Title of Document: THE INFLUENCES OF APTITUDE, LEARNING CONTEXT, AND LANGUAGE DIFFICULTY CATEGORIZATION ON FOREIGN LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY. Thomas R. Wagener, Doctor of Philosophy, 2015 Directed By: Dr. Steven J. Ross, Second Language Acquisition This research investigates the ability of predictive measures to differentiate level of language proficiency among learners across languages, language ca...

Language proficiency is predicted to modulate orthographic-semantic association in second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition, in accordance with the assumptions of the Developmental Bilingual Interactive-Activation model (BIA-d) (Grainger et al., 2010). The current study explored this modulation during pre-attentive L2 orthographic perception. ERPs were recorded from Chinese-English bilingual...

nowadays, english is the leading foreign language enjoying a prestigious position in many countries, including iran. in recent years, english is more and more popular in the world and the importance of learning english cannot be overstated in an increasingly interconnected and globalized world. in this regard, studying the status of language of the educated class of the society such as teachers...

Assisting in foreign language learning is one of the major areas in which natural language processing technology can contribute. This paper proposes a computerized method of measuring communicative skill in English as a foreign language. The proposed method consists of two parts. The first part involves a test sentence selection part to achieve precise measurement with a small test set. The sec...

Second language learners perform worse than native speakers under adverse listening conditions, such as speech in noise (SPIN). No data are available on heritage language speakers' (early naturalistic interrupted learners') ability to perceive SPIN. The current study fills this gap and investigates the perception of Russian speech in multi-talker babble noise by the matched groups of high- and ...

The study examined language learning anxiety factors, hindering EFL learners’ process of learning, particularly in speaking settings and recommended useful approaches to cope with it. Using the quantitative approach as well as a qualitative semi-structured interview and focus-group discussion method, this study tried to examine the factors behind language anxiety among Iranian language learners...

First language (L1) attrition is a socio-linguistic circumstance where second language (L2) learning coincides with changes in exposure and use of the native-L1. Attriters often report experiencing a decline in automaticity or proficiency in their L1 after a prolonged period in the L2 environment, while their L2 proficiency continues to strengthen. Investigating the neurocognitive correlates of...

This study examined the acquisition of prenominal and postnominal genitives by Iranian EFL learners. Two variables were considered: possessive categories and language proficiency. We considered the influence of possessive categories such as lexical modifier, semantic relationship, and weight and syntactic complexity on genitive alternations by Iranian EFL learners. Also, we examined whether the...