Chinese has a rich and diverse vocabulary of terms, especially verbs, expressing power relationships. This paper selected 25 power relationship terms from the Chinese Proficiency Scale for International Chinese Education, and used a true-false format to test the differences in acquisition between international students from Confucian cultural…

The present study investigated how Cantonese speakers learning English as a second language (L2) would comprehend English irony and whether their L2 proficiency and use would moderate their irony processing. Thirty Cantonese speakers with differing English proficiency (intermediate vs advanced) were asked to complete an irony comprehension task in…

This study investigates how L1-Korean L2-English learners perform with regard to articles in both explicit and implicit tasks. It also examines the role of L1-transfer from Korean demonstratives to English definites in L2 article production. 21 native English speakers and 27 adult intermediate L1-Korean L2-English learners were tested. The…

This study investigates the pedagogical knowledge of novice and experienced English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in Iran by analyzing their verbal reports. This research aims to identify the pedagogical knowledge categories inferred from the teachers' reports, determine the frequency of occurrence of each category, and compare the…

A substantial body of research has examined the role of English in South Africans' linguistic repertoires. Many of these studies have investigated whether a language shift towards English might be underway among first-language (L1) speakers of the indigenous languages. At the same time, the role of English in the repertoires of L1 English speakers…

The task of verifying credible and original information is now more complicated, especially for undergraduate students. This study uses information literacy and discourse analysis to develop English as a foreign language learners' critical reading skills while verifying information on social media. A reading test including false news was used to…

The goals of this paper were to: (a) recognize the funds of identity that five emergent bilingual mother-child dyads express while making personal connections to culturally relevant books, (b) identify whether each dyad's responses were convergent or divergent, and (c) explore how these discussions expanded participants' views of one another or…

This study investigated the instructional effects of learner uptake following automatic corrective recast from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots on the learning of the English caused-motion construction. 69 novice-level EFL learners in a Korean high school were recruited to investigate the instructional effects of corrective recast from AI…

Willingness to communicate (WTC) is an important individual learner difference that can help account for varying rates of language-learning success across individuals. As learner talk is considered to be a key pedagogical activity, instructors and researchers often strive to identify and manipulate key variables that will increase and arouse a…

Defined as a combination of perseverance and passion for long-term goals, grit has been hypothesized to be as important as talent in determining the success of students, adding incremental predictive validity for achievement criteria above and beyond natural or inherent ability. In this study, we tested this hypothesis by comparing the effects of…

The introduction of the CEFR was welcomed by researchers and practitioners in language education, given its potential for increasing transparency of test results and the meaningfulness of test scores. In this paper, I reflect on Glenn Fulcher's (2004, 2016) critical take on the use of the CEFR in the context of mapping (linking or aligning) test…

This study quantitatively measures the variation in language derived from a targeted set of digital game mechanics. Mechanics refer to the design elements of a game that make up the overall gameplay experience, determining player actions and the degree of language interaction. A corpus was compiled by extracting the language files from two popular…

In this article, we address the issue of reliability of quantitative data on multilingualism of the past obtained as recall data. More specifically, we investigate whether the interviewees' assessments of the language repertoires of their late relatives (indirect data) provide results that are quantitatively similar to those obtained from the…

The current study aimed to compare the influence of explicit versus implicit instruction on EFL learners' use of interactional metadiscourse markers in their writing. The study also aimed to explore the perceptions of EFL learners on the instruction of these markers in their writing classes. 120 female undergraduates who are Arab EFL learners took…

This study aimed to explore the effects of a lexical approach to Chinese English major students' reading comprehension ability as well as students' opinions of this approach. A quasiexperimental study was carried out in a Normal University in southern China for 11 weeks. An intact class of 45 first-year English major students at intermediate level…