In recent times, the number of studies examining the use of humor in teaching English as a second language (ESL) in Asian countries has increased as researchers have acknowledged the positive effects that humor has on language teaching. This study presents a systematic review focused on the use of humor in ESL teaching within Asian countries. Its…

Research over the last two decades has shown that teaching pronunciation is both effective and important in language education. Nowadays, therefore, many English language textbooks include pronunciation activities. It is not clear yet how this has affected or changed teachers' beliefs and practices in different teaching contexts. The current study…

Dynamic assessment (DA), based on Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory, integrates instruction and assessment into a single activity through interactive dialog between the mediator and learner to promote development. This research utilized the interactionist DA to assess and enhance five types of listening inferential abilities of Chinese EFL learners.…

This study aimed to investigate the effects of Storytelling Narrated Videos (SNV) on students' knowledge retention and transferability. A total of 56 students from a university in Indonesia were randomly assigned to a quasi-experimental research design exposed to SNV and to Lecture Narrated Videos (LNV). Two videos were created to deliver content…

The generation of meaning in discourse is regarded as the process of knowledge-building, which can be analyzed by semantic waves. Combining the deep learning systems and polynomial fitting method, we present a method to compute multimodal semantic waves. With this method, four representative examples are discussed for the knowledge-building of…

This study investigates English teachers' beliefs and classroom practices regarding the teaching of creative thinking (CT) and explores the factors that hinder these practices. A mixed methods approach is adopted, drawing data from 63 middle school English teachers in China through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and classroom…

This study investigated the development of the integration among EFL student-teachers' PCK components during a 16-week mentoring-enriched practicum course. Data were collected from three EFL student-teachers using the content representation, follow-up interviews, and classroom observation. These data were then analyzed using the PCK Mapping…

In the context of globally integrated education, the last decade has seen a significant rise in bilingual primary schools across China. This development has led to the recruitment of an increasingly diverse group of international teachers to deliver English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education. These EFL teachers introduce a wide array of…

In EFL classrooms today, teachers are facing the challenge of helping their students improve their intelligibility in international communication in English. Feedback is one of the main ways through which teachers are performing the task. However, feedback on students' English pronunciation has not received commensurate attention in EFL contexts.…

The development of autonomy is acknowledged as a significant educational goal in language education, but it seems challenging in many schools. One of the reasons for this discrepancy is the lack of professional development addressing teacher beliefs and practices about learner autonomy (LA) as valid educational concerns. However, in teacher…

Optimizing communication learning experiences for students is a promising development in English language education, enabled by ChatGPT-4, an artificial intelligence software that excels in customizing lessons to suit specific requirements, interests, and preferred modes of communication for each student. Given its critical role in enhancing…

This study examined the effectiveness of teaching phoneme categorization and segmentation to EFL underachievers using songs and rhymes as instructional materials. Two distinct groups of 11th-grade EFL underachievers from Taiwan participated in this quasi-experimental study. The instructional materials consisted of lyrics sourced from online…

While research into strategy-based instruction and language learning emotions has been thriving over decades as respective domains, research on how strategy-based interventions may influence learners' writing enjoyment has largely remained unexplored. Informed by (Positive Psychology) PP theories, this mixed-methods study aims to investigate the…

The present study was undertaken to analyze pre-service EFL teachers' (PSTs) noticing during the practicum process over 14 weeks. In total, 26 PSTs took part in the present study. Data were collected through joint reflection sessions (JRSs). For JRS, PSTs met in their group every week after their practicum days and discussed what they noticed on…

In this study, we conduct a longitudinal experiment to explore the effects of adaptive phonetic training on the identification of the English vowels /i/ and /I/ by learners in China. The vowel /i/ in English has a low F1 value, a high F2 value, and a long duration. In contrast, the vowel /i/ has a high F1 value, a low F2 value, and a short…