Two questions regarding text signals' influence on second language (L2) science expository text comprehension were examined. First, the contextual relationship between verbal headings and non-verbal underlining signals (i.e., related or unrelated) was manipulated to investigate how these verbal and nonverbal text signals influence L2 text…

Second language (L2) utterance fluency is crucial for speaking proficiency assessment. The measurement of L2 utterance fluency relies heavily on silent pause identification. However, empirical studies establishing specific silent pause thresholds for L2 monologic speaking are scarce, and even fewer exist for L2 dialogic speaking. This study thus…

Humans are born storytellers as they use oral narratives as a vehicle to share their experiences. This study aimed to study how female Egyptian speakers formulate their personal experiences in oral narratives in the English Language. A need of this study was felt because not much is known how Arab EFL speakers build their oral narratives when its…

Language reflects how people think and behave in their culture. To have successful conversations, both language use and cultural awareness should be taken into consideration. Undeniably, Japanese grammar is different from Thai making it even harder for Thai learners to have fluent and appropriate conversations in the Japanese language. In the…

The article presents a pedagogical experience with a course of undergraduate students from various programs. The main objectives were to improve their oral skills in English, increase their self-confidence, reduce language-specific anxiety, and provide individual prospective feedback. An action research design was employed, adhering to the…

The relationship between foreign language anxiety (FLA) and foreign language enjoyment (FLE) experienced during a creative collaborative oral English-as-a-foreign-language task, and the relationships between FLE/FLA and task speech fluency were investigated. The task was performed by mid-intermediate/high-intermediate English learners (N = 43) in…

The present study continues research that takes non-serious language more seriously (Cekaite and Aronsson 2005) by focusing on a central second language (L2) Metaphoric Competence factor, Metaphor Language Play (MLP). For willing learners, MLP offers a diversity of benefits (Bushnell 2009; Bell 2012a) despite being one of the most challenging…

Motivation and anxiety are two crucial factors influencing learning outcomes, yet limited empirical research on expectancy-value theory can be found within previous literature about Chinese undergraduate students studying English as a foreign language (EFL). Moreover, few studies have examined the interaction between motivation and skill-specific…

This longitudinal study examines the effects of a pre-study abroad (SA) pedagogic intervention and subsequent SA experience on second language (L2) Mandarin fluency. It explores two temporal aspects of oral fluency--planning time and speech rate--along with one performance measure, duration of response. Additionally, L2 contact data were included…

The present study adopted a sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach to explore the impact of e-tandem on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' speaking skills (i.e. speaking fluency and coherence, lexicon, grammatical range and accuracy, and pronunciation) and willingness to communicate (WTC). To this end, two classes at a language…

This study explored the potential of adopting speech-to-text recognition (STR) technology for English as a foreign language (EFL) oral training in class at the university level. An action study method was set to investigate the effects of implementing STR app tasks for EFL oral training with 27 students in one class for one semester at a…

The main aim of this study was to investigate how oral fluency is assessed across different levels of proficiency in the Test of English for Educational Purposes (TEEP). Working with data from 56 test-takers performing a monologic task at a range of proficiency levels (equivalent to approximately levels 5.0, 5.5, 6.5, and 7.5 in the IELTS scoring…

Research Findings: This study investigated the effectiveness of a home-based intervention in increasing the intrinsic reading motivation and Chinese oral vocabulary of minority South Asian children in Hong Kong. A quasi-experiment was conducted with 78 children (M[subscript age] = 51.54 months; control: 37 children, intervention: 41 children) and…

This study adopted an action research design to analyze the contribution of the Elevator Pitch technique on English as foreign language learners' oral fluency. Six 11th graders in a rural at-risk context in a vocational public high school in Hualqui, Chile participated in this study. The Elevator Pitch technique was implemented during seven…

A significant number of students experience anxiety when asked to speak in English. This unease, often rooted in factors such as shyness, lack of confidence, uncertainty, and a lack of motivation, can hinder their active participation during English oral exams. One of the most important goals that every English language teacher should strive to…