Assessments can provide instructors and students with valuable information regarding student's level of knowledge and understanding, in order to improve both teaching and learning. In this study, we analyzed departmental assessment quizzes given to students at the start of Organic Chemistry 2, over an eight year period. This assessment quiz was…

A body of previous work in second- and foreign language pronunciation instruction (e.g., Lord, 2005; Miller, 2012) has shown that explicit phonetic and pronunciation instruction is beneficial. However, Olson (2014) noted that just a few minutes per week of instruction are devoted to pronunciation in most classrooms. What is the effect of such…

This study investigated the effects of Facebook and Twitter on foreign language (Chinese) learners' written production in both short- (10 days) and long-term (50 days) pseudo-experimental settings. Adopting two concepts (i.e. symmetric vs. asymmetric) from matrix theory in social network analysis, we categorized Facebook as a symmetric social…

This study investigates pragmatic development among Chinese EFL learners, with reference to accuracy improvement in grammar. Sixty college students in mainland China were pre- and post-tested on their pragmatic and grammatical comprehension and production over one academic year. Their test results were compared with those of 14 native English…

The current study longitudinally examined the influence of aptitude on second language (L2) pronunciation development when 40 first-year Japanese university students engaged in practice activities inside and outside English-as-a-Foreign-Language classrooms over one academic year. Spontaneous speech samples were elicited at the beginning, middle,…

Han's (2009, 2013) selective fossilization hypothesis (SFH) claims that L1 markedness and L2 input robustness determine the fossilizability (and learnability) of an L2 feature. To test the validity of the model, a pseudo-longitudinal study was designed in which the errors in the argumentative essays of 52 Iranian EFL learners were identified and…

In this study we focused on the spelling of high-functioning students with dyslexia. We made a detailed classification of the errors in a word and sentence dictation task made by 100 students with dyslexia and 100 matched control students. All participants were in the first year of their bachelor's studies and had Dutch as mother tongue. Three…

The 2012 edition of the "Digest of Education Statistics" is the 48th in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The "Digest" has been issued annually except for combined editions for the years 1977-78, 1983-84, and 1985-86. Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field…

The 2011 edition of the "Digest of Education Statistics" is the 47th in a series of publications initiated in 1962. The "Digest" has been issued annually except for combined editions for the years 1977-78, 1983-84, and 1985-86. Its primary purpose is to provide a compilation of statistical information covering the broad field…