Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: comprensión lectora

Resumen:

The recent introduction of positive psychology (PP) to second language acquisition (SLA) has led to increased interest in researching the relationship between language learning and various positive emotions. Despite this, the concept of learner altruistic teaching has been relatively understudied, compared to other PP aspects. In particular, studies on learner altruistic teaching and English reading comprehension skill have been notably absent. To address this gap, this intervention study aimed to investigate whether learners’ altruistic teaching had a significant effect on their English reading comprehension skill. The study used a mixed-methods sequential explanatory design with a comparison group pretest–posttest experimental design. It involved 116 Iranian learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The study included three...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: comunicación no verbal

Resumen:

Gestures are widely recognized as an integral aspect of multimodal communication and language learning. However, the conditions under which they effectively support learning remain unclear. This study investigated when gesture matters in English as a foreign language (EFL) learning through three controlled experiments. Experiment 1 (3 × 2 design) examined the effects of gesture type (iconic, deictic, metaphoric) and production mode (human tutor vs. virtual agent). Experiment 2 compared gesture engagement (watch vs. imitate), while Experiment 3 tested gesture timing (synchronous, gesture-first, misaligned). University-level EFL learners participated in 30-minute instructional sessions, with outcomes measured in language recall, pronunciation accuracy, and cognitive load using multivariate analysis of covariance. Results showed that...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: adquisición de segundas lenguas

Resumen:

This study addresses the acquisition of second language (L2) Spanish grammatical gender by native speakers of two typologically different languages: English (n = 39) and Russian (n = 37). We aim to explore if the presence or absence of gender features in the first language (L1) influences the acquisition of Spanish grammatical gender. Participants completed an acceptability judgment task consisting of 40 sentences with grammatical and ungrammatical Spanish Determiner Phrases (DPs). They included masculine and feminine Ns (Nouns) with transparent or opaque endings. Our findings show that (1) both groups are sensitive to gender non-matching structures, although L1 Russian speakers gave the lowest scores to ungrammatical structures in Spanish; (2) higher rating scores to masculine matching DPs point to the use of masculine as default by...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: español como lengua de herencia

Resumen:

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This study investigates how Mexican Spanish/U.S. English heritage bilinguals process scope ambiguities in sentences containing the existential quantifiers a/una and the universal quantifiers every/cada in English and Spanish. Sentences like "A person bought every book" are syntactically ambiguous in both languages, allowing for multiple possible interpretations. Research suggests that one interpretation is often preferred due to lower cognitive demand, though degree of preference varies across languages. Notably, heritage bilinguals may have distinct interpretation preferences in each language, highlighting the complexity of bilingual processing. Sixty Spanish/English heritage bilinguals (Age M = 25.48, SD = 2.65)...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: enseñanza/aprendizaje de vocabulario

Resumen:

This study explores whether middle-school students can exploit explicitly addressed crosslinguistic lexical similarities between German and English to learn vocabulary more efficiently. Across six weeks, 260 Swiss German learners of English as a foreign language (17 classes) completed three vocabulary learning tests (T1, T2 and T3). Additionally, 7 of these 17 classes attended a 90-minute intervention between the first and second test: During a 45-minute introductory lesson students discovered four systematic orthographic correspondence rules (e.g.

to as in ship and Schiff), followed by three 15-minute sessions to consolidate their knowledge. The intervention group's improvement in cognate learning was significantly larger in comparison to the control group. The difference was observed across both test modes and all rules...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: español como lengua de herencia

Resumen:

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This study explores the cognitive processing of discourse construction mechanisms in Spanish, focusing on counter-argumentative relations that involve anaphoric encapsulation through either pronominal (e.g., a pesar de ello) or lexical forms (e.g., a pesar de [NP]). These constructions combine procedural meaning with referential retrieval, placing complex demands on discourse integration. Using eye-tracking data from 77 participants across three speaker groups, namely, L1, heritage, and L2 speakers, this study yields three main findings: (1) nominal expressions do not incur greater processing effort than pronominal ones under optimal communicative conditions; (2) heritage and L2 speakers exhibit higher processing...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: enseñanza/aprendizaje de la gramática

Resumen:

This study investigated the extent to which second language (L2) learners benefited from proactive form-focused instruction (FFI) targeting French grammatical gender attribution and the degree to which L2 learners' attention control and working memory predicted their learning gains. A total of 102 L2 learners received either proactive FFI targeting French grammatical gender attribution or their regular instruction (i.e. control condition) for six 80-minute instructional sessions. A pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest were administered, each entailing binary-choice, text-completion, picture-description, and listening tasks. The L2 learners also completed the Simon Test and the Corsi Block-Tapping Test, which measured their attention control and working memory. Results showed that L2 learners receiving the proactive...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: cognición y procesamiento

Resumen:

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Investigaciones sobre activación del léxico han mostrado que cuando se escucha una palabra existe una activación de la fonología. Asimismo, estudios en bilingües señalan que la fonología se activa inicialmente para decodificar e integrar la información de las palabras en la segunda lengua (L2). El objetivo central de este trabajo fue describir si la información fonológica de aprendientes universitarios de una segunda lengua sin experiencia de inmersión es activada inicialmente en una tarea de preferencia visual. En la tarea se presentaban de forma simultánea cuatro estímulos visuales (un competidor fonológico, un competidor semántico, un competidor de rasgos visuales y un distractor)...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: español como lengua de herencia

Resumen:

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This eye tracking study examined the role of lexical frequency in the processing of non-local verbal number agreement by heritage speakers of Spanish. Few prior studies of heritage bilingualism have investigated the role of word frequency in the comprehension or production of morphosyntax, and none have employed a real-time measure of sentence processing, despite the well-known sensitivity of such methods to word frequency and the proposal of some scholars that such online methodologies could be particularly useful in research on heritage speakers. Fifty heritage speakers of Spanish read stimulus sentences containing non-local verbal number agreement that depended on a verb that was either high or low frequency,...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: enseñanza/aprendizaje de vocabulario

Resumen:

We investigated whether learning and retaining vocabulary in a second language (L2) can be improved by leveraging a combination of memory enhancement techniques. Specifically, we tested whether combining retrieval practice, spacing, and related manipulations in a 'multidomain' pedagogical approach enhances vocabulary acquisition as compared to a typical learning approach. In a classroom-laboratory design, 48 Turkish university students studying L2 English were trained on 64 English words over 17 days. They were assigned to either a 'typical' study regimen of (re)studying the words on the first day (initial study) and last day (cramming) of training, or an 'optimized' regimen of retrieval practice (retrieving the words), moreover with feedback, spaced throughout the period, moreover with expanding gaps. The target words were tested...

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