EFL learners in two countries participated in two parallel experiments testing whether retention of vocabulary acquired incidentally is contingent on amount of taskinduced involvement. Short-and long-term retention of ten unfamiliar words was investigated in three learning tasks (reading comprehension, comprehension plus filling in target words, and composition-writing with target words) with varying "involvement loads"-various combinations of need, search, and evaluation. Time-on-task, regarded as inherent to a task, differed among all three tasks. As predicted, amount of retention was related to amount of task-induced involvement load: Retention was highest in the composition task, lower in reading plus fill-in, and lowest in the reading. These results are discussed in light of the construct of task-induced involvement.

Intentional and incidental second-language vocabulary learning: A reappraisal of elaboration, rehearsal and automaticity Hulstijn, J.H.

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Dutch advanced students of French read a French short story in one of three text reading conditions: Marginal Glosses (provision of L1 translations of unknown words), Dictionary (opportunity to use a bilingual dictionary), or Control. After reading, students were tested for their recall of 16 words that had appeared either once or three times in the text. Support was found for the hypothesis that frequency of occurrence will foster incidental vocabulary learning more when advanced second language (L2) readers are given the meanings of unknown words through marginal glosses or when they look up meanings in a dictionary than when no external information concerning unknown words' meanings is available. In the former case, reappearance of a word will reinforce the form‐meaning connection in the reader's mental lexicon. In the latter case, readers will often ignore unknown words or incorrectly infer their meanings, which will limit the frequency effect. This article ends with recommendations for teachers and researchers.

In second language (L2) research and testing, measures of oral fluency are used as diagnostics for proficiency. However, fluency is also determined by personality or speaking style, raising the question to what extent L2 fluency measures are valid indicators of L2 proficiency. In this study, we obtained a measure of L2 (Dutch) proficiency (vocabulary knowledge), L2 fluency measures, and fluency measures that were corrected for first language behavior from the same group of Turkish and English native speakers (N = 51). For most measures of fluency, except for silent pause duration, both the corrected and the uncorrected measures significantly predicted L2 proficiency. For syllable duration, the corrected measure was a stronger predictor of L2 proficiency than was the uncorrected measure. We conclude that for L2 research purposes, as well as for some types of L2 testing, it is useful to obtain corrected measures of syllable duration to measure L2-specific fluency.Imagine two immigrants who have learned to speak Dutch as their second language (L2), let us say Oscar and Mark. Both have acquired Dutch after adolescence and find themselves at an intermediate level of oral proficiency. However, they happen to differ in their level of speaking fluency: Compared to other speakers, Mark seems to use many filled pauses ("uhms") in his L2 speech, whereas Oscar only uses a few filled pauses. Should we therefore conclude that Oscar and Mark operate at different levels of oral proficiency, evidenced by the different levels of speaking fluency? Now imagine that we also know how they speak in their native (first) language (L1). It turns out that Oscar rarely uses a filled pause in his L1 speech, whereas Mark exhibits many filled pauses in his L1. Can we still conclude that

The goal of this study was to explain individual differences in both native and non‐native listening comprehension; 121 native and 113 non‐native speakers of Dutch were tested on various linguistic and nonlinguistic cognitive skills thought to underlie listening comprehension. Structural equation modeling was used to identify the predictors of individual differences in listening comprehension and to test for differences between the native and non‐native participants. Listening comprehension for native speakers was found to be a function of knowledge of the language and the efficiency with which one can process linguistic information, while listening comprehension for non‐native speakers was a function of knowledge and reasoning ability. Working Memory did not explain unique variance in listening comprehension in either group. Differences in experience with the Dutch language are likely to explain the observed pattern of results for both groups.

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There are good theoretical and educational reasons to place matters of implicit and explicit learning high on the agenda for SLA research. As for theoretical motivations, perhaps the most central issue in SLA theory construction in need of explanation is the differential success in one's first language (L1) and in one's second language (L2). Although acquisition of an L1 results in full mastery of the language (provided that children are exposed to sufficient quantities of input and do not suffer from mental disabilities), learners of an L2—even after many years of L2 exposure—differ widely in level of attainment. How can we explain universal success in the case of L1 acquisition and differential success in the case of L2 acquisition? Among the many explanations that have been proposed, including brain maturation and brain adaptation processes (critical period), access to Universal Grammar, L1 interference, and sociopsychological factors (see Hyltenstam & Abrahamsson, 2003, for a review), one finds explanations that involve the notions of implicit and explicit learning. Scholars working in different disciplines, in different theoretical schools, and sometimes using different terminology have argued that L1 acquisition (or at least the acquisition of L1 grammar) relies principally on processes of what we might now call implicit learning, whereas the acquisition of an L2 often relies on both implicit and explicit learning (Bley-Vroman, 1991; DeKeyser, 2003; N. Ellis, this issue; R. Ellis, 2004; Krashen, 1981; Reber & Allen, 2000).I am grateful to Rod Ellis for his thoughtful comments on previous versions of this text.