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Objective: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is one of the most prevalent behavioural disorders among children in which L1 impairments are often displayed. There is a conventional assumption that ADHD-diagnosed children experience difficulties in L2 development as well. The present research aimed at investigating possible L2-related behaviours of ADHD-diagnosed children.Methods: To track L2 profiles among ADHD children, this mixed methods study examined L2 learning performance of ADHD-diagnosed children in terms of English phonological, lexical, and syntactic development compared with typically developing children. To this end, 10 ADHD-diagnosed and 10 typically-developing children were recruited from a public primary school located in Kerman, Iran, throughout the 2022-2023 academic year. The participants were then assigned to two experimental groups and given the English instructions with the same instructor. Results: The quantitative results showed that ADHD-diagnosed learners underperformed the typically-developing learners in all phonological, morphological, and syntactic production and recognition tests. However, the only significant difference was in the phonological recognition test (p = 0.04). Also, the qualitative results demonstrated that both groups were almost equally engaged in classroom interactions.Conclusion: The findings highlighted the importance of speech processing and sustained attention in lexical and syntactic learning ability among ADHD students. The implications of the study for L2 instructors were discussed.

Abstract The present study developed a model of L2 speaking proficiency investigating how lexical sophistication, lexical diversity, syntactic sophistication, syntactic complexity, and cohesion are associated with holistic scores of L2 speaking proficiency employing structural equation modeling (SEM). A corpus of 419 monologues delivered by Iranian EFL learners was compiled and rated to develop the model. Based on the overall scores, the corpus was divided into independent (B1 and B2) and proficient (C1 and C2) users. The results of SEM analysis revealed that the developed L2 speaking proficiency model had an acceptable fit, with partial generalizability across independent and proficient users. Structural regression analysis showed that lexical diversity, lexical sophistication, syntactic sophistication, cohesion, and the indirect effect of syntactic complexity through lexical sophistication explained 34% of the variance in L2 speaking proficiency in descending order of importance. However, their relative importance changed depending on proficiency level. Based on the results, while lexical, syntactic, and cohesive features are sound predictors of L2 speaking proficiency, they function differently across proficiency groups. These findings offer valuable insights for improving speaking proficiency assessment by showing that lexical sophistication, lexical diversity, syntactic sophistication, syntactic complexity, and cohesion do not contribute equally to overall L2 speaking proficiency, and their order of importance varies across proficiency levels. Therefore, prioritizing indicators of L2 speaking proficiency in assessment frameworks based on their importance in each proficiency level can add to the validity and reliability of speaking assessments.