Language Teaching Research Quarterly

The ability to use languages to communicate distinguishes humans from other living things. In language production, two sources of information play a crucial role: a conceptual (semantic) message and a sequence of syntactic states mapped onto an ordered sequence of words. This concept of language production applies to both the native language of the speaker and the second language. Therefore, one question arises as to why second language learners cannot equally master both their second language (L2) and first language (L1). In our research, we investigate second language learning within the linguistic and language production framework. We explain language competence by knowledge of paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations, and we can apply the lexical approach for language learning to reach such competence. With this basis, we have designed an educational web application for second language learning, Bite-sized English, that incorporates the learning of words and phrases hands-in-hands with grammar. Bite-sized English consists of two parts: “Take a Bite”, where users learn lexical chunks from authentic texts, and “Lingua Kitchen”, where learners can build their own lexicon and practice usage in contexts.