The current study is the first of a two-part action research study to support student's communication using WhatsApp™ at a Foundation Year language program in Saudi Arabia. The study focused on unearthing the assumptions behind the support using factual knowledge gathered from 24 female students. Using a questionnaire that included ten…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of conducting asynchronous online discussion forums on low-achieving EFL students in Taiwan. 124 non-English program students from a technological university participated. Based on a textbook, one to three questions were assigned every other week. An asynchronous learning mode was implemented…

This ethnographic case study aims to examine second language socialization (SLS) in a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) called Stronghold Kingdoms (SK). To explore the affordances of this community for SLS, the social dynamics in a Faction community during 4 life-time periods, namely, war, post-war peace and life in exile, end of the world,…

Virtual exchanges (VEs) based on synchronous video communication allow learners to benefit from online intercultural experiences with a high degree of interactivity (Wang, 2004). Video conferencing tools allow synchronous audio-visual and non-verbal communication as in Face-To-Face (FTF) situations (Kock, 2005), although synchronous video…

Duolingo is arguably the most popular language learning app available today, as measured by its metric of achieving 500 million downloads in 2020, yet remarkably little research has been conducted regarding its implementation or efficacy as a language-learning tool. The handful of studies that do exist have found positive outcomes, although…

Social networking sites have become ubiquitous in our daily communicative exchanges, which has brought about new platforms of identification and opened possibilities that were out of reach for many minoritized communities. As they represent an increasing percentage of the media we consume, these sites have been considered crucial for…

This qualitative case study examines learners' experiences in the development of written complexities during Discussion Board (DB) assignments in an Advanced university level Chinese class. Discussion Board was chosen as the avenue for written complexity development because it provides learners a supplementary space with additional time and…

Online English language teaching can now be facilitated by communication technology, which allows easy access to interaction with native speakers. Nevertheless, this industry subscribes to an assumption that native speaker English teachers (NESTs) are the gold standard of language whereas the non-native speaker English teachers (NNESTs) are…

The article deals with an urgent issue of a systematic research of foreign students studying in Ukraine. Successful learning and social adaptation of young people greatly depend on learning the Ukrainian language. In addition to the obvious advantages, it is advisable to pay particular attention to the system of theoretical and methodological…

Employing a CA-inspired methodological approach, this study investigates L2 learners' interactional competence for dyadic interaction via text chat. Fifty-three dyads of Japanese learners of English at three proficiency levels (high, mid, and low) participated in this study, where they worked on three discussion tasks in L2 English. The data were…

Chatbots, whose potential for language learning have caused controversy among Second Language Acquisition (SLA) researchers (Atwell, 1999; Fryer & Carpenter, 2006; Fryer & Nakao, 2009; Parker, 2005, Coniam, 2014; Jia, 2004; Chantarotwong, 2005) are intelligent conversational systems stimulating human interlocutors with voice or text. In…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of technology and online communication platforms in English language learning based on connectivist theory. Design/methodology/approach: Questionnaire and checklist were used to examine the role of online communication tools in the learning process. The data analysis was done with SPSS.…

This study examined factors that might have affected EFL learners' willingness to communicate (WTC) in the extramural digital (ED) environment, a rapidly emerging L2 communication context. The investigator conducted a semi-structured interview with 98 EFL students from three Korean universities. Drawing on grounded theory,…

Computer-mediated, communication-based foreign language learning programs are showing great promise. Among these, video-synchronous mediated communication seems to offer an effective way to provide speaking practice, although research findings have been inconclusive. Furthermore, among studies that have documented the effectiveness of…

This paper addresses a number of questions in the emerging area of blended Chinese language learning design. First, what are the strengths and weaknesses of the extant literature? Second, how might insights from the wider blended and blended language learning literature advance the field? Third, how might these literatures be synthesised to…