Despite the widely used word lists in English as a second or foreign language learning, few attempts have been made to create an academic spoken collocation list, which holds significant potential for enhancing learners' aural and oral abilities in academic communication. This study created a list of the most frequently used and pedagogically…

The effects of learner- and task-related variables on second language (L2) writing syntactic complexity (SC) have been extensively investigated. However, previous research has rarely assessed the reliability of computational tools for analyzing the SC of L2 spoken production, and we know less about the effects of such variables on L2 speaking SC.…

This study investigates the effectiveness of a computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) system on second language learners' acquisition of three grammatical features. It presents a CAPT system on top of a phoneme-based, fine-tuned speech recognition model, and is intended to deliver explicit, corrective feedback on the pronunciation of the…

To date very little research is available that focuses on L2 pragmatics and young learners [cf. Schauer, G.A. 2022a. Teaching pragmatics to young learners: a review study. "Applied Pragmatics." DOI:10.1075/ap.00006.sch]. Recent studies have shown that textbooks for young learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) vary considerably…

This study examines associations between writing instruction with a focus on explicit sentence syntax and reading comprehension in a sample of students receiving special education services. While the outcome data does not show direct causation between student enrollment in a treatment writing course using Systemic Functional Linguistics and…

The purpose of this study is to analyze the grammatical complexity features of international teaching assistants' (ITAs) mock-teaching presentations and to compare the distributions of these features to those found in the Oral English Proficiency Test (a local ITA assessment), university classroom teaching, conversation, and academic writing. The…

The present study explores lexical collocations and their relation to speaking proficiency of Taiwanese EFL college students learning English for academic purposes (i.e., EAP). The data is obtained from 92 English majors at a national university of science and technology in southern Taiwan. The results show that: (a) direct collocation instruction…

The focus of this paper is replication research in pedagogical approaches to spoken fluency and formulaic sequences, and in particular, a call for replication of two often cited studies: Wood (2009) and Boers, Eyckmans, Kappel, Stengers & Demecheleer (2006). We begin by presenting a brief background to fluency and formulaic language, and…

Issues of intelligibility may arise amongst English learners when acquiring new words and phrases in North American academic settings, perhaps in part due to limited linguistic data available to the learner for understanding language use patterns. To this end, this paper examines the effects of Data-Driven Learning for Pronunciation (DDLfP) on…

This paper presents IdiomsTube (https://www.idiomstube.com), the first-ever computer-assisted language learning tool for facilitating the learning of English idiomatic expressions from YouTube videos. The web-based tool is designed to automatically (1) assess the speech rate and lexical difficulty level of any learner-chosen English-captioned…

In many English language teaching contexts, listening activities resemble listening comprehension tests. Scholars have argued that this product-oriented approach is not particularly effective in helping learners improve their listening skills and have advocated for the inclusion of instruction that targets specific features of spoken language. The…

In an exploration of the effects of task-repetition practice on fluency development, English-as-a-foreign language learners performed three oral narrative tasks involving six-frame cartoons for 3 consecutive days. They engaged in task-repetition practice under either a blocked (Day 1: A-A-A; Day 2: B-B-B; Day 3: C-C-C) or an interleaved (Day 1:…

Previous research has provided ample evidence for the processing advantage of formulaic sequences, leading researchers and teachers to argue for its facilitation of speech fluency. However, few studies have examined how the processing of formulaic sequences interacts with speaker proficiency and task difficulty; even fewer studies have…

The present study examined the effects of using automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology on oral complexity in a flipped English as a Foreign Language (EFL) course. A total of 160 undergraduates were enrolled in a 14-week quasi-experiment. The experimental group (EG) and the control group (CG) were taught with a flipped approach, but the EG…

While the role of task repetition has received much attention in task-based research, few studies have examined how exact task repetition affects the performance of child second language learners. Also, little is known about the impact of exact task repetition on trade-off effects between linguistic performance areas among child learners. To help…