This article reports a mixed-methods study about using virtual reality (VR) tools (Google Cardboard and Expeditions) for developing students' oral proficiency in learning Chinese as a second language. Twelve students role-played as tour guides for six locations throughout a semester: four of them with VR tools and two without. Data collection…

Owing to the plethora of user-friendly audio/video creation and editing applications as well as free full-featured hosting platforms, videoing and sharing has become a lifestyle of today's students. Utilizing these spontaneous practices, the current study examined the effects of digital media assignments (DMAs) and accompanying asynchronous…

The present quasi-experimental study investigated the comparative effects of metalinguistic clue (MC) and metalinguistic explanation (ME) on the accurate use of Japanese transaction expressions. The study recruited 25 learners in a second-semester Japanese course (i.e. non-introduced group) and 17 students in a fourth-semester course (i.e.…

Although corrective feedback (CF) has received much interest in the second language acquisition literature, relatively little research has investigated the relationship between CF and learner affect in concrete practice situations. The present study investigates learners' affective states and practice behaviour in a novel context: oral grammar…

This article reports on an exploratory study investigating mobile-assisted oral feedback in teaching Chinese as a second language (CSL). It is aimed at exploring the characteristics of mobile-assisted feedback on oral production with the smartphone social communication app WeChat as a case in point and examining learners' perceptions of…

Speaking practice is important for learners of a second language. Computer assisted language learning (CALL) systems can provide attractive opportunities for speaking practice when combined with automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology. In this paper, we present a CALL system that offers spoken practice of word order, an important aspect of…

Construction grammar (CG) has been proposed as an adequate grammatical formalism for building intelligent language tutoring systems because it is highly compatible with the learning strategies observed in second language learning. Unfortunately, the lack of computational CG implementations has made it impossible in the past to corroborate these…

This paper will describe pedagogical approaches for re-purposing an open educational resource (OER) designed and produced by the Deutsche Welle. This free online program, "Deutsch Interaktiv," consists of authentic digital videos, slideshows and audio texts and gives a contemporary overview of the culture and language in Germany, Austria…

Concerns the relative effectiveness of computer-assisted production (output) practice and comprehension (input) practice in second-language acquisition. In particular, the study focuses on whether the advantage of production practice over comprehension practice still remains when the target structures are relatively simple. (Author/VWL)