This study investigated differences in Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) students' learning achievement, cognitive load level, and eye-movement patterns when learning three types of Chinese characters: pictographs, compound ideographs, and phono-semantic compounds with multimedia slides. Thirty CFL students participated in this study. Additional…

We report on a meta-analysis designed to test the theory that instruction that involves direct teaching of academic vocabulary and teaching strategies to determine the meaning of unknown words develops students' abilities to infer new words' meanings and builds students' overall vocabulary knowledge. We meta-analyzed 39 experimental and…

Functional fixedness is related to excessive focusing on a specific functional property of an object. We assumed that the naming of other objects which possess the same functional property to a lesser extent than a given object can reduce the excessive focusing on this functional property for this object. It can help to loosen functional fixedness…

The present study aimed to construct the piloting phase of a more extensive investigation on the effectiveness of the keyword technique, rote memorisation and semantic mapping as vocabulary learning methods in word retention rates of 16 third-grade pre-service teachers studying at English Language Teaching Department of a large Turkish university.…

The relevance of the study is due to the need to identify the position of teachers in their professional activities, the manifestation of its reflective activity. A special attitude of the teacher to his own activity, when the very content of this activity is for the teacher as an object of analysis, reflection and evaluation, characterizes the…

Formulaic expressions (FEs), such as conventional collocations (e.g., fresh air) and phrases (e.g., take a break), constitute a significant part of language use in our daily lives (Erman & Warren, 2000). FEs are defined as multiword units that holistically represent a single meaning, and they are likely stored and retrieved as unanalyzed…

In contexts of first language (L1) acquisition, prediction and adaptation are often viewed as fundamental to the learning process (Rabagliati et al., 2016). One mechanism that has been proposed to specifically account for such adaptive behavior is error-based implicit learning (e.g., Chang et al., 2006). According to this account, speakers…

This research explored the effectiveness of using the word network technique to teach English vocabulary to first graders in Thai Primary schools. The 150 top-frequency words used in three nationally-used textbooks were inventoried. The list of the words then was compared with the list proposed by the Ministry of Education, Thailand. The combined…

This systematic review synthesizes the literature (involving 62 empirical studies) regarding the effectiveness of cognitive linguistics-inspired language pedagogies (CL-ILPs) on second language (L2) learning. It begins with an overview of the main theoretical tenets of cognitive linguistics followed by a description of the data selection, coding,…

This paper proposes a personalized teaching strategy based on Total Physical Response (TPR) to acquire new words. TPR combines target language items with semantically corresponding gestures conducive to learners understanding and memorizing them by repeatedly executing commands from their teachers. One limitation of TPR is that it does not allow…

Instructional videos for teaching second language (L2) vocabulary often feature an instructor onscreen. The instructor in the video may involuntarily produce beat gestures with their hands, as occurs in real teaching settings. Beat gestures highlight key information in speech by conveying the rhythm of the language, but do not themselves convey…

This study is intended to help English foreign language learners avoid a type of syntactic ambiguity in sentences resulting from prepositional phrases (PPs). The students are guided to make use of the features of both adverbials and adjectivals in resolving this type of ambiguity. The movability of adverbials and the use of relative clauses…

Idioms are highly conventionalized expressions that allow users to express beyond literal meanings. Despite the language difference, counterparts of idioms may overlap cross-culturally due to similar origin, social habits, and experiences. It is therefore interesting to probe whether L2 learners may benefit from deliberate instructions built on…

This study examined the effects of three subtitle conditions on English vocabulary learning, form recognition and meaning recall, from TED Talks videos while controlling for vocabulary size and initial knowledge of the target words. The participants, 105 Libyan students (16 males and 89 females) at intermediate English proficiency level, were…

This review examines and integrates studies of second language (L2) vocabulary instruction with adult learners in a laboratory setting, using a framework provided by a modified version of the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994), the Revised Hierarchical Model-Repetition Elaboration Retrieval. By examining how various training…