To examine the utility of spoken dialog systems (SDSs) for learning and low-stakes assessment, we administered the same role-play task in two different modalities to a group of 47 tertiary-level learners of English. Each participant completed the task in an SDS setting with a fully automated agent and engaged in the same task with a human…

Online participatory cultures (e.g. social media) present a number of opportunities and challenges for language learners. Learners can collaborate with like-minded peers in online affinity spaces or get crowd-sourced information from the locals of a target culture, but they also run the risk of getting lost in the overwhelming amount of noise and…

Regarding the whispered use of technology in instruction and assessment of language skills, the present study investigates the effect of e-portfolio assessment on EFL learners' speaking proficiency. To this end, 60 intermediate students were randomly selected and homogenized to participate in the study. Samples of the IELTS speaking tests were…

This study reports on the results of a semester-long Chinese-American telecollaborative exchange via WeChat, in which students from China and the U.S. shared thematically similar songs in their respective languages and discussed relevant cultural topics that were suggested by the students. Various types of qualitative data collected from the…

Web-based writing tools, which allow multiple writers to share and edit the same document, have attracted significant attention as computer-assisted language learning tools in the past decade. However, how L2 writers contribute to the shared document as a social action for interacting with other cowriters remains underexplored in L2 research.…

By using small focus group discussions, the present study aims to gain insight into students' perceptions about the impact of WhatsApp use in their learning process. More specifically, this study presents a cross-cultural analysis of British and Spanish university students' personal beliefs about the effectiveness of using WhatsApp to complete…

This study examines EFL students' metacognitive strategy use in a university flipped classroom and the underlying factors of metacognitive strategy use. The participants in our study were students enrolled in an elective English course at a university in Taiwan, where they had to watch online course videos outside of class and participate in…

This study examined the online exchanges of 28 pre-service foreign language teachers (14 in Russia, 14 in the US) as they discussed in English their opinions about cultural products, practices, and perspectives, and their study abroad experiences via voice-based telecollaboration. Informed by intercultural competence frameworks, a qualitative…

The present study investigated the effects of group set-up in a semester-long telecollaborative discussion forum project in second-semester German. In order to explore whether group set-up affects learning in discussion forums, small groups of non-native speakers (NNS) of German were partnered either with native speakers (NS), other NNS with the…

Computer-mediated collaborative writing has been increasingly implemented in L2 contexts due to wider awareness of affordances and benefits of Web 2.0 technologies. A systematic review of empirical studies over the recent decade is called forth in order to arouse broadened knowledge and provide new insights in this promising area. This study…