This study investigates the pragmatic development of the refusal strategies to the four different eliciting types (1 request, 1 suggestion, 1 invitation, and 1 offer) by Chinese English major students with low-intermediate language proficiency. The data was collected through written discourse completion tasks, and coded based on the modified…

The overall purpose of this study is to explore and understand how students acquire and apply new information (in particular, vocabulary) and how we as instructors can aid in this process. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) as a whole tends to prioritize implicit learning but it is my belief that certain content can be understood more…

Rating scales for writing assessment are critical in that they determine directly the quality and fairness of such performance tests. However, in many EFL contexts, rating scales are made, to certain extent, based on the intuition of teachers who strongly need a feasible and scientific route to guide their construction of rating scales. This study…

After graduation, many Saudi EFL graduates find themselves losing their oral communicative competence, which could be attributed to the period of their English non-use. To explore such a pressing issue, the following study investigates the effect of English non-use on a surveyed sample of Saudi EFL graduates, and how such disuse correlates with…

A quasi-experimental study investigated the effectiveness of inductive and deductive types of instruction in the acquisition of a complex grammatical structure, the passive voice. The participants were two groups (n = 34) of second-year Japanese students from a vocational school who had three treatment lessons designed for each group embedded into…

This paper evaluates a textbook called "Traveller 4" that is used in the second grade of secondary schools in Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia, considering its general appearance and design, objectives, content, social and cultural contexts, tasks and activities, and usefulness for developing language skills. The paper also reviews the…

In the AI field of language learning, chatterbots are an interesting area for language learning and practice. This research investigates Arabic EFL vocabulary learning using an interactive storytelling chatterbot. A chatterbot was created and equipped with four vocabulary tools: a dictionary, images, an L1 translation tool, and a concordancer. The…

Since March 2020, the world has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in sudden school closures and a rapid transition from traditional face-to-face education to a new model of online learning and assessment. The present study analyzes two cohorts--primary-school EFL teachers and students' parents--regarding the perceptions they…

Lessons for developing students' communication skills have been recently introduced to university English education in Japan, and the lesson format has become student-centered. As lessons are given in English and students have more opportunities to practice speaking in English, there are likely to be controversies over the proper balance between…

Enhancing pupils' intercultural communication competence (ICC) is a key EFL teaching goal in China and the pre-service English teachers' ICC plays an essential role in it. This study aims to investigate the pre-service English teachers' ICC levels and whether there were any differences between their ICC levels and their genders or their family…

The purposes of this study were to investigate the effects of task-based instruction using online language games in a flipped learning environment (TGF) in developing the English oral communication ability of Thai secondary students and examine the students' opinions of the task-based instruction using online language games in a flipped learning…

English proficiency amongst Malaysian is debatably on a decline. Possible causes of this phenomenon are extensively argued. Thus, renewed interest towards English language anxiety, an internal factor of learners' level of intensity in listening and speaking skills, can sometimes be overlooked. An investigation was conducted on selected secondary…

Learner autonomy (LA) has always been viewed as an essential component of successful language learning. It is one of the factors that contributes to creating a learning community in which learners are capable of developing their knowledge and skills. Since it plays an essential role in language learning process, it can be reflected in both…

This paper reports reactions by candidates to the use of online proctoring (OLP), 'invigilation', in the delivery of high-stakes English language examinations. The paper first sets the scene in terms of the move from face-to-face to online modes of delivery. It explores the challenges and benefits that both modes offer, in terms of accessibility,…

This study aims to explore how the speech act of requesting is performed in Catalan (L1), English (L1) and EFL classrooms by pre-primary teachers. The study examines transcripts of 40-minute video-recorded lessons (six in Catalan/L1, six in English/FL, and three in English/L1) collected in several pre-primary schools in Catalonia, Spain. Recall…