The era of globalization and information and knowledge in which we find ourselves requires Higher Education to develop English-speaking proficiency in its students to adequately respond to academic and occupational challenges, taking advantage of the virtues of the variety of resources offered by technology. YouGlish is an online oral dictionary…

Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) technology has revolutionized the landscape of oral English education, offering new possibilities for improving learning efficiency and experiences. This paper presents an innovative teaching system that integrates real-time speech recognition and feedback capabilities with advanced natural language processing (NLP)…

The purpose of the present study was to examine: (1) the effects of audio-visual information; and (2) the role of temporal measurements associated with the perceptual ratings of fluency, accentedness, comprehensibility, pronunciation, and oral proficiency in second language (L2) speech samples of International Teaching Assistants (ITAs). American…

Automatic Speech Scoring (ASS) has increasingly become a useful tool in oral proficiency testing for Second Language (L2) learners. However, limited studies investigate the alignment of ASS indices with the Complexity, Accuracy, and Fluency (CAF)--the three dimensions in evaluating L2 speakers' oral proficiency, and the subsequent impact indices…

English proficiency assessments have become a necessary metric for filtering and selecting prospective candidates for both academia and industry. With the rise in demand for such assessments, it has become increasingly necessary to have the automated human-interpretable results to prevent inconsistencies and ensure meaningful feedback to the…

Purpose: This study investigated the effects of an AR application (Civilisations AR) on EFL learners' oral proficiency in the dimensions of content, fluency, vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar, as well as their attitudes and perceptions toward AR technology. Design: Utilizing a quasi-experiment, twenty-four EFL learners engaged in a…

The study aims to determine whether exposing EFL Saudi undergraduate students to TED talks could effectively contribute to the improvement of their oral language proficiency. To achieve this goal, 32 English as a Foreign Language Saudi undergraduate students were recruited to participate in the study. These students were selected based on their…

The goal of this research is to determine whether the Role Play Technique may improve students' speaking skills, particularly in grade XI. The study was carried out at SMAN 1 Cisarua, Bandung Barat, with 34 students from grade XI Science-3 serving as the sample. This is a pre-experimental study. After 16 hours of treatment (two hours per meeting…

This article reports a mixed-methods study about using virtual reality (VR) tools (Google Cardboard and Expeditions) for developing students' oral proficiency in learning Chinese as a second language. Twelve students role-played as tour guides for six locations throughout a semester: four of them with VR tools and two without. Data collection…

The rating of proficiency tests that use the Inter-agency Roundtable (ILR) and American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) guidelines claims that each major level is based on hierarchal linguistic functions that require mastery of multidimensional traits in such a way that each level subsumes the levels beneath it. These…

Research has suggested the important role of vocabulary knowledge in second language (L2) speaking proficiency. However, earlier studies tended to disregard the congruence in test format between assessing vocabulary knowledge and speaking skills with the former predominantly measured in written format. The current study measured vocabulary…

Nonverbal behavior can impact language proficiency scores in speaking tests, but there is little empirical information of the size or consistency of its effects or whether language proficiency may be a moderating variable. In this study, 100 novice raters watched and scored 30 recordings of test takers taking an international, high stakes…

Although a number of studies have been conducted to explore how various individual difference (ID) factors such as aptitude, motivation, and anxiety contributing to L2 learners' speech performance over a period of time of L2 learning, only a few examined the effect of the three ID factors on learners' L2 speech performances based on classroom…

This study investigated U.S. undergraduates' perceptions of non-native speakers' (NNS) speech which had received 100% proficiency scores on the TOEFL iBT test. Fifty-five U.S. undergraduates rated 20 speech samples for comprehensibility, accentedness, and acceptability. The speech samples were also analyzed for acoustic fluency. Descriptively,…

This study reports on how project-based language learning in which L1 Japanese EFL learners created short videos affected L2 oral proficiency. Students took short speaking tests before and after the class, and the fluency, complexity and accuracy of the pre- and posttests were measured to see which, if any, of these three aspects of proficiency…