This article investigates how group speaking test candidates manage group talk during assessed, time-limited tasks. Drawing on recorded and transcribed data, it explores how higher-scoring learners manage spoken assessment tasks through their talk, moving conversations on or slowing them down in order to perform and complete the tasks'…

In this paper, we report a longitudinal study of the effects of procedural task repetition on learners' task performance (i.e., syntactic complexity in relation to lexical complexity). We investigated how task repetition results in differences at the group and individual level across each task interval (T = 7). Intermediate-level Saudi learners of…

Back-interpreting practice refers to interpreting the translated version of a speech back to its source language. The learning opportunities provided by backinterpreting practice can be explained by Swain's (1985) comprehensible output hypothesis, Laufer and Hulstijn's (2001) involvement load hypothesis, and Schmidt's (1990) noticing hypothesis.…

Data-driven platforms with rich data and learning analytics applications provide immense opportunities to support collaborative learning such as algorithmic group formation systems based on learning logs. However, teachers can still get overwhelmed since they have to manually set the parameters to create groups and it takes time to understand the…

This two-week quantitative experimental study aimed at making a comparison among the effects of individual and collaborative pre-task planning, both with and without receiving teacher feedback on structural organization and clarity of argumentative essays. The participants were 120 Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, assigned…

Group assignments are widely used in higher education for a range of educational reasons. Although there is a large body of research on the merits of group work and factors that may contribute to successful group work, less is known about students' and teachers' perspectives, particularly when groups are composed of students from diverse…

Families engage in a range of cultural practices in their everyday lives that shape children's early literacies. Given the growing number of children who are living outside the country of their birth or their parents' birth, more research is needed to highlight the under-recognised literacies of young children shaped by their family cultural…

This study is intended to explore the influence of partners' L2 proficiency on test-takers' performance and on their interaction patterns in paired oral assessment, and it tries to analyze the underlying causes on the basis of Vygotsky's theory of the zone of proximal development (ZPD) and Storch's patterns of interaction. An experiment including…

The purpose of this study was to assess the degree to which sheltered versus unsheltered contexts of introductory communication courses impact communication skill development and overall learning outcomes for international students. Specifically, this study examined the following outcome variables: public speaking anxiety, engagement,…

The linguistic scrutiny of any aspect of pragmatics is bound to considering carefully the context in which it is expressed. This becomes very glaring when the utterances that constitute discourse are viewed as performing social actions. In an EFL context like Iran, English language learners are in urgent need of raising their pragmatic awareness…

A great number of investigations have focused on the subject of task rehearsal (repetition) and its likely influence on language learning. Giving language (L2) learners an opportunity to repeat the task may help them to redistribute their focus on form, since they have already become fairly familiar with the content. Several studies have also…

This study investigates learners' perceptions of the benefits and the difficulties of group work (GW) in EFL (English as a foreign language) classes. The purpose of this study is to explore the possible effects of GW, in order to better understand learners' attitudes towards GW, and to inform language teachers of students' views of using GW. A…

Pair/group work is now widely applied in virtually all types of classroom, and it is one of the prominent features of the learner-centered approach and the communicative method in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes. This study aimed to investigate three core questions (1) What do English majors at Dong Thap University perceive of group…

The study investigated the interaction patterns of six ASEAN EFL university students when they worked in small groups on two collaborative writing tasks: a descriptive essay and an argumentative essay. Both groups were homogeneous in terms of gender and heterogeneous in terms of home countries. Data collection included pre- and posttest writing,…

Following a suggestion by Poehner [2008. Dynamic Assessment: A Vygotskian Approach to Understanding and Promoting Second Language Development. Berlin: Springer] about the possible merger between group dynamic assessment (GDA) rooted in Vygotskian sociocultural theory (SCT) and computer testing, this study has decided to test the feasibility of…