In the field of second language (L2) research, interest in applying meta-analytic techniques has gained momentum in recent years. Considering the potentially far-reaching impact of meta-analyses, they must adhere to rigorous methodological practices and a high level of transparency regarding decisions made throughout the meta-analytic process. This study empirically assessed the methodological and reporting practices of 224 L2 meta-analyses published across 99 journals. To conduct systematic coding, a comprehensive instrument was developed, comprising 39 items that each address a key aspect of meta-analytic methodology or reporting practice. The overall findings provided an overview of current practices, identifying both strengths and areas for improvement. Based on the findings, recommendations were offered for improving methodological rigor and transparency in L2 meta-analyses. Additionally, the comprehensive coding instrument developed in this study offers a valuable resource for the systematic evaluation of methodological and reporting practices in future L2 meta-analytic research.

The present study investigated how initial proficiency impacted development in adolescent learners’ L2 speaking. The study reports on a longitudinal study with dense measurements with twelve adolescent L2 English learners. The participants were tested every week throughout their first year of secondary school (30 datapoints). The participants’ learning trajectory was modeled using generalized additive mixed models (GAMMs). Results showed large differences in development between various lexical and syntactic measures and between individual learners. The learners’ initial proficiency had a significant impact on their development. Overall, more periods of growth were observed in lexical measures than in syntactic measures. In line with previous results, some stabilization was observed once learners reached a certain proficiency level, but this stabilization was dependent on task type. Closed tasks lead to a ceiling effect in some measures, whereas more open tasks give learners from various proficiency levels opportunities to demonstrate their L2 English speaking skills.

Many adults learn languages with written forms that differ from their first language(s). Empirical research has demonstrated the influential role of written input on developing L2 phonology. However, existing studies are limited by (1) focusing on learning languages that share the same orthographic script, predominantly the Latin alphabet, (2) small sample sizes, and (3) limited consideration of L2 proficiency. This study investigated the influence of Arabic and English written input when lexically encoding the difficult /f-v/ phonological contrast for L1 Arabic-speaking learners of L2 English. A word learning study was completed by 114 L1 Arabic speakers, with varying English proficiency, and 117 L1 English-speaking controls. Mixed-effects modeling of L1 Arabic accuracy revealed an inhibitory effect of any written input when learning words differing by the difficult contrast. Performance improved with increasing L2 proficiency; however, the inhibitory effect of written input for words differing by /f-v/ persisted into high levels of L2 proficiency.

Recent research has shown that adult learners can rapidly acquire novel words of a foreign language by tracking cross-situational statistics, but learning is substantially reduced when the target words are phonologically similar and contain non-native contrasts. We expand on this research by investigating whether perceptual discrimination training on non-native target contrasts facilitates cross-situational learning of new words (CSWL). Our design combines perceptual training and CSWL to test the transfer of perceptual gains to lexical learning—an approach that integrates methods from L2 speech and statistical learning. In two studies, we tested English-native and Portuguese-native speakers’ learning of 24 Portuguese pseudowords via a CSWL task. In Study 1, we examined baseline learning in both language groups without prior training. In Study 2, English-native speakers were assigned to one of three conditions: phonetic training with an AX discrimination task, phonetic training with an oddity discrimination task, or no phonetic training prior to the CSWL task. Results confirmed that adults can learn non-native words from cross-situational statistics, and that phonological overlap between words decreases learning. Perceptual training improved the discrimination of target contrasts, but this did not transfer to statistical learning of words that contain these contrasts. These findings suggest that phonetic training alone may not be sufficient for vocabulary acquisition, suggesting the need for instructional approaches that integrate phonetic training with more explicit teaching methods or meaning-based practice.

Screen-based reading has frequently been associated with lower comprehension than reading on paper, a phenomenon known as screen inferiority. Although cognitive capacity, linguistic knowledge, and digital usage vary across learners, it remains underexplored how individual-difference factors shape medium effects in second-language (L2) reading among adolescents. We investigated how reading on paper versus tablets affects L2 reading comprehension among 240 Korean eighth graders learning English and whether medium effects are moderated by working memory, L2 proficiency, and tablet experience. Participants completed comprehension tests under both conditions, along with a reading span task, a proficiency test, and a tablet-usage questionnaire. Results showed that participants performed worse on tablets than on paper; these gaps were larger among learners with higher spans and proficiency. In contrast, tablet experience did not interact with reading medium. These findings underscore the need for explicit instruction to support effective L2 reading on digital devices, even for high-performing learners.

In this commentary contextualizing the complexities at the nexus of disability and applied linguistics (AL), the authors highlight the paucity of conscientious attention to disabled populations in AL research, explore the intricacies of choosing appropriate terminology to describe disability and disabled people, challenge scholars in the field to reflect on and make explicit their emic or etic positionality vis-à-vis disability in their research, and call researchers to consider researching with, rather than merely about, disabled second language learners. The authors (a) illustrate how a collection of emergent research studies illuminates critical considerations at this underresearched interdisciplinary intersection in the field, and (b) demonstrate, via example studies in other areas of AL, how scholars may choose to center the disabled second-language learning experience rather than relegate it to the far corners of the field.

This paper reports a study that investigated how first language (L1) reading comprehension, L1 low-level skills, working memory capacity, and reading anxiety are related to the accuracy of responses and completion time in a second language (L2) reading test. The data obtained from Hungarian secondary school learners of English showed that anxiety related to processing the L2 reading text, time pressure, and the response tasks as well as L1 reading comprehension scores and backward digit span were significant predictors of L2 reading scores. L1 low-level skills did not contribute significantly to L2 reading accuracy. Higher levels of reading-related anxiety were associated with slower reading, and L2 learners with concurrently lower levels of L1 and L2 reading ability needed more time to complete the reading test. These findings highlight that L2 reading tests should be flexibly timed so that everyone, including test takers with literacy-related difficulties such as dyslexia, can demonstrate their abilities.

Knowledge of academic collocations is important for academic communication. Examining its relationship with knowledge of academic words and general high-frequency words should provide insights into the relative value of prior knowledge of different kinds of single words for the development of collocational knowledge in academic contexts, thus expanding our understanding of vocabulary knowledge beyond the current conception of individual word knowledge. Yet no studies have addressed this issue, mainly due to the lack of validated tests for academic words and collocations. This study employed three pairs of newly developed tests to measure Vietnamese EFL learners’ knowledge of academic collocations, academic words, and general high-frequency words. Results showed that at the form-recall level, both academic word and general high-frequency word knowledge were positively associated with academic collocation knowledge, with academic words having a stronger relationship. At the form-recognition level, only academic words and academic collocations were positively correlated.

Over the past decade, there has been growing use of mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) applications such as Duolingo. The effectiveness of MALL applications is thus of great interest among language acquisition researchers and practitioners. This study compared French language development among beginners in three learning conditions: Classroom-Only (n = 58), Duolingo-Only (n = 65), and Classroom + Duolingo (n = 60). The Classroom-Only group completed a standard first-semester curriculum, the Classroom + Duolingo group used Duolingo as supplemental material, and the Duolingo-Only group learned exclusively through the app. All participants completed pretests and posttests measuring overall proficiency, grammar, vocabulary, pragmatics (tu vs. vous), and communicative competence over a 16-week period. Linear mixed-effects models revealed that all three groups showed significant improvement across nearly all measures between pretest and posttest, with similar magnitudes of improvement. The only exception was in learning tu vs. vous (pragmatic competence), where the Classroom + Duolingo group showed larger gains than Classroom-Only and Duolingo-Only groups. Results suggest that both traditional classroom instruction and Duolingo are comparably effective for beginning French language learners. Results are discussed in light of mobile app-based language learning with the potential role of learner characteristics.

This meta-analysis aimed to determine whether Chinese-English bilingual children with reading difficulties (RD) have significant deficits in morphological awareness (MA), phonological awareness, and word reading, in both their first and second languages (L1 and L2). It also evaluated the influence of RD severity, age, diglossia context, and methodological design on effect sizes. The study included 29 samples (N = 4,516) from 14 studies on children with RD in L1 morphosyllabic Chinese and L2 morphophonemic English. Results showed medium effect sizes for MA (g = −0.722) and PA (g = −0.625), and a large effect size for word reading (g = −2.042) in L1 Chinese. In L2 English, medium to large effect sizes were found for MA (g = −1.083), PA (g = −0.857), and word reading (g = −0.730). Age was the only significant moderator, with larger deficits observed as age increased. These findings align with studies on monolinguals with dyslexia and bilinguals with normal abilities or disabilities, recommending MA tasks in assessments.

The role of morphology in complex word acquisition was examined in Chinese (L1)–English (L2) bilinguals. Participants learned words consisting of two novel constituents, by pairing them with pictures. Items either belonged to large (torbnel, torbilm, torbla, torbiph) or small morphological families (torbilm, torbla). After training, participants completed recognition and spelling tasks with novel words that either included or excluded a trained morpheme. Results revealed robust stem-training effects, showing that items including a trained constituent were harder to reject and easier to spell than items including two untrained constituents. There was also a significant effect of morphological family size, with greater training effects for items belonging to large than small families. Effect sizes were overall smaller in L2 than in L1. These findings point to the important role of morphological structure in L2 word acquisition and suggest that large morphological family-clusters lead to better learning outcomes.

Natural phonetic variability such as talker differences facilitates second language (L2) word learning. Whether accent variability enhances the talker variability benefit, particularly in the learning of words that differ only in lexical tones, has not yet been examined despite its potential applied value for L2 tone language learning. Two groups of monolingual English speakers completed six training sessions on four minimal-tone quadrads of Mandarin monosyllabic pseudowords, produced either by 12 talkers from Beijing (single accent) or by four talkers each from Beijing, Yantai, and Guangzhou (multiple accents). Bayesian mixed-effects modeling revealed strong learning improvement across sessions in both conditions, but the multiple-accent group improved faster than the single-accent group. In addition, the multiple-accent group demonstrated superior generalization to new talkers with a familiar and an unfamiliar accent, suggesting that natural L2-Mandarin accent variability facilitates English learners’ access to abstract tone-word lexical representations, beyond the benefits of talker variability alone.

Prior research has reported vocabulary learning benefits from reading while listening (RWL), but few testable predictions have been made regarding an underlying mechanism for benefits. In this study, reading ahead of the audio was examined as a potential source of benefits during RWL. Fifty-nine participants had their eye movements tracked during a contextualized RWL task embedded with 25 pseudowords 10 times each, followed by three learning outcome measures: form recognition, meaning recognition, and meaning recall. Results indicated that (a) reading ahead facilitated initial form decoding as indexed by gaze durations, especially during early instances; (b) it only predicted the deepest level of vocabulary knowledge tested—meaning recall. These findings indicate that reading ahead may reflect the critical alignment between auditory input, orthographic decoding, and phonological encoding processes during reading, thereby facilitating faster processing when reading ahead than not reading ahead, as well as form-meaning mapping for new words.

This study, grounded in critical disability studies, explores ableism in language education and its impact on Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students learning English as a foreign or third language (L3). Using interpretative phenomenological analysis, the lived experiences of 14 Iranian DHH undergraduate students, proficient in Esharani (sign language used by the Iranian Deaf community) and Persian, were analyzed. Participants recounted their experiences with ableism in English education through interviews. Analyzing interviews resulted in the emergence of three key themes: a) lack of awareness of (dis)ability and ableism throughout their English education, b) the prevalence of overt and covert ableism viewing deafness as a marker of “otherness,” and c) the need for advocacy and more inclusive practices and environments for DHH learners acquiring L3. This study highlights the challenges DHH learners face in L3 acquisition and calls for more inclusive language education policies to better support disabled students.

This study investigates whether adult learners can simultaneously acquire the sounds, words, and grammar of a novel language through cross-situational statistical learning (CSL). English-speaking participants were exposed to an artificial language with unfamiliar phonology and varying morphological salience. Results showed measurable acquisition of nouns and verbs, but limited learning of adjectives and case markers. Importantly, only participants in the high-salience condition showed sensitivity to morphosyntactic violations, suggesting that perceptual salience enhances awareness of grammatical structure. A word–picture matching task revealed that learners encoded phonolexical forms imprecisely: while clearly deviant items were rejected, minimally different lures were often accepted. Finally, individual differences in phonolexical precision were only weakly associated with phonetic discrimination ability. These findings demonstrate the power and limits of CSL in second-language learning and highlight the importance of perceptual cues for acquiring complex L2 structure.

This study investigates whether the second language (L2) development of d/Deaf and hard of hearing (d/DHH) learners in comparison to the L2 development of hearing learners, based on the processability theory (PT) developed by Pienemann (1998, 2005) in the field of second language acquisition (SLA). Thirty-eight d/DHH and 32 hearing secondary school learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) completed a series of speaking tasks designed to elicit specific morphosyntactic structures that, according to PT, align with L2 developmental stages. Implicational scaling revealed that although d/DHH learners followed a similar developmental sequence to their peers, they displayed a noticeable delay. They also appeared to require additional time and practice to fully produce the entire target structures after reaching certain developmental stages. The results provide stronger empirical evidence for d/DHH learners’ L2 development, supporting the qualitative similarity hypothesis in the field of special education, which posits that despite quantitative delays, d/DHH learners exhibit qualitatively similar L2 development to their hearing peers.

This study investigated the effects of contextual diversity (CD) on second language incidental vocabulary learning. A total of 124 Japanese learners of English were allocated to a control group or 2 experimental groups, either a high contextual diversity (HCD) or a low contextual diversity (LCD) group. Participants in the HCD group encountered target words across three different texts that varied in genre and topic, while those in the LCD group read three different texts that shared the same genre and topic. Meaning recall and recognition tests were conducted at pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed posttest. Results showed that HCD outperformed LCD on meaning recognition at the delayed posttest. Moreover, learners with greater prior vocabulary knowledge tended to benefit more from contextually varied input, whereas such input may have adverse effects on learners with lower lexical proficiency. This study offers insights into the role of CD in incidental vocabulary acquisition and provides pedagogical implications for optimally incorporating input variability into L2 vocabulary instruction.