Extensive evidence supports the effectiveness of retrieval practice as a powerful method for promoting long-term learning. For students to obtain the maximum benefit from retrieval practice they need to incorporate the strategy into their study routines as a learning tool that is used early and often. Unfortunately, many students avoid retrieval…

This study explored the communication strategies of college students majoring in one of five modern foreign languages (i.e., English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish) and their relation to communication confidence. It also explored the association between their strategy use and the difficulty regarding the speaking components, and students'…

The present research focuses on studying teachers' beliefs about the complexity of learning the curricular languages in the Basque Country, with special focus on Basque, the minority language. The study adopts a mixed-methods research design. For the quantitative data, 1093 participants completed a specifically designed online questionnaire, which…

This study investigates how task complexity affects native speakers' and second language (L2) learners', and experts' perceptions of task difficulty in writing tasks. It also explores how task complexity influences English native speakers' and L2 learners' linguistic complexity in their writing. Ninety participants performed one simple and one…

The global blossoming of doctoral education calls for a better understanding of doctoral candidates' needs concerning thesis writing. Although scholars proclaim the particular difficulty of writing a thesis discussion, empirical studies on doctoral students' needs for the discussion chapter are insufficient. To fill the gap, using individual…

This study addresses how Chinese learners of English as a second language (L2) perceive conversations in English materials as compared to speakers of English as a first language (L1). Data were collected through questionnaires completed by 48 participants (28 L2 English learners in China and 20 L1 English speakers in the UK), eliciting evaluations…

The present quantitatively-driven mixed methods study aimed at exploring the effect of musical input as a mode on intermediate L2 learners' knowledge and retention of difficult words. The data were collected in two phases. In the experimental phase, quantitative data were collected from 40 learners. An innovative method was used for the purpose of…

The present study aimed to describe and evaluate the current assessment practices prevalent in the different translation courses offered at the College of Languages and Translation (COLT). A sample of specialized translation final exams in 18 translation subject areas was collected. Each final exam was analyzed in terms of the following: (1) # of…

The purpose of the present small-scale study was to investigate the factor structure of an adapted, 13-item subjective English cognitive load scale in a fully online learning context. To serve this purpose, adult online learners enrolled in a fully online graduate program completed the adapted English cognitive load scale at the end of an…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of the proposed mobile self-regulated learning approach in higher education settings. A mobile self-regulated learning system was developed to improve students' learning achievements and self-regulated learning skills. An experiment was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the…

Research writing is an important part of doctoral study. Previous studies suggest that students who speak English as an additional language (EAL) may experience difficulties in writing a thesis in English. This study investigated the nature of the writing challenges experienced by EAL doctoral students. Drawing on data collected from individual…

Increasing the rigor of courses taken in high school is a crucial part of education policy. However, existing knowledge about high school coursework is outdated. Using data from a recent nationally representative data set, this brief reports results that expand our knowledge base on the relationship between rigorous coursework and postsecondary…

With anglophone countries now experiencing unprecedented levels of ethnic and linguistic diversity, it is considered increasingly important that young people learn to communicate in ways which are effective for the multilingual and intercultural contexts they live in, will work in and will travel to. One of the key vehicles for promoting and…

This study extends an eight-country mapping exercise (McPherson & O'Neill, 2010; see "Research Studies in Music Education" issues 2010-2011) to include students' motivation to study music within the Australian context. It sought to determine whether music learners (students learning an instrument or voice), might be more motivated to…

This article discusses perceptions of and performance in listening by a group of heritage and non-heritage learners of Portuguese. Our data include a survey containing background information and perceptions about listening, two listening tasks and a post-task self-report on how learners arrived at their answers. Quantitative and qualitative…