Flexible learning in this pandemic combines a specific percentage of synchronous and asynchronous sessions. In this research, the adoption of Zoom as a discussion platform tool in teaching communicative English skills to tertiary education students in a public HEI is discussed; based on the Leapfrog Principle. The study investigated the…

Giving effective writing feedback can be a challenge for any English instructor. Teaching students how to provide peer feedback can be problematic as well. Both these challenges may seem even more apparent when teaching online during a pandemic. Using Google Docs for collaborative writing feedback is one effective method for addressing both these…

Adult first language (L1) English speakers who are advanced second language (L2) learners of Spanish demonstrate near-ceiling levels of accuracy for some features of Spanish, such as [Person] and [Number] for verbs (McCarthy, 2012; Rodgers, 2011). While for other features, such as [Aspect] for copulas (i.e. ser and estar), and [Person] and…

This article is the first large-scale study to document the speaking proficiency outcomes of intensive programs in less commonly taught languages in US higher education. Speaking proficiency was measured by pre- and postprogram ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interviews (N = 484) in 14 languages: Arabic, Bengali, Brazilian Portuguese, Hindi, Indonesian,…

This article investigates the effectiveness of positive psychology interventions (PPIs) in an intensive English program for non-matriculated university students. Interventions based on the PERMA model were implemented through weekly 65-minute lessons given during the first class of each week. These were followed by short daily activities during…

The U.S. economy receives consistent and increasing benefits from international students in higher education, an estimated $41 billion during the 2018-2019 academic year. However, the existing research literature has failed to determine whether Intensive English Language Programs (IELP) adequately prepare these students for college-level…

Collaboration in peer interaction has been investigated extensively by analysing language-related episodes (LREs). These have been classified variously depending on the nature of the discourse. Most studies of collaboration in peer interaction have thus tended to adopt a predetermined framework for analysis. Meanwhile, task type as a mediating…

With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, online education has been embraced as an instructional delivery mode to ensure continuity in all levels of education including higher education. Given the fact that the success of online learning heavily relies on the learner's ability to autonomously regulate their learning, this study focuses on…

Students are often encouraged to proofread their writing by reading it aloud. Presumably, this will allow writers to correct local errors. Yet even though this strategy may be effective for native speakers, there is little empirical evidence of its benefit among second language writers. Therefore, we wondered how many errors second language…

Children and youth from refugee backgrounds have complex language experiences owing to their journeys away from their homelands often taking them through multiple contexts. This study was motivated by a desire to better understand the language resources of students newly arrived as refugees in Australia and their embodied and contextualised…

This paper examines the efficacy of academic support interventions provided by the Swinburne College Student Hub for international students enrolled in the Postgraduate Qualifying Program (PQP) or English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students (ELICOS). Interventions for PQP students encompass plagiarism checking, paraphrasing,…

While the use of educational technology in online instruction has increased in higher education, it is still limited in intensive, academic English programs. Precipitated by COVID-19, U.S. Intensive English Programs (IEPs) quickly transitioned from face-to-face (F2F) instruction to the emergency remote teaching environment (ERTE) when the public…

Reading approaches in Japan and other EFL settings have typically focused on accuracy at the expense of fluency. However, reading rate and fluency are important components of reading that are currently being neglected. A review of the literature reveals growing interest in investigating the effectiveness of reading rate and fluency enhancement…

The present investigation aimed to assess the use of scaffolding strategies by young English as a second language learners who carried out communicative tasks in the context of high-immersive virtual reality (HVR) (Kaplan-Rakowski & Gruber, 2019). More specifically, 24 students enrolled in an intensive program in the province of Quebec,…

The present study investigated six experienced English as a second language (ESL) teachers' metalinguistic knowledge of the English intonation system through analysis of their metalanguage. Participants' metalanguage related to intonation was collected while completing three tasks: (1) a semi-structured interview, (2) a simulated teaching…