This study investigates the impact of an online workbook on the attitudes of 245 second language (L2) Spanish learners toward this pedagogical tool over two consecutive semesters. The treatment consisted of four hours of classroom instruction and one set of online homework per week, during two consecutive semesters. Students' attitudes toward the electronic workbook were measured by means of a survey administered after eight months of exposure to the workbook. The qualitative data of the survey was compared to quantitative data from two different language assessment tests. The results of these tests indicated a significant increase in grammar scores. These results are consonant with the positive findings of student perceptions about the online workbook obtained in this and previous studies, emphasizing its benefits in terms of accessibility to the material, user-friendliness, and instant error feedback. More importantly, most students praised the usefulness of the online workbook for language learning, particularly in the areas of grammar and vocabulary acquisition. Despite participants' mostly positive attitudes, the survey also revealed some negative aspects of the use of the online workbook, such as the amount of time needed to complete the online exercises. This paper addresses these issues, and provides suggestions to overcome this type of problem.

This investigation is inspired by an interest in the contact/contracting grammars of heritage speakers of Spanish who have experienced prolonged exposure to English in the United States and, in particular, what their linguistic performance reveals of their knowledge of lexical subclasses and discursive properties associated with ordering of sentential constituents in the Spanish language. Analysis of data obtained for 24 participants on diverse measures of interpretation and production of unergative and un accusative predicates and Topicalization and Clitic Left Dislocation constructions indicate that while properties of the core syntax (e.g., properties of TP, AgrS, and AgrO) remain robust, properties of the lexico-and discursive-semantic interface may be vulnerable to attrition or respecification.

This article extends recent findings that presenting semantically related vocabulary simultaneously inhibits learning. It does so by adding story contexts. Participants learned 32 new labels for known concepts from four different semantic categories in stories that were either semantically related (one category per story) or semantically unrelated (four categories per story). They then completed a semantic-categorization task, followed by a stimulus-match verification task in an eye-tracker. Results suggest that there may be a slight learning advantage in the semantically unrelated condition. However, our findings are better interpreted in terms of how learning occurred and how vocabulary was processed afterward. Additionally, our results suggest that contextual support from the stories may have surmounted much of the disadvantage attributed to semantic relatedness.Semantic Categories and L2 Vocabulary foreign language textbooks. Usually, students are presented with a particular topic or situation (e.g., food, professions, vacations, and so on) and they are given lists of words and pictures that are most commonly related to the particular topic or situation. The vocabulary is then semantically related. This method of presentation is also viewed as an effective tool for vocabulary acquisition and retention by researchers such as Gairns and Redman (1986), Nattinger (1988), Stahl andNagy (2006), andGraves (2006), who believe that presenting two words that are semantically related not only helps a learner to become aware of the similarities in meaning but also to determine and remember the differences between them. However, when analyzing recent work on the effects of semantic relatedness on second-language (L2) vocabulary learning, it is clear that this method, in spite of its continual popularity and reported effectiveness, may hinder the learning process. Considering the essential role that semantics plays in L2 vocabulary learning even at the earliest stages of acquisition (Altarriba & Mathis, 1997), it is important to investigate this area in more depth. The purpose of this study is to address this issue by expanding on existing research on the effects of semantic relatedness on L2 vocabulary acquisition. Semantic Relatedness and Context in L2 Vocabulary LearningThe existing body of research in the area of semantic relatedness and L2 vocabulary learning has shown that exposing learners to semantically related words may hinder their ability to learn them effectively. For example, Tinkham (1993) determined that L2 learners were able to learn words that were not semantically related faster than those that were. In his study, 20 English speakers were asked to learn and orally recall sets of three semantically related and unrelated nonwords (paired with their English counterparts) and two sets of six semantically related and unrelated nonwords (also accompanied by an English translation). In both experiments, the participants were able to learn and recall the semantically unrelated set faster than the semantically re...

This article describes the first part of a study that explores the metaphorical language used by 64 second language (L2) Spanish and English as a foreign language (EFL) pre‐ and inservice teaching assistants and instructors in their conceptualization of L2 teachers and students. The article investigates the philosophical perspective embedded in their discourse and differences based on experience, academic background, and culture. The results of the study show the prevalence of the conduit metaphor in most participants' conceptualizations despite differing experience and academic and cultural backgrounds, except for a group of EFT teachers. The article also addresses similarities and differences and the role of metaphors in instructors' practice.