Digital Storytelling offers many advantages for language learning, especially within a project-based framework. In this article, the use of Digital Micro-Narratives is proposed as particularly useful for second language learners at the novice level. As a sub-genre of Digital Storytelling, Digital Micro-Narratives focus more on frequently updated…

Whereas studies show that comprehensible output facilitates L2 learning, hypothesis testing has received little attention in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Following Shehadeh (2003), we focus on hypothesis testing episodes (HTEs) in which learners initiate repair of their own speech in interaction. In the context of a one-way information gap…

This paper investigates the usefulness of Web portals in a workbench for assisting student interpreters in the search for and collection of vocabulary. The experiment involved a class of fifteen English as a Foreign Language (EFL) student interpreters, who were required to equip themselves with the appropriate English vocabulary to handle an…

This study aims at finding the effect of video-based tasks in improving the listening comprehension ability of Iranian pre-intermediate EFL (English Foreign Language) learners. After determining the level of learners, an experimental and control group, each of 20 participants, were nominated to contribute to the study. From the time the pre-test…

The goal of this study was to determine whether learner beliefs regarding corrective feedback mediate what is noticed and learned in the language classroom. The participants were four groups of high-beginner college-level francophone English as a second language learners and their teachers. Each teacher was assigned to a treatment condition that…

Adopting a decompositional approach to items in the lexicon, this article reports on an empirical study investigating Chinese speakers' second language (L2) acquisition of English "wh-on-earth" questions (i.e. questions with phrases like what on earth or "who on earth"). An acceptability judgment task, a discourse-completion…

This study investigated the potential of using tasks in the Malaysian classroom to facilitate second language (L2) learning, particularly amongst Form 6 (18-year-old) students in the Malaysian secondary school system. These students had undergone 6 years of primary education and 5 years of secondary education in Malaysian public schools. They…

The current study analyzes the oral production of advanced learners of English who have Catalan and Spanish as their first languages. Subjects participated in study abroad (SA) programmes in English-speaking countries as part of their undergraduate studies. A role-play task was used to elicit speech from learners prior to SA and upon arrival from…

Language play and its effects on second language learning have been addressed by many scholars in recent years with instances of language play being identified both inside and outside the classroom. However, only a few have integrated language play with classroom tasks, and they just sufficed to the qualitative analyses of the learners'…

A decade ago, Klapper (2003: "Taking communication to task? A critical review of recent trends in language teaching", "The Language Learning Journal" 27: 33-42) created the opportunity to reflect on the assets and limitations of task-based language teaching (TBLT) in comparison with more established communicative language…

Resumptive pronouns (RPs) are one of the most challenging grammatical points for EFL learners because this structure is different in their L1. We aimed to examine whether blended learning/TBLT are useful to teach RPs. We examined the extent to which such methods improve performance on the posttest. Forty learners took part in the study who were…

This longitudinal case study documents the emergence of bilingualism in a young monolingual Mandarin boy on the basis of an acoustic analysis of his vowel productions recorded via a picture-naming task over 20 months following his enrollment in an all-English (L2) preschool at the age of 3;7. The study examined (1) his initial L2 vowel space, (2)…

In native speakers of gender-marking languages, mechanisms of gender production appear to be affected by the morphophonological cues to gender present in the noun phrase. This influence is manifested in higher levels of production accuracy when more transparent cues to gender are present in comparison to when they are not. The goal of the present…

The current study investigated task effects on listener perception of second language (L2) comprehensibility (ease of understanding). Sixty university-level adult speakers of English from 4 first language (L1) backgrounds (Chinese, Romance, Hindi, Farsi), with 15 speakers per group, were recorded performing 2 tasks (IELTS long-turn speaking task…

Tablets have become increasingly popular among young people in Sweden and this rapid increase also resonates in school, especially in classrooms for younger children. The aim of the present study is to analyze and describe how the students deal with the open instructions for a task of using online dictionaries on tablets. Specific focus is on how…