This study aimed to develop and validate an analytical rating scale specifically designed to assess the lexical proficiency of Chinese college students in Academic English speaking tasks. A multi-layer construct of lexical proficiency was first developed and operationalized into an eight-dimension rating scale, including word diversity, word…

Enhancing proficiency in argumentative writing in English has always been a challenge for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Despite the widespread use of argumentative essays in international tests such as International English Language Testing System (IELTS) and Tests of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) in recent years, the…

Purpose: This study aims to explore computer-assisted language learning (CALL) activities to improve the English essay writing of Pakistani university students. It highlights the role of CALL in the language proficiency model cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP), which can enable second language learners to engage in more critical…

This study examines the potential of ChatGPT to enhance grammar development in an academic writing context, where grammar instruction is often overlooked. Adopting a qualitative case study, this research explores how a localized version of ChatGPT can assist first-year undergraduate students in improving their grammar in writing tasks. The study…

Given the significant global influence of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (CEFR) on English language education, this study deals with aligning a university's academic reading tests to the CEFR. It aimed at validating the test construct of the academic reading tests in relation to the…

Extensive reading (ER) has the potential to enhance academic writing proficiency by supporting vocabulary growth, syntactic development, and organizational clarity. Despite its benefits, ER remains underutilized in many EFL contexts. This study investigates the impact of ER on the academic writing skills of 80 undergraduate students at Mizan Tepi…

This study explores Saudi undergraduate students' perceptions of artificial intelligence (AI) tools in academic writing. Despite extensive research on AI in higher education, there is limited focus on academic writing, especially in the Saudi context. A survey of 189 students, proficient in English and enrolled in freshmen academic writing…

English language learners (ELLs) lack academic vocabulary knowledge, an essential component that explains much of the persistent achievement gap between students who start schools as ELLs and their monolingual peers. This single-subject experimental design study addressed this issue by focusing on self-regulated vocabulary learning that helps ELLs…

Pragmatic markers perform important communicative functions, but they can be difficult to learn in a second language because of their multifunctionality and lack of salience during communicative events. This study has two goals: (1) to describe the communicative functions of the pragmatic marker "I mean" in academic discourse; and (2) to…

This article examines the relationship between Japanese undergraduate students' English language proficiency and English language-related challenges faced when studying an international business course through English. It also examines English language proficiency thresholds students need to reach in each academic skill (i.e. reading, listening,…

Soon after Kachru (1992) promoted the notion of the World of English(es) through his 'inner-outer-expanding circle' principle, academic audiences started to recognize that the number of English nonnative speakers had noticeably surpassed that of native speakers. Such a phenomenon has encouraged English learners of diverse lingua-cultural…

Peer review is generally regarded as a useful learning tool for students, providing them with opportunities to interact with their peers when engaging in the process of critical reading and critical thinking, thus possibly raising students' motivation to learn. For peer review to be a manageable task for students, appropriate scaffolding is…

Providing foundational academic support to Indiana's culturally and linguistically diverse students is a cornerstone of the state's educational goals. Over 140,000 Indiana students speak a language other than English at home, and there are over 295 different languages represented in Indiana schools. Of these, over 93,000 students have been…

Multiple test tasks are available for assessing L2 collocation knowledge. However, few studies have investigated the characteristics of a variety of recognition and recall tasks of collocation simultaneously, and most research on L2 collocations has focused on verb-noun and adjective-noun collocations. This study investigates (1) the relative…

In this paper, we propose a pedagogical approach for teaching and learning multimodal literacy, specifically, the application of multimodal discourse analysis for genre awareness. The mastery of specific oral genres is seen as desirable to help students become competent professionals. This is the case of Product Pitches (PPs) in the business field…