This paper investigates optimal practices for teaching Chinese as a foreign language, situated within the context of adult learning theories, with a specific focus on adopting Vygotsky's sociocultural perspective. The examination delves into the theory of genre and its role in constructing meaning within cultural and social contexts, exploring its…

Engaging a complexity theory view of learning, this study examined an atypical timescale for tracking L2 authorial voice development through the interaction of cognitive processes that inform voice construction. A microgenetic analysis of seven adult Japanese learners of English in a three-week writing course designed to help students develop…

This study is a critical analysis of a low-stakes in-house English as a Second Language (ESL) and English literacy test from a local program in a large city in the southwestern United States. From a critical multimodal social semiotic perspective (Kress G. Multimodality: A social semiotic approach to contemporary communication. Routledge, 2010;…

Recent research on the relationship between reading and writing in foreign language (FL) context is limited. However, an examination of the issue is critical for FL literacy curriculum design. The present study, contextualized in an English as a foreign language (EFL) test preparation program in China, explores the reading-writing relationship by…

The present study investigates how learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) improve the readability of their texts in an explicit genre-based approach that is utilized in an oil and gas exploration workplace in Angola. By drawing on the English for Specific Purposes and Systemic Functional Linguistics genre traditions, the study engages 18…

Following one of the new challenges suggested by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, a treatment was developed to enhance pragmatic competence, since this competence is not easy to acquire by non-native speakers. Within this context, we focused on pragmatic awareness in the workplace, an area of expertise in growing demand…

Opportunities for incidental vocabulary acquisition were explored in a 121,000-word corpus of teacher talk addressed to advanced adult learners of English as a second language (ESL) in a communicatively-oriented conversation class. In contrast to previous studies that relied on short excerpts, the corpus contained all of the teacher speech the…