Podcasts are a useful tool for developing speaking skills in language acquisition settings, particularly within the context of the emerging Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL). While much research has emphasized the effectiveness of teacher-produced podcasts, this study seeks to address the gap in knowledge on student-generated podcasts in…

This study explores the influence of self-assessment of vocabulary competence on a group of students' oral fluency. Twenty-four young adult learners participated in a learning process that promoted their oral skills and vocabulary development. Self-assessment was mainly examined through the analysis of students' learning logs, field notes and…

In this study I attempt to shed light on the experiences of the teacher researcher and university students who explored social justice issues in an art education course. The primary purpose of this study is to provide insights in teaching practice and students' learning processes when the course is designed to examine systems of oppression through…

The purpose of this study was to expand the knowledge of adult motivation in unconventional professional settings. Nine focus group interviews were conducted with child care providers in child care settings from four states in the Western United States: California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington. At each focus group interview three to eight…

This paper draws on the KINSA project (The Communicative Situation of Immigrants at Swedish Workplaces), which aimed to identify communicative factors that have a positive impact on the integration of second language speakers in the workplace and in their immediate work team. The focus here is on humour and swearing as strategies for doing…

This paper reports findings from the Ear-Playing Project in relation to the teaching strategies that 15 instrumental teachers adopted during one-to-one instrumental lessons whilst helping their students to copy music by ear from a recording. Overall, the teachers used a variety of strategies including singing and humming along with or without the…

Students express widespread dissatisfaction with academic feedback. Teaching staff perceive a frequent lack of student engagement with written feedback, much of which goes uncollected or unread. Published evidence shows that audio feedback is highly acceptable to students but is underused. This paper explores methods to produce and deliver audio…

This study describes the grammar of the Ch'orti' Maya language as it appears in a collection of oral literature. I collected the stories that form the basis of this study in and around Jocotan, Guatemala, during 2004 and 2005. I worked with bilingual story-tellers to make audio recordings of the original Ch'orti'-language tales, produce textual…

This report describes the initial automated scoring results that were obtained using the constructed responses from the Writing and Speaking sections of the pilot forms of the "TOEFL Junior"® Comprehensive test administered in late 2011. For all of the items except one (the edit item in the Writing section), existing automated scoring…

The provision of supplemental educational and instructional content in podcast form is becoming increasingly widespread in first language education. However, amongst second language students in Japan the lack of literature illustrates podcast use has been limited. Imitating podcasts, educational and instructional materials in audio form were…

The participation of parents-shared reading with children is a topic that has generated a lot of attention among many researchers in the world. For the use of picture story books, which have caused positive impact on the child's learning process, has also been recommended as the best strategies to develop children's aesthetic ability. The purpose…

This article presents results from an initial investigation of Greek oral reading fluency and prosody. Although currently held perspectives consider reading the product of reading decoding and reading comprehension, there is enough evidence (both Greek and foreign) to suggest that other variables may affect reading, as well. Such variables include…

Recent second/foreign language (L2) research has witnessed the application of sociocultural tenets to L2 classrooms. This study aimed to probe whether Iranian L2 learners' engagement in ZPD-activated collaborative dialogue, or "languaging", mediates their learning process and, specifically, their appropriate use of metadiscourse to…

An alternating treatments design with a control condition was used to evaluate and compare the effects of two taped-problem interventions on addition fact fluency. Both taped-problem interventions were identical with the exception of the time delay between the auditory cue of the problem and the answer. One condition used a 2-s delay and the other…

The rise in the affordability of quality video production equipment has resulted in increased interest in video-mediated tests of foreign language listening comprehension. Although research on such tests has continued fairly steadily since the early 1980s, studies have relied on analyses of raw scores, despite the growing prevalence of item…