There are two main lines of research in estimating classification accuracy (CA) and classification consistency (CC) under Item Response Theory (IRT). The R package cacIRT provides computer implementations of both approaches in an accessible and unified framework. Even with available implementations, there remains decisions a researcher faces when…

Estimation is useful in situations where an exact answer is not as important as a quick answer that is good enough. A web-based adaptive system for practicing estimates is currently being developed. We propose a simple model for estimating student's latent skill of estimation. This model combines a continuous measure of correctness and response…

Background: Teachers and clinicians may struggle to provide early identification to support multilingual children's language development. Dynamic assessments are a promising approach to identify and support children's language development. Aims: We developed and studied a novel word learning task that is dynamic and language neutral. It makes use…

The benefit of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) for second language (L2) development has been addressed by second language acquisition theory and investigated by empirical studies. However, previous studies have not demonstrated the effectiveness of CLIL precisely as most of their study participants took CLIL and non-CLIL courses…

This study examined how mode of input affects the learning of pronunciation and form-meaning connection of second language (L2) words. Seventy-five Japanese learners of English were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions (reading while listening, reading only, listening only), studied 40 low-frequency words while viewing their corresponding…

The instructional lab setting has been found to be dominated by prescribed tasks and pre-prepared lab kits. This was explained by teachers' need to guide students to simultaneously progress through a lab curriculum, which prompts them to standardize the lab experience. Nevertheless, prominent professional associations have persistently called to…

Machine translation (MT) provides a seemingly accelerated alternative way to communicate in the target language (L2). A convenient service to the public, MT renders a potential disservice to language learners. In this pedagogically focused article, we show concrete and detailed examples of how language instructors can turn MT and other electronic…

While the research on pretask planning has concentrated on its effects on learners' task performance in terms of fluency, accuracy, and complexity, its possible influence on the overall discourse level, such as discourse management and coherence, has been largely ignored. The present study addresses the inadequacy by uncovering the potential…

This study investigates the implementation of peer feedback in an advanced English-Chinese translation course. Teacher scaffolding was provided to 20 students who completed two translation-feedback-revision cycles. A survey was then administered to the class, followed by a semi-structured interview with six students. The study yielded rather…

We examined the developmental relationship between cognitive-linguistic skills (nonverbal IQ, vocabulary, phonological awareness, rapid automatised naming [RAN]), home environment factors (direct teaching, shared book reading, access to literacy resources, parents' expectations, family's socioeconomic status [SES]), and pinyin letter knowledge in…

Research suggests that second language words are learned faster when they are similar in phonological structure or accent to the words of an individual's first language. Many major theories suggest this happens because of differences in frequency of exposure and context between first and second language words. Here, we examine the independent…

With the development of language corpora, linguists have been able to identify how often specific words, phrases, and expressions are used, and in which contexts. However, applications of corpora in the wider domain of language teaching have remained limited. This article presents an approach to utilizing corpora, combining principles from…

To pinpoint difficulties in the second language (L2) processing of temporarily ambiguous sentences, this study investigates first language (L1) effects and effects of verb bias, i.e. frequency information about preferential verb complements, on semantic persistence effects in L2 sentence comprehension. We tested 32 L1 German and 32 L1 Turkish…

Acadience Reading (AR) is a screener for early detection of reading problems in elementary students. Limited research exists, however, on its technical adequacy for evaluation of English Learners (ELs). In this study, we tested the long-term predictive validity and diagnostic accuracies of AR and examined the differences between native…

To efficiently create books and other instructional content from videos and further improve accessibility of our course content we needed to solve the scene detection (SD) problem for engineering educational content. We present the pedagogical applications of extracting video images for the purposes of digital book generation and other shareable…