This study examined the effects of pretask training to promote peer collaboration, encourage learning opportunities, and foster individual L2 writing development in web-based L2 collaborative writing (CW) tasks. The participants were 48 students from two junior English composition classes at a Taiwanese university. One class (n = 24) was assigned…

Adopting the approaches of "pattern hunting" and "pattern refining" (Kennedy & Miceli, 2001, 2010, 2017), this study investigates how seven freshman English students from Taiwan used the Corpus of Contemporary American English to discover collocation patterns for 30 near-synonymous change-of-state verbs and new ideas about…

This study investigated the effect of wiki-mediated collaborative writing on the development of learners' individual writing in a second language (L2). Participants were 52 learners of English as a foreign language enrolled in two intact junior writing classes at a Taiwanese university. One class was assigned to be a wiki-collaborative writing…

The purposes of the current study are to develop virtually immersive EFL learning contexts for EFL learners in Taiwan to pre- and review English materials beyond the regular English class schedule. A 2-iteration action research lasting for one semester was conducted to evaluate the effects of virtual contexts on learners' EFL learning. 132…

Numerous researchers in education recognize that vocabulary is essential in foreign language learning. However, students often encounter vocabulary that is difficult to remember. Providing effective vocabulary learning strategies is therefore more valuable than teaching students a large amount of vocabulary. The purpose of this study was to…

The aim of this study was to determine the effects of different types of language tasks performed in Second Life (SL) on the oral performance of beginners of Chinese as a Second Language (CSL), focusing on oral accuracy. The 30 CSL beginners who participated in this study were randomly divided into two groups (n = 15 per group), required to…

The present study incorporates a student response system (SRS) as a means to engage students in a flipped classroom and promote active learning. While the effectiveness of such systems with regard to student learning has been well documented in disciplines that are dominated by lecture-based instruction, no studies have compared the effectiveness…

This study explores the relevance of multimodality to critical media literacy. It is based on the understanding that communication is intrinsically multimodal and multimodal communication is inherently social and ideological. By analysing two English-language learners' multimodal ensembles, the study reports on how multimodality contributes to a…

This meta-analysis reports the results of a systematic synthesis of primary studies on the effectiveness of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in second language acquisition (SLA) for the period 2000-2012. By extracting information on 21 features from each primary study, this meta-analysis intends to summarize the CMC research literature for…

The current study investigated the effects of different computer-supported cooperative prewriting strategies (text-based brainstorming, drawing, and mind mapping) on the writing performance of elementary-school EFL (English as a foreign language) learners in Taiwan. Three intact classes of fifth graders (N = 81 students; 27 per prewriting strategy…

The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Second Life (SL) for improving the oral output of overseas Chinese students learning Mandarin Chinese (hereafter referred to as Mandarin). More than 1000 overseas Chinese students attend a university in northern Taiwan every year to learn Mandarin as a heritage language after graduating…

This paper reports the results of an action research-based study that adapted a mobile-supported cooperative reading system into regular English as a foreign language (EFL) classes at one Taiwanese elementary school. The current study was comprised of two stages: adaptation and evaluation. During the adaptation stage, a mobile-supported…

Behind CALL teacher education (CTE) there is an unproblematized consensus of transfer, which suggests a positivist and tool-centered view of learning gains that differs from the sociocultural focus of recent teacher education research. Drawing on Beach's (2003) conceptualization of transfer as "consequential transition," this qualitative…

Automated writing evaluation (AWE) software is designed to provide instant computer-generated scores for a submitted essay along with diagnostic feedback. Most studies on AWE have been conducted on psychometric evaluations of its validity; however, studies on how effectively AWE is used in writing classes as a pedagogical tool are limited. This…

The purpose of this experimental study was to compare the effects of different types of computer-generated visuals (static versus animated) and advance organizers (descriptive versus question) in enhancing comprehension and retention of a content-based lesson for learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Additionally, the study investigated…