Fun facts--facts that are interesting, unusual, and often little-known--are a popular form of entertainment throughout the world. There are countless books, TV quiz shows (Jeopardy!), board games (Trivial Pursuit), and museums (Ripley's Believe It or Not!) dedicated to trivia and the unusual that fascinate people of all ages. Short oral…

This study explores how lexical bundles link smaller functional units (steps) in research article (RA) conclusions in hard and soft science knowledge fields by using corpus-based and corpus-driven approaches. RA conclusion corpora from the hard and soft sciences were compiled and four-word lexical bundles were extracted from each corpus.…

Although current approaches to second language (L2) pronunciation underscore that instruction should concentrate on pronunciation features that help learners be more intelligible (and not necessarily more native like), there is little empirical evidence as to what those features are, especially in languages other than English. To address this gap,…

This study investigates whether the use of prosodic cues during instruction facilitates the processing of German accusative case markers. Two groups of third semester L1 English learners of L2 German completed Processing Instruction (PI) with aural input: Learners in the PI+P group heard sentences that included focused prosodic cues; learners in…

J.D. Brown (JD) served as the author of an instructional column titled "Statistics Corner" in the "Shiken": JALT "Testing & Evaluation SIG Newsletter" for an extensive period spanning over two decades, from 1997 to 2019. This publication was under the auspices of the Testing and Evaluation Special Interest Group,…

The scope of this study is to observe features of environmental autonomy support and to identify aspects of autonomy. To this end, a case study was designed and implemented in a state school in the western region of Mexico, with the participation of twelve secondary school pupils, ages 12 to 14, who attended a non-required 40-hour course using the…

Children with difficulties in language learning experience considerable problems in writing and spelling. This systematic review explores the research literature that has been conducted with children who have language learning difficulties (developmental language disorder) through the lens of Chenoweth and Hayes' (2003) model of writing. The model…

"Word Study with Multilingual Learners: Phonics, Spelling, and Vocabulary Instruction" is the most complete resource available for teachers to use as you facilitate research-based word study in classrooms with students from varying language backgrounds. Empower your students to grasp this new language at the word level, building skills…

The purpose of this review was to summarize the behavior-analytic literature on the emergence of untrained second language skills and to provide recommendations for future research focused on second language acquisition. Seventeen distinct studies were included in the review. These studies implemented a variety of teaching methods (e.g., tact,…

The purpose of this follow-up study was to investigate further the expressed needs of Instructional Designers (IDers) from a large public Facebook group. Our previous original research (Abramenka-Lachheb et al., 2021a) reported that IDers expressed needs during the pandemic in several categories, including: (1) educational technology, (2)…

We believe that is culturally situated. In this conceptual article, we problematize some of the phrasing used for prosody indicators and explore how three of the most spoken languages in the United States (other than English) enact aspects of prosody when reading. We probe potential linguistic and sociocultural implications and contribute to the…

Although emotions are vitally important for achievement and performance in learning a new language, prior research has mainly focused on negative emotions and the cognitive aspects of second language acquisition and foreign language learning. However, the number of studies on the relationship between positive psychology and language learning has…

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have contributed significantly to the advancement of society. In recent years, AI-powered writing assistants have received increasing attention among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) communities. However, most of these digital writing tools focus on the revision and editing stages. Few digital tools are…

Language and literacy are inextricably linked with identity, yet most children experience children's literature in schooling contexts in only one language. For many students, this language is not their home or preferred language, so they rarely, if ever, see their home language represented in school and children's literature. While the number of…

Despite the proliferation of research about pair/group interaction during second language collaborative writing, little is known about how psychological factors, in particular learner attitude affect participation and learning in collaborative writing. This study primarily attempted to investigate whether EFL learners' attitudes toward…