Various examinations are administered at universities across the US as a means of assessing bilingual/multilingual international teaching assistants' (ITAs') proficiency in spoken English before they are permitted to teach. While such exams are taken by students in a range of academic disciplines, recent research suggests that communicative…

Captioning is commonly used to scaffold video viewing for second language learners, with the captioning affording the learners access to authentic videos that would ordinarily be out of their reach. Ostensibly the videos are mainly shown to help improve the learners' listening abilities. However, there is the view that the learners largely tend to…

This study investigates caption-reading behavior by foreign language (L2) learners and, through eye-tracking methodology, explores the extent to which the relationship between the native and target language affects that behavior. Second-year (4th semester) English-speaking learners of Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish watched 2 videos…

The study compared participant comprehension of foreign language video content using two advance organizer (AO) strategies while exploring the benefits of AOs as proficiency increases. Participants were 50 advanced-beginner Spanish college students in three sections. Collaborative reading condition participants read a target language narrative…

This project investigates whether learners of Russian perceive the sociocultural weight of the two personal pronouns for "you", "ty" (informal/intimate) and "vy" (formal/polite) when they listen to native speech. Research on address pronoun use shows it to be an important sociocultural variable and, while there is some general consistency in use,…

The finding that speakers of aspect languages encode event endpoints to a lesser extent than do speakers of non-aspect languages has led to the hypothesis that there is a relationship between grammatical aspect and event conceptualization (e.g., von Stutterheim and Nuse, 2003). The present study concerns L1 event conceptualization in 40 L1…

This article reports a case study where the data was collected at one university in the United States. It shows the benefits of using digital videos in intermediate-level Japanese language course curriculum so that learners can develop a higher level of proficiency. Since advanced-level speakers, according to the American Council on the Teaching…

This study investigated the use of discourse markers (DMs) by college learners of English in China. It compared the use of DMs for four discourse functions by students at different proficiency levels. An audio-video instrument called Video Oral Communication Instrument was conducted to elicit ratable speech samples. Fraser's (1999) taxonomy was…

This study examined the amount, the purposes, and the reasons why L1 is used in L2 classrooms. Data consist of video and audio recording of samples of two instructors' L2 classes over the course of a 12-week semester in two second-year German conversation university courses, instructor interviews, and stimulated recall sessions. Results revealed…

This study aims to investigate Jordanian university students' attitudes towards using video and text chat discourse with anonymous native speakers of English to improve their English proficiency. To achieve this aim, a questionnaire was designed. The study sample consisted of 320 university students enrolled in two Jordanian universities. Results…

An exploratory study conducted at George Brown College in Toronto, Canada between 2007 and 2009 investigated language learning with mobile devices as an approach to augmenting ESP learning by taking learning outside the classroom into the real-world context. In common with findings at other community colleges, this study identified inadequate…

This study investigates the application of voice recognition technology to online lectures focusing on the efficacy of the text component of a multimedia presentation. Specifically, participants were provided with online access to multimedia instructional packages comprising an image of the lecturer with accompanying computer slides, plus…