The study examined the impact of a first language's summarizing skill and second language vocabulary size on summary performances in a second language. A total of 40 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners from a Japanese university with a mixed level of English language proficiency were asked to write a summary in English (i.e., their…

The primary goal of language teaching is to afford learners, proficiency in communicating in the target language, self-development as well as intercultural understanding of languages in the learning process. The teacher is therefore charged with the task of selecting appropriate strategies to effectively achieve his pedagogic goals, one of which…

The first language (L1) use is vital to developing the quality of second-language (L2) writings. Establishing a clear argument with the logical flow in L2 can be a daunting task for learners with low L2 proficiency. To determine if L1 use is positively related to students' L2 texts, the researcher conducted a comparative study with 77 Japanese L2…

This study investigated the factors, such as students' foreign language enjoyment, their foreign language classroom anxiety, the teacher's language choice (English-only instruction versus English instruction with limited legitimate Japanese support), and demographics that affect improvement in English proficiency in EFL communicative classes.…

In EFL teaching, it has been theorized that intelligibility can be achieved by relative closeness of oral performance to the standard of EFL proficiency. The current study sought to investigate the position of interlanguage performance of EFL college students in terms of intelligibility of the language product (Speaking). Ten students' Mid…

In recent years, along with the development of Chinese economy, the Chinese government pays more attention to English education in ethnic minority areas. Chinese ethnic minority EFL learners' passion has reached an unprecedented level. Nevertheless, a series of complicated factors affect Chinese ethnic minority EFL learners' English pronunciation…

This study aims to explore how the speech act of requesting is performed in Catalan (L1), English (L1) and EFL classrooms by pre-primary teachers. The study examines transcripts of 40-minute video-recorded lessons (six in Catalan/L1, six in English/FL, and three in English/L1) collected in several pre-primary schools in Catalonia, Spain. Recall…

The "College English Teaching Reform Project", issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education aims to strengthen the practical English instruction and improve the English language proficiency of the college students (Ministry of Education, 2007). However, the problem of "naturalness" in handling English by the college students…

The traditional focus of English phonetic teaching in China has consistently been on the segmental acquisition, which is mainly highlighting the pronunciation of vowels and consonants, while its suprasegmental knowledge in speech naturalness, coherence and understanding is relatively insufficient. In addition, Chinese students have a serious…

Investigating the L2 temporality, most previous studies within the Aspect Hypothesis framework focused on the basic meanings or prototypical uses of past morphology. The present study, however, including other less prototypical uses of past morphology, addresses 2 questions: (i) how the uses of simple past and past progressive morphology change as…

The purpose of the present study is to examine whether the summarizing skills in the first language (L1) of learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) affect their summary performances in a second language (L2). To examine the transferring of L1 summarizing skills to L2 summary performance it is necessary to figure out which L1 knowledge and…

The present study aimed to compare between individual and collaborative writing (pair and group of four) activities of 72 EFL students. The subjects of the study were assigned to produce their tasks by these three activities. Qualitative method was employed by using interview of nine students drawn from students with different levels of English…

Although much research on English for specific purposes (ESP) has been conducted, little focus has been placed on investigating the mechanisms involved in ESP readers' comprehension process. This case study explored the reading process that characterizes a competent ESP reader's comprehension. A juris doctor student attending a major university in…

This paper provides an overview of the theories on the organization and development of L1 mental lexicon and the representation mode of bilingual mental lexicon. It analyzes the structure and characteristics of Chinese EFL learners and their problems in English vocabulary acquisition. On the basis of this, it suggests that English vocabulary…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the production of pragmatic markers (PMs) by multilingual students in a CLIL context. Previous studies have analyzed pragmatic competence in multilingual settings (e.g., Cenoz, 2003; Martín-Laguna & Alcón-Soler, 2015; Portolés, 2015; Safont & Portolés, 2016). However, to the best of our…