This book examines key issues in theories of what language is and what happens in the mind during second language acquisition. Chapters provide cutting-edge insights and new empirical findings spanning formal and cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics and second language development, to understand the role of learner-internal factors in SLA.

This book presents a study of literacy practices and language use of students of Japanese outside of the classroom, both in class-related and voluntary activities. It discusses how values, motivations and types of activities differ between the two contexts and concludes that slight changes to teaching practices may enhance autonomous learning.

This book is one of the few empirical studies to capture an in-depth understanding of the study abroad experiences of newly-arrived international students in higher education. It closely examines their changing learning goals, underlying motivations and strategy uses during both short and long academic programmes in a study abroad context.

The comprehension, retention and production of idiomatic expressions is one of the most difficult areas of the lexicon for second language learners to master. This book investigates this under-researched and interesting aspect of language acquisition, shedding light on conventional uses of idiomatic expressions as well as creative variant forms.