The current project longitudinally investigated the extent to which first-year Japanese university students developed their second language (L2) oral ability in relation to increased input in foreign language classrooms. Their spontaneous speech was elicited at the beginning, middle and end of one academic year, and then judged by linguistically…

This study examined the relationship between targeted pronunciation instruction in French as a second language (L2) and listener-based ratings of accent, comprehensibility, and fluency. The ratings by 20 French listeners evaluating the speech of 30 adult L2 French learners enrolled in a 15-week listening and speaking course targeting segments,…

Pronunciation features are not equal in how they affect listeners' ability to understand. Some are low value, while others are high value. This study explores whether contrastive stress is high value. Previous research has shown that identification of contrastive stress is learnable (Pennington & Ellis, 2000), and that explicit teaching about…

These days focus of interest in English learning changes to productive skills, in Turkey. This research study assesses the teachers' point of view about using ice-breakers for adult Turkish EFL learners in upper-intermediate level. It also anticipates finding valuable information with applying ice-breaker activities as a useful teaching policy…

Flipped Instruction is overemphasized in recent years that has a significant impact in language education. In this context, the current research investigates the effects of Flipped Instruction on pre-service English language teachers' speaking skills development. The research covers subskills of speaking skills. In this study quantitative data…

This study investigates how fluent second-language (L2) learners of English produce and perceive the /ae/-/?/ vowel contrast of Southwestern American English. Two learner groups are examined: (1) early, proficient English speakers who were raised by Spanish-speaking families but who became dominant in English during childhood and, as adults, lack…

This study identified robust predictors of expressive skills in academic English as a foreign language. The participants were 92 Korean-speaking learners of English. The field test of the Pearson Test of English Academic was used as a secondary data analysis. Four communicative skills (reading, writing, listening, and speaking) and six enabling…

This article reports on the outcomes of a longitudinal case study to gauge the impact of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) on two of the least researched language skills: oral comprehension and production. It worked with 24 students in the fourth grade of Compulsory Secondary Education in a public school in Andalusia (southern Spain)…

Assessing speaking skills is regarded as a complex and hard process compared with the other language skills. Considering the idiosyncratic characteristics of EFL learners, oral proficiency assessment issue becomes even more important. Keeping this situation in mind, judgements and reliability of raters need to be consistent with each other. This…

Perceptual (mis)matches between teachers and learners are said to affect learning success or failure. Self-assessment, as a formative assessment tool, may, inter alia, be considered a means to minimize such mismatches. Therefore, the present study investigated the extent to which learners' assessment of their own speaking performance, before and…

In order to develop effective teaching methods and computer-assisted language teaching systems for learners of English as a foreign language who need to study the basic linguistic competences for writing, pronunciation, reading, and listening, it is necessary to first investigate which vocabulary and grammar they have or have not yet learned.…

This study investigates the different learning opportunities enabled by text-based and video-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) from an interactionist perspective. Six Chinese-speaking learners of English and six English-speaking learners of Chinese were paired up as tandem (reciprocal) learning dyads. Each dyad participated…

The mastery of speaking skills in English has become a major requisite in engineering industry. Engineers are expected to possess speaking skills for executing their routine activities and career prospects. The article focuses on the experimental study conducted to improve English spoken proficiency of Indian engineering students using task-based…

This study investigated how task-based learning (TBL) developed the verbal competence of Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) by employing qualitative and quantitative analyses. We compared the impromptu oral presentations on reading texts of 76 intermediate EFL learners given respectively in the beginning and the end of the…

Chinese EFL learners may have difficulty in speaking fluent and accurate English, for their speaking competence are likely to be influenced by cognitive, linguistic and affective factors. With the aim to enhance those learners' oral proficiency, this paper first discusses three effective models of teaching English speaking, and then proposes a…