This paper reports on a pilot study with advanced EFL learners in Germany who were asked to use ProWritingAid (PWA) for a composition task in a German comprehensive school. PWA is an Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) tool that provides writers with feedback on grammar, spelling mistakes, and writing style during the writing and editing process.…

The introduction of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory (SCT) into the second language (L2) domain provides a potential site to explore the mechanisms underlying L2 learners' cognitive modification and the transformation of social understanding into the personal one. This study provided a picture of L2 personalization in two groups of advanced and…

This is the first paper that provides correlational evidence about how interacting with an online allophonic transcription tool helps learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) to improve their phonological awareness. The study investigates 55 advanced ESL learners at a Polish university enrolled in a course in English phonetics and phonology.…

This study examined how Google Jamboard-based autonomous knowledge-sharing advanced language proficiency and motivation in an online intermediate--high EFL communication course. For one semester, 30 Korean first-year college students shared their learning experiences beyond the classroom, enhancing their English communication competence via a…

This study had two aims. The first was to explain the process of using the Rasch measurement model to validate tests in an easy-to-understand way for those unfamiliar with the Rasch measurement model. The second was to validate two final exams with several shared items. The exams were given to two groups of students with slightly differing English…

Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) systems have been found to enhance the accuracy, readability, and cohesion of writing responses (Stevenson & Phakiti, 2019). Previous research indicates that individual learners may have difficulty utilizing content-based AWE feedback and collaborative processing of feedback might help to cope with this…

Pronunciation is one of the main problems in language teaching and learning and it gets little attention. Most of students underestimate the importance of pronunciation considering that pronunciation is less important than other aspects of language. Many researchers investigated the weakness of pronunciation among students in all stages. However,…

The terms used to designate ordinary relational identities seem easy to learn and translate. However, these interpersonal identities reflect complex mental constructs that are very sensitive to the variables that interact in human communication, particularly cultural variation. This paper describes a pilot project developed at the University of…

This mixed-methods study investigates writers' task representation and the factors affecting it in test-like and non-test-like conditions. Five advanced-level L2 writers wrote two argumentative essays each, one in test-like conditions and the other in non-test-like conditions where the participants were allowed to use all the time and online…

: Bookmapped storytelling, a pedagogical approach designed by Terence W. Cavanaugh and Jerome Burg (2011), allows students to trace a character's trajectory on a digital map. The use of this digital tool in foreign language education and its effectiveness in helping students reach proficiency remains little studied. In this article I explore the…

In English, positions of lexical stress in disyllabic words are associated with word categories; that is, nouns tend to be stressed more often on the first syllable, whereas verbs are more likely to be stressed on the second syllable (i.e. "sub"ject (noun) vs. sub"ject" (verb)). This phenomenon, which is called the stress…

Since modal auxiliary verbs have been proved to be one of the most troublesome grammatical structures in English, the researchers of this study decided to do an analysis on the ways in which advanced EFL Iranian students use modal auxiliaries focusing specially on nine modals' semantic functions. Consequently, was conducted based on the following…

Derived from Vygotsky's works, dynamic assessment (DA) enables learners to move beyond their current level of functioning through offering needs-sensitized mediation. This study aimed at exploring the learners' development in novel and increasingly more challenging situations called transcendence (TR) in an L2 context focusing on reading…

New information technologies can act as a Trojan horse offering activities that will require major changes in the teaching-learning process. Computer aided learning applications are able to offer advanced students the opportunity to improve their skills and to maintain their motivation. In the spirit of "learning by doing", they are…