Local tour guides' English speaking competence determines inbound international tourists' travel experiences. This study investigated student tour guides' English learning by adopting role-play tasks. The communicative tasks were designed to explore how real interactions prepared English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners to become cultural…

The orientation toward a knowledge-based economy has led to the increasing need to pursue advanced degrees to further improve one's competitiveness in society. Research on postgraduate programs has thus sparked interest from multiple perspectives, among which, generated written artifacts such as dissertations have become the center of attention.…

MA students often find writing the discussion section of a thesis (hereafter discussion writing) a difficult task (Bitchener & Basturkmen, 2006). Thesis advisors, research writing instructors, and graduate students are able to recognize the strength and weakness of discussion writing through established levels of quality. Therefore, grading…

This study examined the effects of identity revelation and concealment on the number of times students' work was assessed in an online peer assessment context. It also examined the underlying reasons guiding the assessor's targeting behavior. Two fifth-grade classes participated. The one-group pretest-posttest experimental research design coupled…

This study reports the development of a scale to evaluate the speech act performance by intermediate-level Chinese learners of English. A qualitative analysis of the American raters' comments was conducted on learner scripts in response to a total of 16 apology and request written discourse completion task (WDCT) situations. The results showed…