Social networking applications such as WhatsApp have been extensively used for language research; however, they have rarely been applied for language assessment purposes. To explore the efficiency of WhatsApp for assessment purposes, 30 Iranian English learners doing self- and peer-assessments on WhatsApp are studied. The changes and the reasons…

A qualitative think-aloud study, informed by social literacies and holistic bilingual perspectives, was conducted to examine how six emergent bilingual, Mexican American, fourth graders approached, interacted with, and comprehended narrative and expository texts in Spanish and English. The children had strong Spanish reading test scores, but…

This research investigates cross-linguistic influence in the comprehension of L3 French past tense. A close examination was made on the L1 (Chinese) and L2 (English) transfer patterns among 20 English majors in their early acquisition of L3 French passé compose (PC). Data were collected through introspective think-aloud protocol in a comprehension…

Academic reading has been less emphasized compared with academic writing as a site of research inquiry. Although some studies have examined reading strategy use in academic reading (e.g., Block, 1986; Plakans, 2009), these studies used short passages only, and there have been a few studies that have focused on the mental representation constructed…

Present conceptualizations and measures of self-esteem do not account for linguistic self-esteem, an aspect of the self specifically relevant for bilingual students. This study examines the utility of a newly developed measure of linguistic self-esteem. This novel measure is compared with a commonly used self-esteem measure, two standardized…

The purpose of this study is to explore ways of incorporating web-based concordancers for the purpose of teaching English collocations. A mixed-methods design utilizing a case study strategy was employed to uncover four specific dimensions of corpus use by twenty-four students in two classroom sections of a writing course at a university in…

Think-aloud protocols (TAPs) are frequently used in research on essay rating processes. However, there are very few empirical studies of the completeness of TAP data and the effects of this technique on rater performance (i.e., rating processes and outcomes). This study aims to start to address this research gap. As part of a larger study on rater…

Approaching peer review from a process and contextualized perspective, this exploratory case study investigates two Chinese EFL learners' decision-making patterns while evaluating peers' texts in an online peer review and factors influencing these patterns. Detailed qualitative case study data were collected through think-aloud protocols,…

Having the skills and strategies to comprehend and respond to information on the Internet plays a crucial role in students' success in a digital information age. Defined as the deliberate conscious control of one's own cognitive actions, metacognitive reading strategies can help readers overcome problems they encounter and ultimately achieve…

This case study investigated the revising patterns and intentions in L1 and L2 of Japanese writers with various writing experiences. Three participants were selected through purposeful sampling to do within-case comparisons. One participant was an experienced writer in both Japanese and English; one was an experienced writer in Japanese, but not…

A study explored the cognitive processes and social-situational influences underlying students' assessment of their own foreign language proficiency, focusing on process rather than result of self-evaluation. The subjects, 28 college student learners of French at different course levels, were administered a self-assessment questionnaire on the…