This study reviews the effect of comprehension and perceived text difficulty in promoting reading enjoyment and interest to read more among novice learners practicing extensive and pleasure reading. Sixty-seven college students in their first semester of Spanish were asked to read a children-like story picture book in Spanish and were then given…

Language acquisition and Language Maintenance (LM) both depend on ample opportunity and motivation. Currently, many national language societies are undergoing Language Shift (LS) to English, impacting their acquisition as first (L1) and possibly even more as second (L2) language. This study interviewed 44 adolescents, including 24 L1 and 20 L2…

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'…

In recent years, there has been growing interest in the use of data-driven learning (DDL) in L2 writing instruction. This paper examined whether and to what extent DDL activities could enhance the writing complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) of 30 Thai EFL learners. The presentation of DDL in this study was hands-on concordancing with the…

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…

Little is known about how persons with autism spectrum conditions experience the process of learning foreign languages. To augment the research literature (reviewed here) with the experiences of autistic persons, online autism forums were scrutinised. Discussions pertinent to language learning were identified in English, Spanish, French and…

The purpose of this quasi-experimental, mixed-methods study was to address the gap in understanding regarding second language (L2) comprehension of stories by using a taxonomical approach based on Anderson and Krathwohl's (2001) revised taxonomy that includes multiple levels of cognitive processing to provide insight into L2 learners' depth of…

This study aims to examine whether differences exist in the factors influencing the difficulty of scoring English summaries and determining scores based on the raters' attributes, and to collect candid opinions, considerations, and tentative suggestions for future improvements to the analytic rubric of summary writing for English learners. In this…

The purpose of this study was to explore the reasons for low retention rates among students in the Chinese classes in upper secondary education in the Czech Republic. The principal research question was whether Chinese characters were the main reason why many students decided to stop attending their Chinese classes. Semi-structured interviews with…

The idea that reading model essays facilitates better writing is generally accepted in second language writing literature. As such, anthologies of model essays are often selected for inclusion in writing centre self-access library shelves. When selecting these texts, readability is often considered via the application of quantitative readability…

According to the IELTS official website, IELTS candidates usually score lower in the IELTS Writing test than in the other language skills. This is disappointing for the many IELTS candidates who fail to get the overall band score they need. Surprisingly enough, few studies have addressed this issue. The present study, then, is aimed at shedding…

Current trends in educational research focus on understanding situational processes and the dynamics of achievement emotions. In this context, the features of the learning environment and their situational impact on achievement emotions play a significant role. In this study, we consider academic language demands as a feature of the learning…

This study examined the effects of watching gestures and lip movement on second language (English) listening comprehension. The participants were 30 high and 22 low proficient learners of English. There were six listening tasks combining two variables: modality and difficulty. The modality consisted of three types of assessments: Body (the upper…

Educators encounter challenges in performing materials adaptation stemming from time limitations, institutional responsibilities, administrative demands, and a dearth of formal training in materials development resulting in improper adaptation and ineffective learning activities. This research investigated the process of adapting materials as a…

This study examined the relationship of linguistic complexity, captured using a set of lexical richness, syntactic complexity, and discoursal complexity indices, to second language (L2) learners' perception of text difficulty, captured using L2 raters' comparative judgment on text comprehensibility and reading speed. Testing materials were 180…