This study examines the impact of High-Immersion Virtual Reality (HiVR) as a tool for teaching English L2 pragmatics to international students enrolled in an Intensive English Program at a US university. This research focuses on integrating HiVR into explicit L2 pragmatics instructional treatments. A quasi-experimental design was employed to…

For this dissertation, I had the opportunity to investigate a well-established university-based intensive English program in the northeastern United States as it transitioned from an integrated-skills to a paired-skills approach. My goal as a researcher was to investigate in what ways "listening," the second language (L2) skill…

The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of international-student English language learners (ELLs), situated on a language learning plateau (L2P), who have been exposed to a Growth Mindset Pedagogy with Deliberate Practice. The researcher used a qualitative research design, to document the experiences of five adult English language…

The purpose of my dissertation study was to explore the experiences and perceptions of English language instructors about the use of multimodal digital technologies in the teaching of academic writing. Writing academically in English as a second language (L2) is complex and multilayered for international students, and multimodal digital literacy…

Internationalization at institutions of higher education in the United States results in greater linguistic diversity of the student body. Admission policies for international students include English proficiency standards which are meant to ensure that multilingual students for whom English is an additional language can function linguistically in…

The problem addressed through this study was that, in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms, adult learners in an intensive English program often suffer from tiredness, mental overload, and not having enough time for learning, these are factors which negatively impact their ability to learn English successfully. The purpose of this study…

This present study closely examines a particular type of institutionalized interactions for second language (L2) learning, namely one-on-one instructional sessions between instructors and learners of Japanese at an intensive summer study abroad program in Japan. During these sessions, both instructors and learners employ various form-focused…

Reading approaches in Japan and other EFL settings have typically focused on accuracy at the expense of fluency. However, reading rate and fluency are important components of reading that are currently being neglected. A review of the literature reveals growing interest in investigating the effectiveness of reading rate and fluency enhancement…

While the use of educational technology in online instruction has increased in higher education, it is still limited in intensive, academic English programs. Precipitated by COVID-19, U.S. Intensive English Programs (IEPs) quickly transitioned from face-to-face (F2F) instruction to the emergency remote teaching environment (ERTE) when the public…

The vast majority of the studies concerning graphic organizer use for the improvement of reading comprehension have been carried out with first language (L1) learners. The recommendations to employ graphic organizers as part of reading instruction are frequently found in L1 reading literature (Blachowicz & Ogle, 2001; McKenna & Robinson,…

Responding to a gap in postmethod pedagogy in English-language teaching, this study details the implementation of a pedagogy of plausibility (PofP), a place-based ecopedagogy that privileges local knowledge and language practices. A PofP is informed by four pedagogic pillars: (a) teaching with particularity, (b) teaching with practicality, (c)…

Computer-mediated collaborative writing has drawn attention from second language researchers and instructors for a few decades, and due to recent developments in Web 2.0 technologies, the possibilities of wikis for collaborative writing have increased enormously. However, few studies have explored the nature of wiki collaboration and interaction,…

Constructionist research on L2 learning has focused on the degrees to which skewed frequency (Goldberg, Casenhiser & White, 2007; Casenhiser & Goldberg, 2005; Goldberg, Casenhiser, & Sethuraman 2004) in a person's linguistic environment can facilitate "entrenchment," "schematization," and "contingency…

For this dissertation, teacher linguistic awareness (TLingA) involves teacher linguistic knowledge, teacher language awareness (TLA), and teacher cognition for second language (L2) teachers. Teacher linguistic knowledge is an understanding of how language functions and is compiled within the different areas of linguistics. And TLA is the knowledge…

Language instructors play a decisive role in adult language learners' learning and retention of vocabulary through planning, selection, and teaching of vocabulary and strategies. However, some professional language schools lack extensive teacher-training programs that prepare instructors with the skills required to select and teach vocabulary,…