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…

Positive perceptions of the school social environment have been found to be associated with a host of positive outcomes. However, English language learners (ELL) might be less likely to have positive perceptions of their school environment or a strong sense of school belonging compared with their fluent English-speaking peers. The purpose of the…

Adultism within English learner (EL) policy in the United States relegates youth to the status of objects whose English proficiency and academic achievement is assessed, monitored, and developed. This study challenges this institutionalized adultism by centering youths' interpretations of their own schooling experiences. It uses an intersectional…

Many students in Title I, low-income public high schools in the Pacific southwest do not appear to have the same levels of academic mastery as their more affluent counterparts. This dissertation examines whether a classroom environment has an effect on students' perceptions of their teacher and academic achievement, and consists of a causal…

The literature on students' perceptions towards using Social Media (SM) for language learning reports mixed findings: while some studies indicate learners' positive perceptions of their use for academic purposes (e.g., Bani-Hani et al.), others suggest that learners' perceptions might vary due to their proficiency in the language (e.g., Gamble…

This study intended to explore the different types of phraseological units in IELTS academic writing task 2 and probe into the IELTS candidates' perceptions of phraseological competence. To this end, a corpus entailing 100 essays (26,423 words) written for IELTS writing task 2 was scrutinized, through which phraseological units were extracted and…

The goal of this project was to design a scaffolded learning activity that develops English learners' (ELs) argumentation skills. In this study, we investigated how middle school ELs interacted with a game-enhanced scenario-based assessment of argumentation skills (named "Seaball"). The target skills included identifying and classifying…

This study examined the contribution of three writing enabling skills (i.e., feedback perception, self-efficacy, and self-regulation) on writing performance among Hispanic students. Participants were 261 students in grades 3-5. Approximately 60% of students were Emerging Bilingual (EB) enrolled in dual language programming. Students completed…

English speaking is considered the most difficult and anxiety-provoking language skill for EFL learners due to lack of access to authentic language use, fear of making mistakes, and peers' negative comments. With automatic speech recognition and natural language processing, intelligent personal assistants (IPAs) have potential in foreign language…

Objective: The purpose of this study is to better understand the lived experiences and familial culture that influence the college decisions and experiences of Mexican American students in a community college in Oregon. The research questions guiding this study are "What early schooling experiences affect the college experiences of Mexican…

This study was focused on adult English language learners (ELLs) that described their experiences with language acquisition in an elementary, middle, or high school in the United States. The problem addressed in this qualitative descriptive study was that public schools were unable to handle the academic inadequacies of ELLs as well as the…

It has been observed that the low academic performance of trainees at the Windhoek Vocational Training Centre has been on the increase at an alarming rate without any proven reasons Malwa (2018). This may be the case in other vocational training centres. Thus, this study examined the influence of English as a Second Language on trainees' academic…

In this position paper, we draw on a wide, but non-exhaustive, review of existing literature to argue that long term English learner (LTEL)-considered students are uniquely positioned to expose fissures in the English learner (EL) education system more broadly. Examining both the early educational contexts that lead to students' LTEL status, as…

Long-term English learners (LTELs) are students who were identified as English learners (EL) when they entered U.S. schools and continue to be ELs for 5 or more years. Although many factors influence LTEL status, student performance on standardized language and achievement tests particularly shape their trajectory through school. Yet, little is…

This article explores the experiences of seven elementary teacher candidates and their participation in varied field experiences during the last year of their teacher preparation program in response to the question: In what ways does a one-on-one tutoring practicum with an English Learner (EL) and a semester-long student teaching experience in a…