This article reports on the final round of piloting for a questionnaire instrument created and designed with the intention of collecting self-report data on adult, beginner Swedish L2 learners' use of vocabulary learning strategies. The "Swedish Vocabulary Learning Strategy Survey" (SVLSS) version 1.2 is distributed to 182 participants…

This study investigated the effects of Reading Strategy Instruction (RSI) on reading performance and attitude toward reading strategies while reading texts of different difficulty levels. Fifty-five university students studying Political and Basic Sciences took part in this study. After homogenizing the participants, 24 students were in the…

Vocabulary learning is the basis of the language learning process in teaching Turkish as a second language. Vocabulary learning strategies need to be used in order for vocabulary learning to take place effectively. The use of vocabulary learning strategies facilitates vocabulary learning and increases student achievement. Each student uses a…

The study developed an adaptive computer-assisted reading system and investigated its effect on promoting English as a foreign language learner-readers' contextual vocabulary learning performance. Seventy Taiwanese college students were assigned to two reading groups. Participants in the customised reading group read online English texts, each of…

This article reports on the updating and validation of a questionnaire for vocabulary learning strategies. An English as a second language (ESL) version of the "Vocabulary Learning Questionnaire" (VLQ), first published in Gu and Johnson (1996), was created based on its latest version. Two response formats were piloted, that is, a paper…

In this paper, the development of a web application for self-access English vocabulary courses at a national university in Japan will be reported upon. Whilst the basic concepts are inherited from an old Flash-based online vocabulary learning system that had been long used at the university, the new HTML5-based app comes with several new features…

This study looks at the effectiveness of an intervention to improve student retention on a distance language course. Of the six beginners' language courses offered by the UK's Open University, the beginners' Welsh course has consistently had the lowest retention rates since it was first presented in 2008. In order to address this, a project was…

Writing as one of essential skills in English learning is attached more and more importance. English writing involves not only the application of lexicon and grammar, but also the construction of the text and the expression of the thought. For Chinese EFL learners, the common problem in English writing is that they tend to apply the Chinese…

Vocabulary constitutes an essential part of every language-learning endeavour and deserves scholarly attention. The objective of the present study was three-fold: 1) exploring Iranian English language learners' Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLSs), 2) examining language learners' perceptions of vocabulary learning, and 3) exploring Iranian…

This paper describes a narrative-based design framework that organizes three narrative elements (i.e., storyline, character, and quest) to support a contextual game-based environment for language learning. Using this design framework, a PlanetAdventure system was developed to examine its feasibility and its effects on student language learning. A…

This paper reports on the implementation of Japanese extensive reading with international students studying at a Japanese university using graded readers (GRs). GRs chosen for the present study were simplified versions of original Japanese literature and were used to support students in acquiring a top-down reading strategy, a wide range of…

Given the importance of the phonological and lexical components of the language in L2 learning, this article discusses an innovative, holistic approach to learning these two components of the language based on the existence of "sound symbolism"--the interrelation between sound and meaning--in English. In particular, it describes how and…

This article reports on an investigation of the suitability of mobile vocabulary games for inducing a state of incidental vocabulary acquisition. Draw Something, a social digital drawing game in which players draw and guess words, was selected as a focus for this investigation. Results from an exploratory factor analysis of the questionnaire data…

This article aims at sharing with the readers two ways of English vocabulary learning based upon a small-scale study conducted in Taiwan. The participants of this study were one hundred and three university students randomly chosen from universities in Taiwan. They received questionnaires and vocabulary teaching videos through e-mail or Facebook.…

The study examined whether exposure to spellings of new vocabulary words improved monolinguals' and language minority (LM) students' (n = 25) memory for pronunciations, meanings, and spellings of the words. College students who are native English-speaking monolinguals (n = 12) and LM students who learned English as their second language (n = 13)…