Research Findings: This study aims to evaluate the efficacy of linguistic training based on the use of the Drežancic method in educational settings. It is hypothesized that characteristics of this method, based on the typical stages of linguistic and cognitive development, could influence both language competence and executive function (EF). A…

We report on a case study of high Japanese student failure rates in an online MBA programme. Drawing on interviews, and reviews of exam and assignment scripts we frame the problems faced by these students in terms of a "language as social practice" approach and highlight the students' failure to understand the specific language games…

This study carries out a comparative analysis of achievement according to gender between mixed and single-sex schools in the region of Catalonia, Spain, for the subjects of Spanish, Catalan, English and Mathematics. After a brief contextualisation, a review of the main findings from international studies on differences in results for mixed schools…

Expressing causal relations plays a central role in academic writing. While it is important that writing instructors assess and provide feedback on learners' causal discourse, it could be a very time-consuming task. In this respect, automated writing evaluation (AWE) tools may be helpful. However, to date, there have been no AWE tools capable of…

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the impact of learners' L1s and proficiency levels on their written production. This study also examined the influence of speech upon their writing. The following research questions were explored: (a) How do L1 and proficiency levels of learners affect their degrees of register awareness? (b)…

This study reports evidence of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) that surfaced from English compositions of SiSwati learners of English in Swaziland, where English is a second language. Although CLI has been studied widely in other languages, it has not been studied in SiSwati and English, and its implications for instruction are not known.…

Discourse analysis, as Murcia and Olshtain (2000) assume, is a vast study of language in use that extends beyond sentence level, and it involves a more cognitive and social perspective on language use and communication exchanges. Holding a wide range of phenomena about language with society, culture and thought, discourse analysis contains various…

I believe that there should be a focus on problematic language issues such as prepositions in the language classroom in order to provide continuous exposure to such features. Consequently I provided my students with supplementary activities on prepositions, and also promoted learner autonomy by highlighting urls which deal with collocation.…

Studying task repetition for adult and young foreign language learners of English (EFL) has received growing interest in recent literature within the task-based approach (Bygate, 2009; Hawkes, 2012; Mackey, Kanganas, & Oliver, 2007; Pinter, 2007b). Earlier work suggests that second language (L2) learners benefit from repeating the same or a…

Primary school enrolment in low-income countries has increased in recent years. The quality of education is, however, still a cause for concern. Better measurement of early reading progress has been suggested as a means of improving education quality. Benchmarks based on the number of 'words per minute' (WPM) students are able to read correctly…

English as a second language (ESL) classrooms in the United States increasingly include students who have had exposure to more than one global context of English. Unless explicitly discussed, the variations within global Englishes can lead to confusion and obstruct learning. In addition, sometimes teachers fail to acknowledge the Englishes that…

A broad communicative repertoire can help university lecturers to motivate and engage diverse student populations. The aim of this study is to develop and explore the usefulness and validity of a tool to identify patterns in lecturers' verbal repertoire. Speech act theory is presented as a framework to study lecturers' verbal…

This research combines corpus-based and intuition-based approaches in developing a list of important words in business news that Thai learners of business English need to know. The Thai corpus of English for Business and Economic News (Thai-EBEN) has been compiled from English business news articles in the Thai press. A computer concordancing…

This study examined the effect of native language background on listeners' perception of native and non-native vowels spoken by native (Hong Kong Cantonese) and non-native (Mandarin and Australian English) speakers. They completed discrimination and an identification task with and without visual cues in clear and noisy conditions. Results…

Extensive reading (ER) is an effective way to provide large amounts of comprehensible input to foreign language learners, but many teachers and administrators remain unconvinced, and it has been argued that there is still insufficient evidence to support the claims that have been made regarding its benefits. Few studies have looked at ER's effect…