The Direct Method, a pedagogical approach for teaching additional languages through immersion, emphasizes oral interaction and everyday language usage to facilitate language acquisition. This method discourages reliance on translation and minimizes emphasis on grammatical rules. However, a fundamental question arises about the effectiveness of…

The purpose of this chapter is to present the assessment practice carried out by means of learning diaries within institutionally integrated teletandem, a bilingual model of Virtual Exchange (VE) embedded into foreign language courses at São Paulo State University (UNESP), in Brazil. Teachers read learners' diaries on a weekly basis and provide…

Only three percent of Brazilians are estimated to speak English despite the status of this language as a mandatory subject in grades 10 to 12 of basic education and preferred foreign language in grades 5 to 9. This paper will analyse possible reasons for this fact. The widespread concept in the Brazilian society that speaking English is beneficial…

Despite positive evidence demonstrating the pedagogical benefits of Text-To-Speech (TTS) synthesisers for second/foreign language learning (Liakin, Cardoso, & Liakina, 2017), there is a need for up-to-date formal evaluations, specifically regarding its potential to promote learning. This study evaluates the voice quality of a TTS system in…

Students of initial teacher education need to be prepared for the classrooms of tomorrow. Teachers require the necessary skills and competences to teach in culturally diverse contexts, to collaborate across disciplines, and to use technologies in innovative ways; but the Digital Economy and Society Index reports that only 20-25% of students in…

Answers of undergraduate Brazilian English as a foreign language students (N=40) to an open-ended and a multiple-choice reading comprehension test revealed that three prereading activities (pictorial context, vocabulary preteaching, and prequestioning) resulted in higher reading comprehension. (Author/CB)

A classroom research project in English-as-a-Second-Language vocabulary development, conducted in an English language school in Brazil, is described. The study had two major aims: to help students build a large lexicon for future use, and to encourage students to be responsible for their own learning by teaching strategies for learning vocabulary.…

The IADIS CELDA 2012 Conference intention was to address the main issues concerned with evolving learning processes and supporting pedagogies and applications in the digital age. There had been advances in both cognitive psychology and computing that have affected the educational arena. The convergence of these two disciplines is increasing at a…