Personalized learning has become an important and powerful paradigm catering for various needs, styles, preferences, and modes of learning. Several methods including task recommendations and path planning have recently emerged to effectively implement personalized learning using e-learning systems. The literature shows that the use of task…

There now exists an established body of work outlining the challenges international students can face as part of the acculturation process, including a range of academic and non-academic pressures to overcome. For many students, writing essays in academic English for the first time is problematic. This article considers pedagogical approaches for…

The study explored the impact of proficiency, frequency, L1-L2 congruency, and semantic transparency on the knowledge of multi-word units (MWUs) among Iranian L2 learners (N = 256). A gap-filling test was used to assess learners' productive knowledge, employing a high-frequency MWU list created with the lemmatised concgramming method. The list,…

Language assessment is increasingly computermediated. This development presents opportunities with new task formats and equally a need for renewed scrutiny of established conventions. Recent recommendations to increase integrated skills assessment in lecture comprehension tests is premised on empirical research that demonstrates enhanced construct…

This study explores the role of cognitive task complexity in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum development and its impact on learner engagement, motivation, and learning outcomes. A mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative and quantitative methods, was employed to gain comprehensive insights into the topic. The qualitative…

Language tests, including international high-stakes English proficiency tests widely used around the world, are to be viewed as ideological constructs connected with power relations and center-periphery demarcations at different social levels. In this paper, we examine the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) as an instance of…

Test preparation has been shown to affect educational test scores to varying degrees. In language testing, however, there are no cross-regional studies that consider the effects of gender and age on test preparation practices. This study represents an attempt to remedy this situation. Questionnaire respondents to a global survey were tasked with…

Over the decades, extensive research efforts have been directed towards classifying and evaluating motivational teaching behaviours. Recent calls in motivational research, however, have emphasised the need to investigate teachers' perspectives on how they develop effective motivational strategies so that implications for motivational teaching are…

This study explores the effectiveness of using ChatGPT, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) language model, as an Automated Essay Scoring (AES) tool for grading English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' essays. The corpus consists of 50 essays representing various types including analysis, compare and contrast, descriptive, narrative, and opinion…

This study investigates washback effects of IELTS test on university teachers' adoption of teaching materials in the classroom in China and see how a high-stake language exam affects their teaching practices and how they and their students perceive the effectiveness of the pedagogic adjustments. To this end, individual interview to five teacher…

The present study was undertaken to explore the practicality and the effect of dynamic assessment on L2 writing ability of Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. To this end, 17 EFL learners divided into two groups, participated in this article. Then, dynamic assessment procedure was done in three steps, topic-choice,…

Purpose: This study attempts to evaluate the effect of the corpus-based inductive teaching approach with multiple academic corpora (PICA, CAEC and Oxford Corpus of Academic English) and conventional deductive teaching approach (i.e., multiple-choice items, filling the gap, matching and underlining) on learning academic collocations by Iranian…

This study investigated the effects of using IELTS model essays in conjunction with noticing as a feedback instrument on Vietnamese undergraduates' IELTS Task 2 writing performance. To investigate this, a quasi-experimental design was undertaken. The control group used the course textbook and received traditional writing feedback (i.e. direct,…

Teacher corrective feedback is widely recognised as integral in supporting developing L2 writers. The potentially high pressure IELTS test preparation classroom presents a context where feedback has not yet been extensively studied. Consequently, teachers' approaches to corrective feedback on Writing Task 2, the essay component of IELTS Writing,…

Affordance refers to the opportunity available to a learning activity. Taking affordance as a theoretical and analytical construct, this exploratory study investigates learners' attitudes and the opportunities WeChat may provide for Chinese cultural knowledge (CCK) learning. The aim is to find out the potential new affordances and compare learners…