The perennial challenge of reading fluency, notably profound among Asian EFL learners, stems largely from linguistic disparities, conventional teaching paradigms, and ingrained cognitive practices. This study critically investigates the challenges Chinese undergraduates face with English reading fluency, notably due to linguistic disparities and…

Anxiety has a significant effect on oral communication, particularly when it occurs in the form of a public address. The quality of a public academic speaker's oral presentation may highly be determined by a variety of emotive elements. However, this has received much too little attention in the realm of academic dissertation oral defense…

While anime is well-recognized as a significant motivator of Japanese language learners today, idol fandom, though served as an equally strong source of motivation for some learners, receives far less academic attention. This paper is a preliminary exploration of idol fandom's role in fueling the Japanese language-learning process. Through…

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first sociolinguistic matched-guise experiment that examined Chinese students' attitudes toward African American English in both its standard and vernacular variants. This pilot study explored Chinese students' implicit bias--if any--toward African American English compared to white American English. For…

In this paper, through a personal narrative discourse, I explore the influence and the contribution of my cross-cultural study experience in China on my development as a young researcher. Through the Chinese academic culture, I learned some best practices that I consider essential for the blossoming and development of a student. Nonetheless, I…

This study aims to discover to what extent native ESL teachers utilize wait-time in their classes and to what extent wait-time gives way to more student contribution. Wait-time is considered as a part of classroom interactional competence, and relevant utilization of it may improve learning in the classroom. Accordingly, six classroom hours of…

The intrinsic relationship between language and society has a great influence on how native English speakers evaluate the non-native ones. Such evaluation may lead to language discrimination, prejudice or other types of exclusion (BAGNO, 2007; CAMACHO, 2001; CALVET, 2002; GNERRE, 1985). In light of this perspective, this bibliographic study aims…

This study investigated how English learners at a university in Japan perceive connections with students in the US through an educational social network platform, called Edmodo. The instructor of English at the Japanese university cooperated with a Japanese language instructor at an American university and they incorporated Edmodo into their…

This report includes findings regarding demographic characteristics and academic outcomes of DELTA students; highlights emerging topics from the student, teacher, and staff surveys; and provides recommendations for future program implementation.

Within Asian EFL contexts such as South Korea, large class sizes, poor sources of input and an overreliance on the Grammar-Translation Method may negatively impact semantic and pragmatic development of writing content. Since formulaic language is imbued with syntactic, semantic and pragmatic linguistic features, it represents an ideal means to…

This report includes findings regarding demographic characteristics and academic outcomes of DELTA students; highlights emerging topics from the student, teacher, and staff surveys; and provides recommendations for future program implementation. [For the 2018-2019 report, see ED626017.]

The purpose of this study is to measure the comprehensibility of the Expanding Circle nations' citizens, namely Burmese, Cambodians, Indonesians, Laotians, Thais and Vietnamese towards the Outer Circle Englishes, namely Bruneian English, Malaysian English. Philippine English and Singaporean English. Ten universities in the Expanding Circle that…

For the purposes of revealing and comparing the social, cultural, and motivational differences between American and Chinese undergraduate students learning foreign language, a sample of 100 students at University of Wyoming was asked to fill out a Foreign Language Learning Motivation and Beliefs questionnaire and 61 respondents completed the…

This study investigates motivation that influences heritage and non-heritage students' learning of Chinese, and its relationship with Chinese language learning strategies (LLS). The study uses Deci and Ryan's typology--"Intrinsic Motivation" and "Extrinsic Motivation", for the investigation, examining issues such as: (1) What…

With study abroad becoming an integral part of the American higher-education curriculum, home-institution instructors face the challenge of understanding the type and content of learning taking place abroad. We report on a study conducted at a service academy on the U.S. East Coast to examine American college students' cultural learning in the…