The current study investigates the roles of lexical aspect and phonological saliency in second language acquisition of English past tense morphology. It also explores whether the effects of these factors are affected by data elicitation tasks and learners’ L2 proficiency. We created a learner corpus consisting of data from oral personal narratives from twenty Arabic EFL learners from two proficiency groups (low vs. intermediate/advanced), which were transcribed in CHAT format, tagged, and included in the TalkBank corpora. We also administered a written cloze task. Despite task variations, we find strong evidence that supported the influence of lexical semantics in Arabic learners’ acquisition of past tense marking, confirming the predictions of the Aspect Hypothesis.

The current mixed-method study investigated two groups of Korean-speaking short-term sojourners in Australia. One group (students) was composed of learners enrolled in English training programs, whereas the other group (workers) was of learners in the workplace. We administered questionnaires and a semi-structured interview to examine their willingness to communicate (WTC) in English as their second language (L2) and explored the relationship between this variable and the sojourners’ amount of L2 contact and their oral fluency in English. Our quantitative analyses show that the student group showed a higher level of WTC and amount of L2 exposure than the worker group. For both groups, WTC significantly predicted sojourners’ amount of L2 exposure. However, oral fluency was found neither to be associated with WTC nor with the amount of L2 exposure. Qualitative theme-based analysis suggests that the two sojourn groups demonstrated similarities and differences in their attitudes and motivations related to WTC and unwillingness to communicate (unWTC). The students demonstrated a stronger tendency to engage in L2 interaction than the workers, aligning with their significantly higher frequency of reported L2 exposure. The workers’ attitudes were characterized by feelings of ambivalence, with co-existence of both WTC and unWTC.

In the current study of applied cognitive linguistics (CL), schematic diagrams that represent generalizations of physical-spatial experience were applied in a computer-based tutor that trained English prepositions for second language (L2) learners. Behavioral and electrophysiological (ERP) measures were used to examine whether schematic-diagram feedback provided by the tutor had an instructional advantage over the minimally informed correctness feedback. Behavioral results confirmed this prediction and further revealed that the treatment difference was more striking when the participants had a lower L2 proficiency. The ERP results also supported the prediction. Violation uses of prepositions yielded an N270 and an N400. Schematic-diagram feedback motivated significant changes in brain potentials, whereas correctness feedback failed to do so. Overall, our findings suggest that CL-inspired instruction of a relatively short duration led to significant improvements in learners’ behavioral productive performance and in their sensitivity to semantic violation of preposition use during online sentence processing. The study provided strong neurolinguistic evidence for CL-inspired pedagogy in supporting L2 learning.

Embodied imagery hypothesis proposes the activation of perceptual-motor systems during language processing. Previous studies primarily used concrete visual stimuli to investigate mental imagery in language processing by native speakers (NSs) and second language (L2) learners, but few studies employed schematic diagrams. The study aims to investigate mental imagery in processing prepositional phrases by English NSs and L2 learners. Using image-schematic diagrams as primes, we examine whether any mental imagery effect is modulated by target preposition (over, in), the abstractness of meaning (spatial, extended), and stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA; 1,040 ms, 2,040 ms). A total of 79 adult L2 learners and 100 NSs of English completed diagram–picture matching and semantic priming phrasal decision tasks. Results revealed interference effects on L2 processing of over phrases and under 2,040 ms SOA, but no such effects were observed in the NS group. The selective interference effects in L2 suggest different mental imagery patterns between L1 and L2 processing, and processing schematic diagram primes requires high cognitive demands, potentially leading to difficulties in integrating visual and linguistic information and making grammaticality judgments. The findings partially validate schematic diagrams as visual representations of concepts and suggest the need for further examination of schematic diagrams with varying degrees of complexity.

Based on the Competition Model, the current study investigated how cue availability and cue reliability as two important input factors influenced second language (L2) learners' cue learning of the English article construction. Written corpus data of university-level Chinese-L1 learners of English were sampled for a comparison of English majors and non-English majors who demonstrated two levels of L2 competence in English article usage. The path model analysis in structural equation modeling was utilized to investigate the relationship between the input factors and L2 usage (frequency and accuracy of article cue production). The findings contribute novel and scarce empirical evidence that confirms a central claim of the Competition Model, i.e., the changing importance of cue availability and cue reliability in the frequency and accuracy of production. Cue availability was found to determine L2 production frequency regardless of level of L2 competence. Cue reliability was the input factor that differentiated competence levels. When learners stayed at a relatively lower L2 proficiency, cue reliability played an important role in influencing L2 frequency of usage rather than accuracy of usage. When learners developed increased exposure to and stronger competence in the target language, cue reliability played a significant role in determining learners' success of cue learning. The study is methodologically innovative and expands the empirical applicability of the Competition Model to the domain of second language production and construction learning.