This article describes a model that integrates an at-home preparation intensive summer program with a short-term, study abroad summer program to increase students' Chinese-language proficiency, cultural awareness, and personal career development. The results indicate that the at-home preparation program can build students' self-esteem and…

This article reports the results of a research study to determine the washback effect of an oral assessment system on some areas of the teaching and learning of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The research combined quantitative and qualitative research methods within a comparative study between an experimental group and a comparison group.…

This empirical study was undertaken to test the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer and Hulstijn, 2001) by examining the impact of three tasks on vocabulary acquisition. It was designed to test and develop the involvement load hypothesis by examining the impact of different reading tasks on the L2 vocabulary acquisition. The results show that…

This study was intended to determine whether or not the genre of a reading text affects the incidental vocabulary acquisition of L2 learners while reading. To this aim, 40 Iranian EFL students whose vocabulary knowledge was within a limited range (already determined by Nation's Vocabulary Levels Test) were divided into two groups of 20 each for…

This paper is a research in the second Language acquisition (SLA) with its focus on the role of input, interaction and output in the development of oral fluency in the EFL context from both a theoretical point of view and a case study. Two instruments were used: tests of oral fluency and face-to-face interviews. The findings showed that non-native…

This study focused on examining the effect of two alternative school types on student success in Mississippi. To determine alternative school type, alternative program directors self-reported program design, and schools were divided into two groups. Type I schools were defined as "punitive-based" programs in which students receive…

Lexical competence is considered to be an essential step in the development and consolidation of a student's linguistic ability, and thus the reliable assessment of such competence turns out to be a fundamental aspect in this process. The design and construction of vocabulary tests has become an area of special interest, as it may provide teachers…

This empirical study investigates the effect of online textual, pictorial, and textual pictorial glosses on the incidental vocabulary learning of 90 adult elementary Iranian EFL learners. The participants were selected from a pool of 140 volunteers based on their performance on an English placement test as well as a knowledge test of the target…

Today, Japanese Canadians are marrying outside of their ethnic community at an unprecedented rate, resulting in the creation of a newly identifiable group of "Japanese Canadians" borne from these interracial unions. Members of this emergent group are increasingly being referred to both by social scientists and self-referentially as…

In cognitive diagnosis a Q-matrix (Tatsuoka, 1983, 1990), which is an incidence matrix that defines the relationships between test items and constructs of interest, has great impact on the nature of performance feedback that can be provided to score users. The purpose of the present study was to identify meaningful skill coding categories that…

This study investigated language learning strategies used by 418 EFL learners in Taiwan and looked for relationships between learning strategy use and the patterns of strategy use based on language proficiency. The participants reported using compensation strategies most frequently and affective strategies least frequently. The most frequently…

Collocations are one of the areas that produce problems for learners of English as a foreign language. Iranian learners of English are by no means an exception. Teaching experience at schools, private language centers, and universities in Iran suggests that a significant part of EFL learners' problems with producing the language, especially at…

The present study evaluates the relative effectiveness of three types of input-based approaches for teaching English polite request forms to sixty Japanese learners of English: (a) structured input tasks with explicit information; (b) problem-solving tasks; and (c) structured input tasks without explicit information. Treatment group performance…

This study used a mixed methods research approach to examine how native English-speaking (NS) and non-native English-speaking (NNS) teachers assess students' oral English performance. The evaluation behaviors of two groups of teachers (12 Canadian NS teachers and 12 Korean NNS teachers) were compared with regard to internal consistency, severity,…

Foreign language tests fall into two classes, according to their purposes. The first class, tests used for the control of instruction, may be achievement or diagnostic tests. The second class of tests, used in the control of a person's career, may be concerned with what the subject can do, or what he should be able to do in the future. The…