This study aims to provide a comprehensive profile of collocational competence, a key component of one's overall linguistic competence. For the maximum of ecological validity, we elicited naturalistic oral/written production data from 84 Chinese intermediate EFL learners and performed a 2×2 fashion of analysis on their performance in each of the…

As an important practice for researchers, citing sources is a challenging task for undergraduate students as they deal with the types of citation forms, the variety of reporting verbs and their tenses, and the writer stances through reporting verbs. Therefore, the current research is aimed at investigating the surface forms, reporting verb tenses,…

Neural Machine Translation (NMT) has gained increasing popularity among EFL learners as a CALL tool to improve vocabulary, and many learners have reported its helpfulness for vocabulary learning. However, while there has been some evidence suggesting NMT's facilitative role in improving learners' writing on the lexical level, no study has examined…

The current study comparatively investigated the employment of metadiscourse items in 40 post-method sections/chapters of research articles (RAs) and master's dissertations (MAs) in the field of applied linguistics. Utilizing Hyland's (2005a) model of metadiscourse in analysing metadiscourse elements detected in both sets of texts, the findings…

Collocations, a crucial component of language competence, remain a challenge for L2 learners across all proficiency levels. While the data-driven learning (DDL) approach has shown great potential for collocation learning from a shorter-term perspective, this study investigates its effectiveness in the long term, examining both linguistic gains and…

The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in L2 teaching and learning is poised to revolutionise educational practices by enhancing both instructional methods and language development for L2 learners. This study employed a mixed-methods design to comprehensively examine the impact of AI tools, machine translation systems, and traditional…

In order to facilitate the instruction and acquisition of EFL writing, this paper compares the uses of the light verb "get" in English writing by Chinese and L1 undergraduates by drawing on insights from the theory of norms and exploitations (TNE). Corpus pattern analysis (CPA) is conducted to analyze the data taken from two comparable…

China has had an ambivalent policy for the learning and teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL) over much of its history. The explicit and implicit implementation of language policy has had a significant impact on the content of EFL textbooks and the ideologies underlying them. However, studies exploring such ideologies remain sensitive…

As technology advances, and more students have constant access to cell phones, laptops and tablets inside the classroom, the use of machine translation (MT) by language learners will continue to rise. Therefore, in order for instructors to better design courses they should strive to understand how students are using machine translation, as well as…

Despite the growing recognition of corpus in language teaching and learning, the importance of teaching materials informed by corpus investigation has not been widely acknowledged, especially in the EFL context. In teaching grammar, it is essential to provide authentic materials for the learners indicating both grammaticality and appropriateness.…

Despite the growing interest in AI for language assessment, there remains a significant research gap regarding its usefulness for assessing less proficient language skills, particularly those of learners of English as a second or foreign language (S/FL). AI models often prioritize proficient writing, neglecting the intricacies of learner language.…

Videoshadowing is a synchronous video-collaboration practice for learning foreign languages and cultures; it is related to the field of digital ethnography applied to the development of communicative competence. The study discusses this methodology's strengths as an interpretative and reflective approach; emic perception linguistic data are…

This study examines the efficacy and motivational implications of the word-count tracking strategy as a viable teaching strategy for improving writing output among Saudi EFL undergraduates. An intensive writing program was conducted at the English Department Al-Majmaah University with two groups who were taught through two different approaches.…

This research investigates disciplinary variations using syntactic features in Pakistani academic writing (AW). The corpus of this research is developed from 160 dissertations across four disciplinary divisions and analyzed through AntConc. Results reveal heterogeneous and homogenous use of the said features. Heterogeneity is seen in relation to…

Dissertation introductions (DIs) have received on-going attention because they are considered to be the most challenging and difficult part of an academic text for graduate students, particularly for non-native English speakers (NNES). However, research that has investigated DIs written by native English speakers (NES) and by NNES, particularly…