This study applies and tests the efficacy of the flipped learning approach designed for a business English translation course in a class consisting of 26 third-year business English major students in an independent college, the Yangtze University College of Arts and Science. Because the students in independent colleges usually have weak English…

English speaking proficiency requires more than knowing its grammatical and semantic rules. It also includes the knowledge of how native speakers of one language use the language in the context of structures of interpersonal exchange, within which many factors interact. Critical thinking is the deliberate determination of whether we should accept,…

Needs analysis guides course and curriculum design. In addition to mandatory courses, it is necessary for intensive language schools and institutes. Recent university graduates in China are increasingly enrolling in language training at public and private language schools to hone their communication abilities. On the other hand, English courses as…

Translation competence has been a heated topic in recent years. Yet, business English majors (BEMs), as non-translation bilingual majors, also need training in translation competence. The paper intends to construct translation competence for BEMs through four modules: schema based on business knowledge; information types; cognitive thinking and…

The aim of the study reported in this paper was to explore the issues of motivation of student teachers before and after their two practicum blocks which were held in the third and final years of teacher training. Participants provided quantitative and qualitative data through questionnaires and in-depth interviews which were conducted at four…

Collocation is an often-neglected language form that foreign language teachers and students should focus on to achieve competence in a target language. In this research, the researchers studied purposely to facilitate both second language teachers and students to produce correct and appropriate collocations. The purposes of this research were 1)…

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…

The "College English Teaching Reform Project", issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education aims to strengthen the practical English instruction and improve the English language proficiency of the college students (Ministry of Education, 2007). However, the problem of "naturalness" in handling English by the college students…

This research is designed to determine the relationship between English teachers' effectiveness and students' English proficiency at Selected Colleges in Dili, East Timor, as input for enhancement programs. The English teachers' effectiveness consist of three aspects namely (1) English Proficiency, (2) Pedagogical Knowledge, and (3)…

Although much research on English for specific purposes (ESP) has been conducted, little focus has been placed on investigating the mechanisms involved in ESP readers' comprehension process. This case study explored the reading process that characterizes a competent ESP reader's comprehension. A juris doctor student attending a major university in…

Second language learning requires conscious and persistent efforts on the part of the learner, to achieve significant proficiency. Generally, students show complacency towards learning a new language, as a result of frustrating factors such as unfamiliar vocabularies, mixing words with different textual meanings, difficulties in adopting the…

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 present study explored whether two semester overseas study programs had any impact on participants' language ability and motivation to study English. The language ability, L2 learning motivation and learning attitude of 65 Japanese university students participating in semester-long study abroad programs were measured pre departure and on their…

Significant variation exists in how native speakers respond to word association tasks and challenges the usage of nativelikeness as a benchmark to gauge second language (L2) performance. However, the influence of word class and trials of elicitation is not sufficiently addressed in previous work. With controlled stimuli from multiple word classes,…

The current study aimed to investigate the tendency to use temporal markers (TMs) in English writing by three different levels of Thai writers. Data used in this study were based on the Corpus of Thai Writers of English. The corpus size of approximately 8,800,000 words consisted of essay writing produced by intermediate and advanced student…