Adult second/foreign language acquisition is extremely challenging for many learners, with pronunciation often the one aspect in which otherwise very proficient language users fall short. Although a great deal of research has found that formal instruction in phonetics/phonology may improve learner pronunciation, no study has yet addressed the…

The effectiveness of written corrective feedback (WCF) in the improvement of language learners' grammatical accuracy has been a topic of interest in SLA studies for the past couple of decades. The present study reports the findings of a three-month study investigating the effect of direct unfocused WCF on the grammatical accuracy of elementary…

The purpose of this study was to compare the effects of two types of corrective feedback on EFL learners' writing skill. Thirty five advanced learners in three groups participated in this study. Structures of written texts were taught in all three classes during fourteen sessions of treatment; and each session, a related topic was given and the…

Facebook has best leveraged the rapid technological and societal changes over the past decade to grow into the world's largest social-networking site (SNS). However, research of Facebook has lagged behind other Web 2.0 technologies, particularly in regards to investigating its efficacy versus a control group to improve L2 writing. This study,…

The current study investigated the application and effectiveness of computer assisted language learning (CALL) in teaching academic writing to Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners by means of Microsoft Word Office. To this end, 44 sophomore intermediate university students majoring in English Language and Literature at an Iranian…

This study aimed to show whether administering a battery of time-series diagnostic tests (screening) has any impact on Iranian EFL learners' writing ability. The study was conducted on the intermediate EFL learners at Islamic Azad University North Tehran branch. The researcher administered a homogenizing test in order to exclude the exceptional…

This quasi-experimental study examined whether there was any difference in the quantity and quality of the written texts produced by two groups (N = 18) of intermediate Chinese language learners. Over one semester, students in the experimental (E) group wrote weekly updates and comments in Chinese on a designated Facebook group page, while…

This paper presents the results of a one-year longitudinal study which sought to investigate the effect that strategy instruction may have on English language achievement. Two classes of junior high school students at Madina in Ghana were involved in an experiment. The experimental class was taught various language-learner strategies both…

This study illustrates how a synergy of two technologies--Intelligent Computer-Assisted Language Learning (ICALL) and corpus linguistic analysis--can produce a lasting improvement in L2 learners' ability to edit persistent grammatical errors from their writing. A large written English corpus produced by Korean undergraduate and graduate students…

Online translation (OT) sites such as Free Translation and Babel Fish are freely available to the general public and purport to convert inputted text, from single words to entire paragraphs, instantly from one language to another. Discussion in the literature about OT for second-language (L2) acquisition has generally focused either on the…

This study examined the effectiveness of teaching methods used with a second language reading and writing unit. This investigation addressed discrepancies between assessment scores in the four communicative language skill areas of students in beginning-level Spanish classes at a suburban middle school. Accordingly, the purpose of this study was to…

This study investigated the effectiveness of portfolio-based writing assessment in EFL situations. Participants were 40 pre-intermediate young Iranian English learners. They were randomly divided into experimental and control groups of 20 each. The experimental group wrote on five pre-established topics from their coursebook. Their writings were…

"Frequently accepted as being the last language skill to be acquired for native speakers of the language as well as for foreign/second language learners" (Hamp-Lyons and Heasly, 2006: 2), English writing, for a number of EFL learners, appears to be challenging. This paper sought to investigate if learners can grow out of the writing…