Approaches to learning a second/foreign language can be affected by such individual differences as personality traits, motivational variables, and task difficulty. Personality traits have been proven to influence academic achievement, but their effects on motivation and language learning approaches remain unanswered. The first purpose of the study…

This study investigates to what extent a language learners-as-ethnographers (LAE) approach utilizing social media helped English language learners (ELLs) become fuller participants in a face-to-face target language community. The pedagogical design of this LAE project was based on bridging activities and legitimate peripheral participation in…

In conventional written corrective feedback (WCF) practice, teachers spend an inordinate amount of time identifying every error in student writing. Research evidence suggests that such a comprehensive WCF approach is both undesirable and ineffective. Recent research has shown that focused WCF, where teachers respond to errors selectively, is a…

This study investigates how Chinese scholars in Applied Linguistics construct different authorial stances in their English and Chinese research articles (RAs) by using interactional metadiscourse comprising boosters, hedges, and self-mentions. A specially designed corpus of 22 Chinese and 22 English RAs written by the same group of Chinese…

This study aims to adapt and extend the DeLone and McLean Information System (IS) success model in the context of an online English as a Foreign Language (EFL) higher education foundation program. The objective is to enhance teaching, learning, and knowledge-sharing experiences within a virtual community of practice (vCoP). The research involved…

Research suggests new foreign language (FL) words are learned more easily if their phonology follows the phonotactic rules of the native language. Very little is known, however, about the impact of orthography on FL learning. This study investigated the cognitive mechanisms supporting the learning of words with familiar and unfamiliar…

When refugees are forced to flee their country, they leave for a number of reasons. Some refugees resettle in the United States, in Buffalo, New York. Buffalo is home to a large number of Burmese refugees over the years and some of those refugees are children. Schools can play an important role in children's lives and school administrators can…

Understanding the IELTS washback on learning in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in higher education contexts remains limited. To fill in this research gap, this study investigated washback effects of the International English Language Testing System (hereafter called IELTS) as an English language proficiency exit test for final-year English…

Sentence frames are a frequently used form of pedagogical scaffolding in language education. Yet there is debate around whether sentence frames offer the opportunity for analysis and internalisation of authentic language use, or simply facilitate rote, 'plug and play' language use. This paper takes a linguistic ethnography approach informed by…

Estimating the difficulty of reading tests is critical in second language education and assessment. This study was aimed at examining various text features that might influence the difficulty level of a high-stakes reading comprehension test and predict test takers' scores. To this end, the responses provided by 17,900 test takers on the reading…

The current study investigates narrative retelling and comprehension among 30 native Arabic-speaking preschool children with a mean age of 5:10. Narrative features of text-complexity (less-complex and more-complex episodic structure) and language variety (Spoken Palestinian Arabic [PA] and Modern Standard Arabic [MSA]) were analyzed for their…

This mixed-methods study aims to investigate the bias in peer feedback. Thirty-two English as an additional language learners gave each other anonymous feedback on their texts. Half of the participants received feedback from their teacher disguised as peer feedback, while the other half received actual peer feedback. Data were collected through…

Reading in a foreign language (English) has been a problem for primary school kids in remote places in Indonesia. The purpose of this study is to determine if there is a significant difference in the effect of extensive reading (ER) between individual and group teaching. Students were divided into two categories, one class read individually, and…

Since its first adoption as a computational model for language learning, evidence has accumulated that Rescorla-Wagner error-correction learning (Rescorla & Wagner, 1972) captures several aspects of language processing. Whereas previous studies have provided general support for the Rescorla-Wagner rule by using it to explain the behavior of…

As K-12 schools in the United States continue to experience increases in enrollment of English learners (ELs), educators and researchers seek to identify effective teaching practices. Previous research in the area of teacher effectiveness with ELs has focused mainly on pre-service and elementary-level teachers, with studies of coursework and…