High frequency words, which are key to a text, must be mastered to achieve minimum levels of reading proficiency. However, knowledge about the frequency of items in a language is very limited. Given this consideration, WordSift (www.wordsift.org), a word cloud tool based on high frequency and key words can assist English as a Foreign Language…

Given the recent technological advancements and the critical role that grammar plays in students' writing development, several digital tools that provide computer-mediated corrective feedback have emerged. One such tool is Grammarly, which identifies duplicate content and errors in grammar, vocabulary, mechanics, and language style. This tech…

The rapid advancement in video technologies in recent years has made the creating and editing of subtitles for a video increasingly feasible. For a long time, however, the pedagogical potentials of subtitling in language teaching and learning have been neglected. To fill this gap, this technology review introduces "VisualSubSync," a free…

This paper evaluates Voki, a digital platform for creating speaking avatars, in the context of Global Englishes Language Teaching (GELT). It firstly outlines the benefits of using animated characters in online tools to personalize language lessons and engage students. As a web-based application, Voki offers various customization options, including…

Peer review has been promoted for decades in order to engage students in the assessment process which then leads to better learning outcomes. This teaching pedagogy is relatively innovative in the Hong Kong language classroom because English as a Second Language (ESL) students are not aware of their responsibility in the language learning process…

Technology reviews are a specific article genre published in several language teaching and learning journals. Their emergence is likely due to the proliferation of technology that facilitates and supports language acquisition. These reviews aim to increase teachers' and learners' awareness of the forms of technology available and succinctly…

This innovations in practice article introduces a chatbot that was developed to support and motivate second language learners during the COVID-19 pandemic. The chatbot was designed to facilitate active, out-of-class language learning to supplement in-class input. It can adapt to learners' abilities and pace by chatting with them, thus providing…

Grammarly's Tone Detector is included in the free version of the application and is available for major phone and computer program platforms. Its strength is in helping students compose pragmatically appropriate texts which could substantially increase their confidence and the feeling of autonomy. It accomplishes this by providing writers with…

Involving parents in their children's school-based English language learning is beneficial to learners' academic achievement as well as their language and literacy development. However, involving parents can be challenging. This study reports on one teacher's use of a digital learning platform, Seesaw, with his third-grade (7 to 8 year-olds)…

In recent years, the use of English corpora to instruct grammar in writing classes has become increasingly popular. In English for Specific Purposes classes, such a novel approach is critically important since it not only allows teachers to achieve a profound understanding of which syntactic structures should be instructed, but it also increases…

This research combines corpus-based and intuition-based approaches in developing a list of important words in business news that Thai learners of business English need to know. The Thai corpus of English for Business and Economic News (Thai-EBEN) has been compiled from English business news articles in the Thai press. A computer concordancing…

For second language learners vocabulary growth is of major importance, and for many learners commercially published coursebooks will be the source of this vocabulary learning. In this preliminary study, input from three levels of the coursebook series "New English File" (Oxenden and Latham-Koenig, 2006; Oxenden, Latham-Koenig, and Seligson, 2004,…

Recent advances in digital video have lead to a convergence of mainstream entertainment (e.g., movies) and language learning tools. An example is a software system/media player called L1, which provides interactive subtitling and learning support for DVD entertainment products. Convergence of entertainment and learning resources raises challenging…

School- and university-based writing tasks make demands on cognitive processing and socio-cultural knowledge that vary with the discipline in which the writing is situated. The variation in socio-cognitive demands makes the use of self-accessed, computer-mediated writing instruction more promising than conventional, teacher-fronted instruction. To…