Despite undeniable advances in research on language learning strategies in the last several decades, empirical investigations of actions and thoughts that learners engage in to better understand and use grammar structures in different contexts, or grammar learning strategies (GLS), remain scarce. Moreover, there is a paucity of studies examining…

This article applies the neuroscientific concept of embodied simulation--the process of understanding language through visual, motor, and spatial modalities of the body--to rhetorical grammar and sentence-style pedagogies. Embodied simulation invigorates rhetorical grammar instruction by attuning writers to the felt effects of written language,…

Having hardly learnt any English or having at best learnt wrong English (which is worse than no English) during their junior and secondary school years and having little or no exposure to English outside their classrooms, and partly due to certain weaknesses and shortcomings in what the teachers teach and how they teach, college students in some…

Nonnative speakers of a language are often at a disadvantage in producing extended speech, as they have differing native (L1) phonological systems and rhetorical traditions or little experience in giving talks. Prosody in the form of stress, rhythm, and intonation is a difficult but crucial area needed to master extended speech because prosody…

The purpose of this article was to look at some of the issues students have with reading and interpreting their instructors' post-secondary writing prompts. Every student, who attends a post-secondary institution, will at some point in their university/college career be asked to submit a writing assignment of some kind. The most common assignment…

College English writing is one of the four basic skills in English learning, which can objectively reflect students' language ability. Whereas, English writing is considered to be the most difficult part to improve. As we can see, in the essays of the Chinese college students, there often appears Chinglish, correct in grammar but unauthentic in…

Gamification of language learning is a clear trend of recent years. Widespread use of smartphones and the rise of mobile gaming as a popular leisure activity contribute to the popularity of gamification, as application developers can rely on an unprecedented reach of their products and expect acceptance of game-like elements by the users. In terms…

In this paper, we discuss the benefits of using online translators in the foreign language classroom. Specifically, we discuss how faulty online translator output can be used to create activities that help raise metalinguistic awareness of second language grammar and of the differences between grammatical constructions in the first and second…

Emphasis on universal learning activities of each student rather than acquisition of ready knowledge, as well as on how an individual masters a language necessitate the development and application of innovative technologies promoting functional-semantic and textual approaches. In the modern context, Russian language teachers, along with knowledge…

This paper describes the development of web-based software at a university in Spain to help students of EFL self-correct their free-form writing. The software makes use of an eighty-million-word corpus of English known to be correct as a normative corpus for error correction purposes. It was discovered that bigrams (two-word combinations of words)…

This paper introduces a Dialog-Based Computer-Assisted second-Language Learning (DB-CALL) system using semantic and grammar correctness evaluations and the results of its experiment. While the system dialogues with English learners about a given topic, it automatically evaluates the grammar and content properness of their English utterances, then…

The listening comprehension skill is frequently cited by both teachers and learners of a second language (L2) as perhaps the most difficult to deal with in any systematic way. One possible approach is to use the dictogloss task. This involves learners reconstructing a short text they have listened to. Originally developed to draw learners'…

Writing has an important role in science education and practice. Emphasizing the interdisciplinary collaboration between English rhetoric studies and biology, seemingly disparate disciplines, we describe a model for a scientific writing and communication course. The goals of the course were to prepare students for science-oriented careers, as well…

Many EFL teachers spend a lot of time marking students' written assignments and correcting their spelling, grammatical, punctuation, organization and idea generation errors in detail. The more students make mistakes, the more meticulously they mark and correct mistakes. Despite meticulous error correction, students continue to make the same…

Language learning within the context of service-learning presents a unique opportunity for students, educators, and community members alike. Most service-learning projects focus on the development of a more civic-minded student whose increased knowledge of democratic values through the service-learning experience benefits the community and society…