The aim of this research project was to examine the impact of chatbots as conversation partners. First and second year Japanese university students (n=120) from a private university in Southwest Japan were randomly assigned to either conduct a speaking task with an Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot or human partner. Preliminary analysis of the…

This pilot study delivers a preliminary report on students' attitudes toward Virtual Reality Assisted Language Learning (VRALL). Learners (N=22) participated in a VRALL lesson and then completed a post-experience survey. Virtual Reality (VR) technology allows for learning experiences that increasingly remove geographic limitations to foreign…

This study proposes a virtual reality platform for language learners to practice a Target Language (TL) and develop cross-cultural competencies through interaction with peers or an AI-agent (limited scope), followed by a scheme for engaging learners to envision their conversations by disclosing their thoughts, reasoning, feelings, and…

As education gets increasingly digitized, and intelligent tutoring systems gain commercial prominence, scalable assessment generation mechanisms become a critical requirement for enabling increased learning outcomes. Assessments provide a way to measure learners' level of understanding and difficulty, and personalize their learning. There have…

This study has sought to reveal perceptions towards the employment of WhatsApp in foreign language learning, especially preparing for a national academic language exam. In this sense, this study is supposed to make contribution to employing WhatsApp in educational contexts. This study, designed as a case study, is to investigate the pros and cons…

In this article, the authors propose a problem-based approach to education that enables learners to build critical consciousness to drive "active citizenship"; develops their abilities to frame their identities; and empowers them to critically question any systemic, cultural, and physical manifestations of exclusion and marginalization.…

While research on informal digital learning of English (IDLE) increases in the fields of teaching English to speakers of other languages and computer-assisted language learning, few studies have examined the relationship between quantity and diversity of IDLE practices and different language learning outcomes. To address this gap, data were…

Recent studies on the learning of L2 prosody have suggested that pitch gestures can enhance the learning of the L2 lexical tones. Yet it remains unclear whether the use of these gestures can aid the learning of L2 intonation, especially by tonal-language speakers. Sixty-four Mandarin speakers with basic-level Spanish were asked to learn three…

Researchers have generated a powerful framework that identifies three aspects of noticing students' mathematical thinking: attending to, interpreting, and deciding how to respond to student thinking. Previous research has tended to focus on evaluating how "well" teachers engaged in noticing, and how "well" they connected the…

Despite its numerous benefits and potentialities for language learning and teaching, digital technology can also play a role in creating and maintaining inequality. While critical CALL often focuses on micro-level issues and contexts, macro-level perspectives, including discourses, are also essential to consider: From ecological and…

Wall Street English has built online activities that allow students to record phrases and receive word-level Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) driven pronunciation feedback. Students in language centres in China, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, and Italy (N=2,867) used ASR-Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) activities, and some (N=482) completed a…

Interacting with peers can be difficult for some students, due to their personality as well as to their learning styles. This paper shows how the Task-Based Approach (TBA) can be implemented and how digital resources can be used in language teaching and learning to enhance the students' experience and foster autonomy. To do so, I describe tasks I…

In recent years, the development of mobile technology and devices makes Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR) available tools in classroom teaching and learning. AI and AR are used to improve the learning effect as well as motivate the students' learning enthusiasm. In English as a second language (ESL) learning, several previous…

In the realm of second language acquisition, investigations of the efficacy of multimedia annotations for learning unknown lexical items has attracted considerable interest during the past decade. This commentary discusses the story of my first contribution to the field of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) 14 years ago. In particular, it…

Hydrogen bonds are very important chemical structures that are responsible for many unique and important properties of solvents, such as the solvation power of water. These distinctive features are directly related to the stabilization energy conferred by hydrogen bonds to the solvent. Thus, the characterization of hydrogen bond energetics has…