Podcasting has become a popular medium for people to express themselves and share their knowledge with a global audience. However, there is still a lack of research on how podcasting can be used as a tool for education and personal development. The current study, framed in Jenkins' participatory culture where artistic expression and civic…

Education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is essential to achieving continued technological advancement. The most critical years for instilling knowledge are during childhood, and a strategic way to accomplish this is through playful materials. Therefore, there is a need to develop more inclusive solutions to achieve…

Purpose: Podcasting is a new mobile technology application for language learning. Drawing upon the stimulus-organism-response model and the interest driven creator (IDC) theory from e-learning, this study aims to develop and test an integrative conceptual framework. This study investigates contextual and environmental stimuli effects (content…

While previous studies have focused on the outcomes of using dubbing apps to foster learner's development of English-speaking ability, this study, grounded in cognitive apprenticeship (CA), is an investigation of the learning processes, which included modeling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection, and exploration, involved in the use…

This study explores how learner-generated podcasts can support English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning among college students in Taiwan. Using a mixed-methods approach, data were collected from 31 participants through surveys on podcasting attitudes, learning logs, and reflective essays. The findings reveal that EFL learners generally…

Purpose: There is a lack of standardized Mandarin reading text material that could potentially elicit significant variations in fundamental frequency (F0) and in vocal intensity for clinical voice evaluation. In this study, a phonetically balanced "Three Bears Passage" was developed based on the classical "Goldilocks" story for…

Intelligent Personal Assistant (IPA) has emerged as a valuable tool for EFL learning by offering interactive authentic contexts. Although IPA is believed to be motivational and useful, empirical evidence is limited and contradictory, especially the efficacy of listening comprehension. Therefore, the study investigated the impact of IPA on…

Purpose: This study examined the acoustic properties of Taiwanese (Southern Min) lexical tones produced in esophageal speech (ES) and pneumatic artificial laryngeal speech (PAL), including onset fundamental frequency (F0), slope of F0 contour, duration, and amplitude (intensity) of the vowel portion of syllables carrying seven Taiwanese tones.…

This study employed a single factor experiment to investigate how different voices from a social robot affect the learning outcomes and motivation of 46 children. The learning motivation for the participants was measured using the ARCS questionnaire, which tested for four subcategories: attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction. The…

Previous studies have shown positive effects of self-assessment on L2 English learners' speaking performance, but it is unclear whether the same is true with peer assessment. Research is also scarce on the effects of such assessments on the learner's sense of autonomy. This study thus investigated the effects of self- and peer-assessment on L2…

Podcasts have been widely used in various fields, and their applications in English as a foreign language (EFL) learning have been mainly to improve students' listening ability. Relatively few studies have explored how engaging EFL students in making podcasts might help develop their speaking competence. This study therefore is an investigation of…

Drawing on Conversation Analysis, this paper investigates how an English native speaker interviewer utilizes clarification requests as a form of recipient design during an interview to resolve problems of non-understanding. This data is contrasted with interviews between English language learners at a private university in Taiwan. The findings…

Repeated reading, which involves the reading of short passages several times, has been demonstrated to be beneficial for second language fluency (Chang & Millett, 2013) and vocabulary acquisition (Liu & Todd, 2014). Despite the increasing interest in repeated reading, no study has addressed the effects of time distribution--how different…

Grounded on the notion of observational learning in social cognitive learning theory, this study evaluated the effectiveness of repeated self-assessment on English-as-a-foreign-language learners' oral performance and the perceptions of the students and the instructor of this practice. Ninety-seven students from three classes in a Taiwanese college…

Although research has investigated laughter in professional communication settings, fewer studies have explored laughter-talk in second language (L2) classrooms. This study examines L2 university students' use of laughter-talk in peer group conversation to understand the linguistics of affect and its interactional effects. The author draws upon…