subcategorization is much lower in the case of errors automatica...

: The emergence of the lexicon for events is rather late in L1 acquisition, compared to the lexicon for entities, but the same holds for subsequent L2 acquisition. The semantic processing of verbs by children and adults shows a greater flexibility than the processing of nouns : explanations to that are the relational nature of verbs, and the fact that the lexical categorization of events is les...

Early second language has been defined as a restricted linguistic system that can offer a “window” on language genesis. In this paper, I model the acquisition of negation by L2 (adult) learners as a sequence of constraint rankings in the framework of Optimality Theory. The rankings shift from pragmatics via conventionalization of negation as a focus operator to syntax. Early language is argued ...

Rhythm patterns play an important role in the perception of second-language (L2) speech. This paper presents a novel approach to evaluating L2 speech rhythm using low-frequency spectral features inspired by the rhythmogram auditory model. In this paper we investigate several new feature sets for use in training rhythm-centric acoustic models. By capturing information over suprasegmental linguis...

zoltán dörnyei (2005) proposed a new form of motivation which is aiming at equipping the learners with a lifelong approach to motivation which is self-induced by the learner and it is not needed for any extrinsic mediation, having understood how to keep yourself motivated. this study was an attempt to find out the effect of self-motivation strategies instruction on the learners belief on learne...

This is an interview study of Eldin, a 14-year-old Bosnian boy living in Sweden since the age of six. The aim is to investigate how Eldin became a gamer and how he, strongly motivated, learned foreign/second (L2) English mainly through selfaccess gameplay. Using language learning motivation theories, Dörnyei’s (2005, 2009) L2 Motivational Self System and Dweck’s (2006) concept of mindsets, the ...