University students in Turkey are required to complete a one-year English preparatory education before starting their education at their faculties. For some time, it has been clear that students have difficulties in learning English in these preparatory programs. The reasons behind this have always been a hot topic in research areas. To have a…

During a 10-week classroom-based study in a school in western Canada, 17 Kindergarten children had multiple opportunities to learn about how elements of visual art, design and layout in picturebook artwork are fundamental to meaning-making when transacting with this format of literature. Student application of learning about the concepts under…

The field of language learning and technology is an ever-growing field as new technologies are constantly developed, and it is important to understand the impact these new technologies may have on language learning. The purpose of this work-in-progress study was to investigate the effects of virtual reality (VR) simulations on a specific second…

This study investigates the impact of perezhivanie, a concept encompassing emotional experiences and their personal significance on English-speaking proficiency and speaking anxiety among Chinese learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The study focuses on the emotional and cognitive dimensions of perezhivanie to understand its dual role…

Since the end of the 20th century, autonomous learning has become a popular research topic in education and has received much attention from researchers. The acquisition of Chinese as a second language requires learners to practice autonomous learning and develop their language learning ability. The present study used the theory of autonomous…

The field of second language acquisition (SLA) research had long been governed by a paradigm that prioritized cognition over emotion. Recently, increased attention has been drawn to the role of "perezhivanie" in language development as Vygotsky's sociocultural theory (SCT) brought together emotion and cognition, thereby offering an…

Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is a hot topic in the field of applied linguistics, and it is getting more and harder to downplay the significance of the so-called theory in the growth of second-language learners (Deci and Ryan, 1985, 2000, 2002). The current study tried to test the theory in the Iranian EFL setting by throwing light on the…

Due to the rapid advancement of the Internet and technology, blended learning has gradually gained widespread acceptance among students, teachers, and educational institutions, emerging as the new norm in the post-pandemic era. This study aims to examine the factors influencing active engagement of undergraduate English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL)…

Over the past decades, but particularly as a response to the global pandemic, online language technologies have made blended approaches increasingly practical for the language learning classroom. Despite the growing interest in blended learning generally, research has shown an overemphasis on comparative studies (Goertler, 2019), and left the…

Purpose: Drawing on diverse findings in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Language Teaching research, but centering on the unique needs and contexts of international students in post-secondary education, this paper aims to develop a working theory of international students' continued language development. Design/methodology/approach: As a…

Linguistic risks are situations in which learners are pushed out of their comfort zone to use the target language in meaningful and authentic settings. This article outlines a novel pedagogical and research approach to language learning through linguistic risk-taking. I review the construct of linguistic risk from interdisciplinary perspectives…

With the rise of augmented reality (AR) and context-aware ubiquitous learning (CAUL), pedagogical designers in computer assisted language learning are increasingly developing authentic English for Specific Purposes (ESP) learning environments. However, there has been little research regarding the development of evidence-based principles for…

Incorporating Vygotsky's concepts of scaffolding and Zone of Proximal Development, this paper presents a qualitative study examining student roles in dialogic peer feedback learning, focusing on Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) students in mixed translation proficiency triads within an English-Chinese translation course. During feedback…

Listening is a major challenge for many English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) learners. Decoding training, which helps learners develop the ability to recognize words from speech, is frequently used to assist EFL learners. Although recent empirical studies on decoding training have provided positive evidence on its effectiveness in improving EFL…

This paper reports on the results of a quantitative study that was aimed to measure the use of socio-cultural strategies in learning English writing among a group of 155 Chinese university English major students. This quantitative survey was informed by the socio-cultural theory that holds that L2 learning is a mediational process in which a…