Abstract This study investigates the serial mediation effect of motivated behavior on L2 grammar attainment, mediated by self-efficacy and self-regulation, among Polish and Iranian university students. A total of 766 participants, 380 Polish and 386 Iranian L2 learners, were recruited to explore these relationships. Data were collected by means of self-report instruments and a researcher-developed grammar test. Descriptive statistics, measurement invariance testing, and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used to analyze the data. The findings revealed a positive direct effect of motivated behavior on self-efficacy and self-regulation, which in turn exerted a positive influence on grammar attainment. Measurement invariance testing confirmed that the constructs were interpreted similarly across both cultural groups. These results support the proposed serial mediation model, suggesting that motivated behavior fosters grammar learning through the development of self-efficacy and self-regulation. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying L2 grammar learning and offers valuable insights for pedagogy.
Abstract Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) has gained prominence in additional language education for its focus on fostering communicative competence through meaningful, real-world tasks. However, there are few longitudinal studies comparing the outcomes of TBLT with those of form-focused instruction (Boers & Faez, 2026). It is not yet clear to what extent TBLT supports the development of explicit linguistic knowledge alongside task-specific communicative proficiency. This issue is especially relevant in educational contexts where students’ progress is evaluated through high-stakes (explicit) language knowledge assessments. This quasi-experimental study reports on a yearlong comparative evaluation of a TBLT Business English course in a Chinese college and examines its effectiveness compared to a task-supported course. Student ( N = 80) learning outcomes were assessed through both task-based and discrete lexicogrammatical measures. Findings show that TBLT was at least equally effective in building students’ lexical and grammatical knowledge, and more effective in developing task-specific speaking proficiency.
The field of L2 research is going through a shift toward greater openness. However, many widely promoted open research practices, such as replication and preregistration, originated in response to the reproducibility crisis in psychology and map unevenly onto qualitative research. This critical review synthesizes literature from L2 research and neighboring fields to examine open research from a qualitative perspective. We organize the review around five key debates, including replication, preregistration, data sharing, data reuse, and publication policy. Taken together, these debates reveal the complexity of openness in qualitative inquiry and show both points of convergence and tension. We identify an emerging trend from principled resistance to principled engagement in the literature, with transparency standing out as a unifying principle. Building on these insights, we propose the situated-openness framework that serves as a heuristic for qualitative researchers to consider how to practice open scholarship in alignment with their own epistemological and ontological commitments.
Abstract The widespread early teaching of English in primary schools has prompted extensive research on young learners’ proficiency and assessment. However, studies exploring young learners’ development in spoken language features—especially in relation to background and contextual factors in EFL settings—are still limited. This longitudinal study examined the development of young foreign language learners (ages 10–12) in various linguistic dimensions of speaking (i.e., fluency, pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and content) over 6 months and investigated how these changes related to their educational context and background variables. A total of 102 young foreign language learners from three different educational contexts in Mexico took the speaking section of the TOEFL Primary® test at both the start and end of the 6 months. They also completed background questionnaires at the beginning, midpoint, and end of the study. Results indicated that learners in the advantaged educational contexts outperformed those with limited resources on most linguistic features of speaking, and that learners with lower initial proficiency made greater gains in all spoken linguistic features. These findings offer important insights for school administrators and curriculum developers.
Abstract Secondary research, such as meta-analyses, has become a crucial research approach across various fields, including second and foreign language (hereafter L2) research. However, the application of secondary data analysis to qualitative data in L2 research remains limited. In this article, we aim to contribute to this underexplored area of L2 research by discussing the potential of secondary qualitative data analysis, with a particular focus on reanalysis-based secondary qualitative data analysis. We first provide an overview of open science and an introduction to the concept of secondary research. Then, we introduce a framework for conducting reanalysis-based secondary qualitative data analysis by using the actual dataset from Sunardi et al., (2025) as an illustrative example. The framework includes (a) clarifying research goals and plans, (b) preregistering the research, (c) conducting the analysis, and (d) presenting and reflecting on the results. The proposed framework integrates existing research and serves as an initial model for the secondary qualitative analysis of reanalyzed data. It aims to encourage further research into this approach as a valuable methodological avenue for advancing second language acquisition research.
