The present study aimed to explore the relationship between reading attitude, motivation, and the metacognitive awareness of reading strategies (MARS) of adult English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Ninety-seven Iranian intermediate EFL learners participated in the study after a multi-stage sampling. The initial analysis suggested high…

ESL writing teachers face the challenge of providing written feedback that is both effective and motivating to students. Thus, many end up making use of praise (or positive feedback) before offering criticism. Only limited research has examined how students perceive praise, and few studies among the most recent have focused on praise above other…

This paper explores the use of Google Translate (GT) by displaced people (DPs) from Ukraine in Australia and English language educators supporting learners from refugee backgrounds in the context of decolonizing language learning. The survey and interviews with DP participants revealed that GT provides them with a sense of confidence and freedom,…

Adult immigrants are invaluable assets to our society as they bring along their cultural capital across borders. However, little is known about how their rich life histories reflect and refract their plights as ESL learners. This study is an investigation of three adult immigrants' English learning in an immigration center in the Midwest. The…

This article reports on a study that examines the effects of metacognitive reading strategy instruction on reading performance of adult ESL learners with limited English and literacy skills. The strategy instruction was implemented over a period of four months with a group of 18 learners who were enrolled in a high beginning literacy course in an…

It remains unclear whether adult-learned second language (L2) depends on similar or different neurocognitive mechanisms as those involved in first language (L1). We examined whether English past tense forms are computed similarly or differently by L1 and L2 English speakers, and what factors might affect this: regularity (regular vs. irregular…

Asylum is a value. At its most basic, it is about the importance of protecting someone's life from persecution. The 1951 Refugee Convention seeks to achieve this--by ensuring that those people with a well-founded fear of persecution should be able to find protection within a state that has signed up to the Convention. The UK's commitments under…

This study is devoted to the effect of "textual metafunction" on the levels of coherence and cohesion in the Iranian EFL learners' English writing performance. Sixty Iranian intermediate EFL learners who were adult females participated in this study were randomly divided into two groups; experimental, and control. They were given a…

The theme for the 59th annual conference of the Association of Literacy Educators and Researchers was Making a Difference in Our Diverse Communities. The meeting took place in Costa Mesa, California in 2015. In the first section of the Yearbook, Dr. J. Helen Perkins's presidential address shared the story of her journey as an educator and how it…

In addition to learning to read and write for the first time, adult English language learners with limited or emerging literacy skills must acquire oral English. Often, learners with limited print literacy in their first language have oral skills in English that exceed their English literacy skills (Geva & Zadeh, 2006). While this mismatch of oral…

This paper examines article use in the L2-English of adult and child speakers of Russian, an article-less language. In earlier work on articles in adult L2-English, Ionin, Ko and Wexler (2004) proposed that speakers of article-less L1s fluctuate between dividing English articles on the basis of definiteness vs. specificity, as a result of direct…

This qualitative research study explores key challenges and literacy needs of adults from war-affected backgrounds. Poverty, stress and anxiety, years of formal education, and lack of English language proficiency were cited by the adult learners as barriers to fulfilling their potential. This study also presents perspectives of teachers who have…

In this article, the authors report that almost one in three adults in the UK have experience of learning a language as an adult, but only four percent are currently doing so--one percent less that in 1999, equivalent to a drop of half a million adults learning languages. Figures of speech, NIACE's UK-wide survey of language learning, also found a…

In a report on meeting the language needs of refugees in Ireland, Little (2000) identifies two sets of language rights for refugees--stemming from the right to preserve their own language or languages as a central element of identity, and the right to enjoy free access to Irish society which entails the right to develop language proficiency in…

This study investigated the relationship of first language (L1) grammatical knowledge to English second language reading (ESLR), with the objective of understanding this relationship in the context of the transfer of L1 skills to second language (L2) academic processes. Fifty-five adult, native Spanish-speaking English-language learners were given…