Background: Academic writing is a complex and demanding activity in which students have to regulate their (meta)cognitive, motivational, and linguistic processes and self-regulatory writing strategies might serve as a tool to accomplish writing tasks. The research was done as part of a verification of Zimmerman & Risemberg’s (1997) model of self-regulation in writing. Previous research on the relationships between students’ self-regulated learning (SRL) and writing performance has suggested their positive impact. Purpose: This paper provides insights into Croatian university students’ first/second language (L1/L2) writing performance regarding the SRL strategy use. Method: Students’ written performance in both L1 (Croatian) and L2 (English) was checked, and the contributions of SRL and sociodemographic factors were explored. A total of 104 students from the initial and final years of teacher education study were included in the research. A quantitative research method was used including the following instruments: The learning orientation scale, the Perceived academic control scale, the Croatian version of the values subscale, Writing strategies questionnaire.Results: Descriptive analyses revealed that students’L1/L2 writing proficiency was on average. There was no difference between L1 and L2 writing proficiency. Furthermore, the study showed that students mostly initiated learning goal orientation, writing tasks were valuable to them and they had more results of academic control over the mentioned tasks. Participants mostly used the most effective writing strategy - checking and correcting the text. The final study year students had better L1 writing proficiency compared to the initial study year students. Such results were expected since students were exposed to the extensive L1 academic experience, which was not the case with the exposure to learning English as a foreign language (EFL learning), resulting in a lower level of L2 essay writing proficiency. Success in L1 writing proficiency was explained more by cognitive and less by sociodemographic and motivational factors. The greater academic control over writing assignments and the lower goal orientation on avoiding effort was shown, the greater success was achieved. Success in L2 writing proficiency was mostly explained by cognitive factors, but also significantly by some sociodemographic and motivational factors. The higher GPA in L2 and the less asking for help and writing by the model strategy was employed, the greater success in writing assignments was achieved. The study indicated the importance of mastering SRL, especially cognitive factors in both L1 and L2 learning. Implication: The implications of the study were discussed which may benefit L1/L2 teachers to teach their students SRL writing strategies by which students could self-regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behaviours throughout the writing process to achieve academic success.

The main focus of this study was to analyse article errors in the writing of first year Croatian psychology students studying English as a foreign language as part of their study programme. Article errors among learners with different proficiency levels were also analysed; moreover, errors made by students with different essay grades were compared. The results show that the category with the highest number of errors included the omission of the indefinite article. Furthermore, it was found that proficiency levels were not a significant factor concerning the average number of errors in any of the categories. Moreover, it was also shown that essay grades did not play a significant role in the number of article errors in student writing except in the category of omission of the definite article, which was found among students with lower essay grades.

The process of academic writing is a highly demanding mental activity that presents a number of difficulties for students, especially when it comes to L2/FL (second/ foreign language) writing. The study employs the social-cognitive model of writing t...

The category of definiteness/indefiniteness is often seen as a linguistic universal (Chomsky 2000; Silić 2000) that exists in every human language but is expressed with different linguistic means and patterns in different languages. In English, this category is grammaticalized primarily via articles (Zergollern-Miletić 2008). The Croatian language does not contain an article system, and acquiring English articles represents a major problem for most learners of English as a foreign language (Balenović and Medved Krajnović 2013; Zergollern-Miletić 2015). The present paper investigates difficulties in acquiring English articles among young learners in Croatia in written tasks. Pupils involved in the research started learning English in the first grade of primary school. A total of 76 primary school learners from six different classes (schools) and different age groups were included in this research. The initial hypothesis is that the correct use of articles increases as learners’ overall L2 proficiency increases due to exposure to instructed EFL learning. A qualitative analysis was carried out using error analysis, i.e., proper/wrong use, or omission of the article. The findings partially confirmed the initial hypothesis and showed that our participants were becoming aware of the existence of English articles (they comprehended that articles should precede nouns), but we found very frequent article omission, which, according to our research results, indicates that the process of developing and understanding the semantic and pragmatic role of English articles is long and fluctuating specifically with learners whose L1 lacks the article system.

This study explored the impact of informal learning on the acquisition of English idioms, operating under the assumption that idioms’ relatedness to lexicon makes the acquisition of idioms less associated with formal English as a foreign language (EF...

The advent of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) has introduced new possibilities in lexicography, particularly in defining dictionary entries with precision, while reducing the time cost compared to more traditional methods or software tools. To test AI’s linguistic capabilities, our study goes beyond monolingual dictionary compilation and investigates the potential of the ChatGPT model in distinguishing between specific senses of loanwords in an L2 context. A corpus-based sampling of target English words was used to assess ChatGPT’s ability to delineate different word senses in which regularly occurring loanwords can be realised in the Croatian language context. The findings indicate that AI demonstrates notable proficiency in providing definitions in general, albeit with observable flaws when responding to prompts that specifically inquire about the possible senses or word classes of targeted loanwords in their L2 setting. Its accuracy diminishes when dealing with less frequently used loanwords, often exhibiting overgeneralisation from English (L1) to Croatian (L2). The AI’s tendency to produce erroneous examples, with suggested usages that lack attestation in language corpora, is discussed in detail, with the results supporting the notion that the model primarily interprets loanwords from an English perspective, regardless of the language used in the prompt. A comparison between AI responses from early 2024 and early 2025 suggests an improvement in the 2025 model, which exhibits a more nuanced handling of ambiguous cases. However, inconsistencies persist, particularly in how frequency of use correlates with the number of senses, much of which is interpreted as ChatGPT’s tendency to sometimes prioritise generating a response at the cost of accuracy.