This study experimentally investigated the effectiveness of feedback on learner refusals in a computer-simulated academic advising session. Ninety participants were assigned to one of three conditions: implicit feedback, explicit feedback, and comparison group. Oral and written discourse completion tasks (DCTs) were administered in a pretest…

To the extent automated written corrective feedback (AWCF) tools such as Grammarly are based on sophisticated error-correction technologies, such as machine-learning techniques, they have the potential to find and correct more common L2 error types than simpler spelling and grammar checkers such as the one included in Microsoft Word (technically…

This article reports a case study that examined dynamic patterns of interaction that two small groups (Group A and Group B) of ESL students exemplified when they performed two writing tasks: a research proposal (Task 1) and an annotated bibliography (Task 2) in a wiki site. Group A demonstrated a collective pattern in Task 1, but switched to an…

Various researchers in second language acquisition have argued for the effectiveness of immediate rather than delayed feedback. In writing, truly immediate feedback is impractical, but computer-assisted feedback provides a quick way of providing feedback that also reduces the teacher's workload. We explored the accuracy of feedback from…

With the growing prevalence of Web 2.0 technologies and use of online resources in their classrooms, language learners have increasing exposure to online texts. In this study we attempted to understand how university level second language (L2) readers construct meaning when reading online. We investigated L2 readers' information-seeking strategies…

The aim of this study was to determine the effectiveness of Second Life (SL) for improving the oral output of overseas Chinese students learning Mandarin Chinese (hereafter referred to as Mandarin). More than 1000 overseas Chinese students attend a university in northern Taiwan every year to learn Mandarin as a heritage language after graduating…

This study investigates Web-based, project oriented, many-to-many collaborative writing for academic purposes. Thirty-eight Fulbright scholars in an orientation program at a large Midwestern university used a Web-based word processing tool to collaboratively plan and report on a research project. The purpose of this study is to explore and…

In the author's piece "Computing the Demands of Vocabulary Acquisition from Reading" ("Language Learning & Technology," October, 2007), he argued that building an adequate functional L2 lexicon for reading from reading alone cannot be done by the majority of learners in the normal time frame of instructed L2 learning. An…