This study examined whether direct communication with people from other countries using Skype or Line would affect students' English test scores in listening and reading as well as the development of their curiosity concerning foreign cultures by comparing the data of an experimental group with that of a control group. The former group conducted…

In this study we used grounded theory framework to explore how preparation for studying abroad affects the academic success of East Asian undergraduate students in U.S. universities. Based on interviews with 12 participants from China, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan, we found that knowledge of English language and American culture, which is…

The purpose of this pilot study was to evaluate the effect of Story Telling and retelling and higher order thinking for "E"nglish "L"anguage and "L"iteracy "A"cquisition (STELLA) on the English oral proficiency of elementary students in Mainland China and Taiwan, where English is taught as a foreign…

This study investigates the effects on developing L2 listening fluency through doing extended listening-focused activities after reading and listening to audio graded readers. Seventy-six EFL university students read and listened to a total of 15 graded readers in a 15-week extensive listening programme. They were divided into three groups (Group…

Automated scoring by means of Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) has been introduced lately to improve the traditional human scoring system. The purposes of the present study were to develop a LSA-based assessment system to evaluate children's Chinese sentence construction skills and to examine the effectiveness of LSA-based automated scoring function…

Thus far, few research studies have examined the practice of integrated speaking test tasks in the field of second/foreign language oral assessment. This dissertation utilized structural equation modeling (SEM) and qualitative techniques to explore the relationships among topical knowledge, anxiety, and integrated speaking test performance and to…

Public speaking can be very threatening to any native speakers of English, not to mention non-native EFL learners. Impromptu speech, perhaps the most challenging form of public speaking, is however being promoted in every city of the EFL countries. The case in Taiwan is no exceptional. Every year, dozens of impromptu speech contexts are held…