Reading, whether the reader's First language, L1 or Second language, L2, is a cognitive enterprise, and it can be treated as a result of the interaction among the reader, the text, and the context. Metacognitive strategies refer to the behaviours applied by learners to plan, arrange, and evaluate their learning. This study aimed to investigate…

This study investigated the effect of formulaic language on L2 learners' ability to decode words in listening texts. One possibility was that formulas would facilitate listening by reducing the need to process every word of the sequences. However, a contrasting possibility was that the commonly reduced nature of formulaic words would hinder…

Students in South East Asia often struggle with English /l/ and /r/. This study therefore set out to examine how Taiwanese pupils' perception of these sounds is influenced by cross-language effects. Most Taiwanese students have Mandarin as L1 and Taiwanese as L2 or vice versa, and English as L3. A same-different discrimination experiment was…

While theories of embodied cognition have been investigated in lab experiments with proficient readers, currently no studies have applied these theories to improving reading comprehension for low-proficiency readers. Using an embodied cognition approach, this study investigated producing comics as an embodied reading activity. To compare effects…

This study investigated whether video-based materials can facilitate second language learners' text comprehension at the levels of macrostructure and microstructure. Three classes inclusive of 98 Chinese-speaking university students joined this study. The three classes were randomly assigned to three treatment groups: on-screen text (T Group),…

This article reports an empirical study investigating L2 acquisition of the Mandarin Chinese "shì…de" cleft construction by adult English-speaking learners within the framework of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2009). A Sentence Completion task, an interpretation task, two Acceptability Judgement tasks, and a felicity…

Idiom transparency refers to how speakers think the meaning of the individual words contributes to the figurative meaning of an idiom as a whole (Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting, 1989). However, it is not clear how speakers or language learners form their assumptions about an idiom's transparency level. This study set out to discover whether there are…

English as foreign language (EFL) writers are often found to have weaker control of their academic writing, among which presenting an effective authorial stance has been reported as particularly challenging (Hyland, 1998a; Schleppegrell, 2004). In particular, student writers tended to deploy a stronger stance and be less effective with tentative…

The present research aims to identify the underlying English listening belief structure of English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners, thereby informing methodologies for subsequent analysis of beliefs with respect to listening achievement. Development of a measurement model of English listening learning beliefs entailed the creation of an…

English education in Taiwan has experienced a number of modifications over the past decade. The Ministry of Education (MOE) has initiated several reforms since 1994 with a purpose of changing the pedagogy, focusing on grammar-translation, to a more communicative one aim at cultivating learners of greater communication proficiency for the demands…

This study investigated which level of graded reader was most appropriate for Chinese-speaking learners of various English abilities and whether there were significant differences in comprehension and vocabulary acquisition when different English proficiency (EP) groups read texts of varying difficulty levels. Eight-two senior high school students…

This study explored language shift and accommodation among bilingual Mandarin and Tai-gi (also called Hokkien, Holo, Tai-gu, Taiwan Min, Taiwanese) families in Taiwan. From the 1940s until the 1980s the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Taiwan promoted Mandarin Chinese. Recent years have witnessed a shift in policy: since 2001 elementary schools…