Reading comprehension is considered a salient source of input and an important language skill in English as Foreign Language (EFL) learning contexts. Moreover, connectors are regarded as main constituents of reading materials. Connectors refer to linguistic devices which provide cohesion in texts and thus are highly likely to contribute to the…

Although TESOL educators often incorporate autobiographical narrative as pedagogy to develop language and literacy among language learners, research has paid little attention to how immigrant youths' personal stories relate to advocacy and social justice. This article addresses this gap by investigating and theorizing how student advocacy…

Unlike other groups of international students, Chinese speakers' use of English names while studying in English is an established norm. Relatively little discussion of the practice has taken place within recent literature, and less attention still has been paid to the minority of Chinese-speaking students who do not adopt English names. The choice…

Professor of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) Robert DeKeyser is from the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures at the University of Maryland. His research builds bridges between the theory of second language acquisition with major concerns in cognitive aspects such as implicit and explicit learning mechanism, age differences, and…

It is now a consensus that high-stakes testing exerts powerful impact in controlling curriculum and pedagogy, and shaping students' learning. The power of testing is especially strong in contexts where testing culture prevails. The Chinese educational context is such a context which is dominated by competitive tests. The language testing results…

This paper evaluates the potential of intercultural contacts portrayed in the content and tasks of a Tunisian EFL textbook for third-year secondary school students to develop the model of the intercultural speaker. The quantitative and qualitative analyses of the elements of intercultural contacts reveal that this portrayal is imbalanced in terms…

Studies on Second Language (L2) classroom interaction have placed a great deal of emphasis on the value of teacher third-turn feedback practices. However, the roles that seemingly minor aspects of interaction like minimal response tokens (e.g. 'Mm', 'Mm hm', 'Uh huh', 'Okay', 'Yeah') play as a feature of these practices have not been investigated…

In recent years, the ways in which to read English picture books to young children has become diverse in English as a foreign language (EFL) context. The present study examined the effect of parent-child interactions and digital pen use during English picture book reading in the child's interest in learning English. A total of 320 Korean mothers…

This article explores formative assessment enactment practices of six lower primary teachers within three primary schools in Singapore. Using a case study approach, data from interviews and lesson observations were examined to determine teachers' formative assessment enactment practices and the influences to their enactment attempts. Findings from…

The current situation on the global education market bears the need for new approaches to learning Russian as a foreign language. The innovation concerns both professors and students' activity. The success in comprehension of scientific language is largely dependent on students' motivation to study the vocation-related language. The article covers…

Just as forming letters is the motor skill component of writing, pronouncing--forming sounds and other features of the spoken language--is the motor skill component of pronunciation. The motor task for L2 (second language) learners is to invent for themselves the actions needed for pronouncing L2, either from matching a model they hear (goal…

From a linguistic perspective it seems intuitive that a strong link would exist between the study of linguistics and critical thinking (CT). After all, linguistics is about making sense of language analysis, which contributes to the enhancement of CT while CT, in reciprocation, enables meaningful analysis. Yet this link has virtually never been…

This study investigated the extent to which second language (L2) learners benefited from proactive form-focused instruction (FFI) targeting French grammatical gender attribution and the degree to which L2 learners' attention control and working memory predicted their learning gains. A total of 102 L2 learners received either proactive FFI…

Much has been written about teachers' beliefs, including their beliefs about reading. Due to its established impact on how it affects classroom practices, teachers' beliefs as a psychological construct is considered by some researchers as the most important in relation to teaching and teaching education. Thus, increasingly teachers of reading have…

Background study: Although the number of computer-based instruction has increased drastically, the understanding of how design features of learning modality can affect learning remains incomplete. This partly stems from studies' heavy focus on modified output. Therefore, how interactive nature of computer-mediated learning feeds into learning is…