The study presents an investigation of the effect of strategic planning, online planning and rehearsal on the fluency, accuracy and complexity of oral productions at two proficiency levels. Forty EFL participants at low and intermediate levels performed picture story tasks in three different conditions: the online planning only condition,…

In an increasingly multilingual world, the question of how to improve foreign language speaking skills of pupils in British schools is of paramount importance to language teachers and policy-makers today. This paper examines how an explicit focus on metacognitive strategy use within secondary school foreign language lessons impacts pupils'…

The research reported here investigated the relationship between students' use of language learning strategies and their English proficiency, and then interpreted the data from two models in information-processing theory. Results showed that the students' English proficiency significantly affected their use of learning strategies, with high-level…

To date, research into vocabulary learning strategies has mainly made use of questionnaires about studying preferences in general or of interviews following a specific study task, focusing on finding out which strategies were most popular. The present investigation attempts to provide more insight into the effects of the parameters of timing and…

The study investigated the relationship among critical thinking, strategy use and university achievement. To this end, 76 English major students sat the California Critical Thinking Skills Test and filled out Oxford's Strategy Inventory for Language Learning. Participants' Grade Point Averages were regarded as their university achievement. The…

The use of integrated skills tasks in language tests has been debated for many years and international English test developers such as Educational Testing Service (ETS) and Pearson Tests of English (PTE) already use such tests to assess English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' language proficiency. Empirical research has rarely investigated…

This study examines the effects of foreign language learning context (three-month study-abroad; versus "at-home" instruction) and age (10-11-year-old children versus university students) on the development of effective foreign language communication strategies (CS) in monologue production. Participants (N = 95) were all Spanish/Catalan…