Despite the increasing number of the North Korean refugees in South Korea every year, there have been few studies of the language-support programs for their resettlement. This study uses a micro-language planning perspective to examine how the resettled North Korean refugee students respond to the government-level language-support programs by…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the teachability of Situation-Bound Utterances (SBUs hence) in a Modern Chinese foreign language classroom. Specifically, the basic question to be examined is this: to what extent two instructional paradigms--explicit versus implicit instruction--affect learners' knowledge and ability to use SBUs. For…

This study investigates whether a natural order exists for non-native acquisition in the production of English syllable coda obstruents by Korean and Chinese adult native speakers. We recorded L2 English monosyllabic words produced by 66 Chinese and 51 Korean native speakers. The recorded speech was then evaluated by 11 native-speaker listeners of…

In mainland China, most ethnic minority students today face the challenge of learning three languages in schools, namely, their home language (L1), Mandarin Chinese (L2) and a foreign language, usually English (L3). Research into trilingual education for minority groups has been most active since the turn of the twenty-first century. This paper…

The present trend in developing and using semi-direct speaking tests has been supported by test developers and researchers' claim of their increased practicality, higher reliability and concurrent validity with test scores in direct oral proficiency interviews. However, it is universally agreed within the language testing and assessment community…

One of the fundamental ways in which knowledge develops is through contrast. This applies not only to the development of ideas and theories in argumentative texts, but also to the contrasting of new findings with old in experimental reports. Contrast, then, is central to the development of academic knowledge. A common finding in contrastive…

The first objective of this study is to identify the types of errors made by students in their ESL writing. The second objective is to compare the types of errors (overall, spelling, mechanics, grammar, coherence, sentence structure and lexical) in descriptive writing, according to gender. The third objective is to explore an ESL teacher?s views…

A Chinese version of the Online Self-Regulated Learning Questionnaire (OLSQ) was administered to 412 Hong Kong students of average ability and 374 students talented in mathematics (Grades 4-9, age 9-15 years). Data indicated that the Chinese OLSQ provides valid and reliable scores when used with these students.

This paper discusses the design of a digital Chinese character composition game with the paper-interface named as ARC (Augmented Reality-based Chinese Characters) and its implementation in a Singapore primary school. The ARC game is designed to help beginning Chinese as second language (L2) learners to develop Chinese orthographic knowledge and…

This article reports on a case study that investigates the learning preferences and strategies of Chinese students learning English as a second language (ESL) in Canadian school settings. It focuses on the interaction between second language (L2) learning methods that the students have adopted from their previous learning experience in China and…

The current study examines the attitudes of heritage language learners (HLLs) and second language learners (SLLs) about their classroom language learning experiences and language learning in general, using data from high school students who participated in STARTALK summer language study programs in 2014 and 2015. Analysis of students' responses to…

This article presents evidence for a validity argument on the ACTFL Assessment of Performance Toward Proficiency in Languages (AAPPL) tests (Interpersonal Listening/Speaking, Presentational Writing, Interpretive Listening, and Interpretive Reading) by summarizing an analysis of the 2014 test data from examinations administered in three languages…

Drawing on theories of family language policy and literacy environment, this inquiry explores and describes how family language policy is managed through literacy resources and literacy related activities in transnational families in the UK. A total of 66 families, each with at least one child between the age of 2 and 8, participated in this…

This study has two aims: one is to examine whether or not there are individual differences in motivation to read English as a Foreign Language (EFL) among Taiwanese adolescents, and the other is to scrutinize whether or not a gender gap exists among those readers. A total of 252 adolescents, half of them female and the other half male,…

Constructionist research on L2 learning has focused on the degrees to which skewed frequency (Goldberg, Casenhiser & White, 2007; Casenhiser & Goldberg, 2005; Goldberg, Casenhiser, & Sethuraman 2004) in a person's linguistic environment can facilitate "entrenchment," "schematization," and "contingency…