This article comprises two international studies. Study 1 aimed to develop a scale to measure the frequency of learners' voluntary, informal, out-of-school engagement with English, so-called Extramural English (EE) activities. It involved three stages -- pilot study, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis -- followed by…

This study investigated whether teacher expectation effects on students' foreign language learning would be moderated by students' perceptions of the classroom environment. The participants were 28 teachers and 1030 first-year undergraduate students learning English as a foreign language from public universities in China. Data for teacher…

This study adopted Ambridge's research paradigm to examine the effects of entrenchment, preemption, and verb semantics in second language (L2) acquisition of English "un-" prefixation. Three groups of Chinese learners of English (second- and fourth-year English majors and teachers of English) rated the acceptability of 48 "un-"…

Previous research has considered the effects of content familiarity and task repetition on second language (L2) performance, but few studies have looked at the effect of these factors on learners' engagement in task performance. This study explores the influence of content familiarity and task repetition on English as a foreign language (EFL)…

This article reports on a study that investigated the role of metapragmatic awareness of L2 learners in Hong Kong, and the impact it has on language choices when addressing requests in English. Simulated open role-plays and retrospective interviews were used to explore the ways in which mainland Chinese undergraduates assess, plan and produce…

While the number of studies on the pragmatic development of nonnative English speakers has been increasing, surprisingly little research has been conducted on the development of the ability of foreign language learners to perform the suggestion speech act, with even less taking Chinese EFL learners as the target group. The present study examines…

Gender is considered as one of the important variables that effects learner motivation in second or foreign language acquisition. It is also believed that learner motivation has an impact on learner performance as well. Using the expectancy-value theory model of achievement motivation, this study aimed at exploring (1) the impact of gender…