This study is intended to explore the influence of partners' L2 proficiency on test-takers' performance and on their interaction patterns in paired oral assessment, and it tries to analyze the underlying causes on the basis of Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) and Storch's patterns of interaction. An experiment including…

The present study was executed with the purpose of validating ELT Certificate Lesson Observation and Report Task (ELTC-LORT), which was developed by China Language Assessment to certify China's EFL teachers by performance-based testing. The ELT Certificate has high-stakes considering its impacts on candidates' recruitment, ELT in China and quality…

This paper examines the linguistic barriers that impede English language communicative proficiency of the students of English language in the college of sciences and humanity studies, Thadiq, Shaqra University, Saudi Arabia. The paper gives the specific linguistic problems that detain attaining a perfect English language communicative competence.…

Communication strategies (CS) have been generally used to overcome oral communication problems in delivering the intended messages. While studies on CS mostly involved simulated communication contexts, the current study deviates from the past studies on CS by identifying the types of CS employed by candidates of real job interviews and examining…

Over several decades, numerous approaches applied to EFL have resulted in theories and reasonings to teach and learn English. Although Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) is the most commonly used path nowadays, it has only resulted in minimal development of university learners' oral skills; i.e., English-beginner-level students usually attain…

This study delves into the analysis of theories of language acquisition and teaching methods. A qualitative approach was used to analyze three language acquisition theories and five teaching methods to help and provide teachers with methods that are relevant and applicable in developing and enhancing the speaking skills of the students. Findings…

This small-scale quasi-experimental research study aimed at investigating the effectiveness of cooperative learning (CL) strategies in the achievement of students' oral performance at the A1 Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) level. The study participants were twenty-four seventh graders from a small rural primary school…

The traditional focus of English phonetic teaching in China has consistently been on the segmental acquisition, which is mainly highlighting the pronunciation of vowels and consonants, while its suprasegmental knowledge in speech naturalness, coherence and understanding is relatively insufficient. In addition, Chinese students have a serious…

Task-based language teaching on the purpose of enhancing students' communicative skills and involving them actively in the authentic context has long been highlighted in recent years in tertiary English language teaching. This paper proposes a framework of task-based teaching approach and language assessment in intensive reading class based on the…

Encouraged by previous studies which recommended incorporating insights from Conversation Analysis (CA) into English conversation teaching to improve EFL students' oral proficiency, this paper reports on the findings from Phase I of a longitudinal study designed to investigate the impact of employing a CA-informed teaching (CA-T) model to improve…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the production of pragmatic markers (PMs) by multilingual students in a CLIL context. Previous studies have analyzed pragmatic competence in multilingual settings (e.g., Cenoz, 2003; Martín-Laguna & Alcón-Soler, 2015; Portolés, 2015; Safont & Portolés, 2016). However, to the best of our…

This study examines the effect of prompts and recasts in providing CF for the article errors by Kurdish-Arabic bilinguals who learn English as a third language. 39 lower-intermediate Kurdish-Arabic bilingual learners of English were tested on three tests: pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests. The participants were randomly put into three groups:…

This study sought to investigate the attitudes of Saudi EFL students towards corrective feedback (henceforth CF) on classroom oral errors. The subjects were 3200 (1223 male and 1977 female) students enrolled in an intensive English language programme in the preparatory year at the University of Ha'il. A questionnaire was the main instrument. This…

The aim of the study was to investigate how raters come to their decisions when judging spoken vocabulary. Segmental rating was introduced to quantify raters' decision-making process. It is hoped that this simulated study brings fresh insight to future methodological considerations with spoken data. Twenty trainee raters assessed five Chinese…

This case study of Al-Aqsa School attempts to show that Cambridge Young Learners English Tests (YLE) may hurt learners' motivation and teaching process. The paper aims to highlight the adoption of Cambridge YLE proficiency tests and explore learners and teachers' perception of those tests. Also, providing alternative yardstick measures learners'…