Despite its importance in our learning and daily life, listening is 'the least understood and the least researched skill' [Vandergrift, L. 2007. "Recent Developments in Second and Foreign Language Listening Comprehension Research." "Language Teaching" 40: 191-201]. By utilizing listening journals and curated materials, this…

The reading response journal has been valued as an effective tool for involving students in authentic reading and writing activities. As the internet has become an essential medium in today's English classroom, it is advisable to integrate both the web and the journal when approaching our EFL students. In order to motivate and engage my…

Students are rarely given the opportunity of being decisionmakers in class, and when they are, they may feel unsure of how to organize their own learning. However, over time they come to appreciate the benefits of a more active engagement in learning English. In this paper, I describe a procedure based on Exploratory Practice (EP) for guiding…

Introduces the activity of student-written reading logs as a practical application of reader-response theory in English-as-Foreign-Language literature teaching. Because reader-response theory stresses the synthesis between reader and text, it is proposed that practical applications should be based on the interaction. (Author/VWL)

This paper examines the English listening journals of 23 Taiwanese university students learning English. The listening journal requires that students listen to one English language program a week, write a brief synopsis, and comment upon self-listening abilities and the program, including what s/he learned. Journals are graded according to effort…

Examined Taiwanese university students' responses to five American short stories. A reader-response approach to teaching English-as-a-foreign-language reading was used. Students' journals were analyzed and students were interviewed. Analysis of the journals reveals students went beyond comprehension of text and actively constructed meaning through…

This study used journals and image notebooks to examine English as a Foreign Language (EFL) university students' cognitive skill development as they completed pleasure-reading activities that preceded creative writing tasks. Participants were freshmen at Taiwan's National Yang-Ming University who were enrolled in an English reading and writing…