Research confirms that critical thinking plays a fundamental role in decision making and problem solving, skills that are essential to function as successful adults in a complex world. Consequently, it has been a focus of educational research for decades. Faculty meetings and teacher training sessions repeatedly run sessions on ways that teachers…

Adopting a cognitive perspective, this study examined roles of working memory capacity (WMC), first language (L1) syllogistic inferencing, and second language (L2) linguistic knowledge on literal and inferential understanding of L2 reading comprehension in adolescent L2 learners. Participants were 193 Korean ninth-grade learners of English. The…

Extensive Reading (ER) emerges as a promising approach for acquiring a foreign language, allowing for a large amount of language exposure. However, the influence of supplementary activities within ER programs has yet to be thoroughly investigated, despite previous studies suggesting their potential effectiveness. This research investigated the…

It is generally agreed that first language (L1) morphological awareness, the ability to reflect upon, analyze and manipulate morphemes and morphological structure of words, can transfer and facilitate second language (L2) reading subskill acquisition. However, the facilitative role of L1 morphological awareness is unclear in the literature…

A gloss refers to a short definition or explanation of the meaning of a word in a text that can assist learners in reading comprehension and vocabulary learning. This study aims to investigate how glosses in English academic texts affect the reading behaviour of ESL undergraduates while reading is taking place. In addition, it also examines the…

The current study explores the impact of varying multiple-choice question preview and presentation formats in a test of second language listening proficiency targeting different levels of text comprehension. In a between-participant design, participants completed a 30-item test of listening comprehension featuring implicit and explicit information…

A large amount of literature exists on how native speakers derive and process pragmatic inferences, yet few studies have examined the issue in second language learners, despite a controversial debate of second language (L2) ultimate attainment of phenomena situated at external interfaces. This study contributes to the debate on the integration of…

Cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs) have received much interest within the field of language testing over the last decade due to their great potential to provide diagnostic feedback to all stakeholders and ultimately improve language teaching and learning. A large number of studies have demonstrated the application of CDMs on advanced large-scale…

Scope ambiguity arises when a sentence contains scope-bearing logical operators like quantifiers and negation (Fox, 2003). For instance, in English, the sentence 'Every horse didn't jump over the fence' can be interpreted as either 'None of the horses jumped over the fence' (surface scope) or 'Not all of the horses jumped over the fence' (inverse…

The TOEFL iBT test was introduced in 2005 to better reflect the language demands of real-life academic tasks than did previous versions of the test. The task-based design of the test was intended to support the interpretation of its scores as a trustworthy measure of international students' ability to use English in an academic environment. Until…

The Interface Hypothesis proposes that second language (L2) learners, even at highly proficient levels, often fail to integrate information at the external interfaces where grammar interacts with other cognitive systems. While much early L2 work has focused on the syntax-discourse interface or scalar implicatures at the semantics-pragmatics…

An enduring question is whether language learning aptitude is a stable trait or is one influenced by experience, such as living with two languages. We investigated aptitude in bilinguals and treated their bilingual experience as an aggregate of variables, focusing on how individual differences in (a) language experience variables of proficiency,…

Literacy in a first language or in additional languages involves a set of complex cognitive, social, and linguistic skills that develop over time. However, pedagogical materials for low-proficiency English as an additional language (EAL) learners tend to target low-level literacy skills only, such as responding to fact-based questions. Materials…

Language acquisition may come naturally for people without sensorial disabilities. But for deaf children, language acquisition happens differently and comparably delayed than hearing children. This case study made an in-depth inquiry of the communication skills of the Special Education (SPED) students in one of the community colleges in Quezon…

This research sought to investigate EFL nursing students' use of vocabulary learning strategies to learn medical terminology and further assess strategies used in relation to learning outcomes measured by two types of vocabulary knowledge: meaning recall (passive recall) and meaning recognition (passive recognition). The participants, 138 EFL…