Scholars have advocated for critical approaches to language education (e.g., Del Valle, 2014; Leeman & Serafini, 2016), including those that promote the development of "Critical Language Awareness, CLA" (e.g., Alim, 2010; Leeman, 2018). The goal is to develop students' critical knowledge of the cultural, political, and social…

For decades, there has been a debate over the effectiveness of written corrective feedback in second language writing pedagogy. Recently, research on the issue has gradually turned from whether to give corrective feedback in L2 writing to how it can be effective; however, pursuit for effective pedagogical practices are still underway. To address…

This study explores how preschool educators could assess dual language learners' (DLLs) English language abilities using formative instruments in school settings. It specifically examines (1) DLLs' receptive and expressive language proficiencies measured using the instruments and (2) educators' perceived usefulness of them for informing…

This study employed a blended learning approach to investigate 98 medical university EFL students' perceptions and analyzed the learning trajectory of their LMOOCs in formal education. Meanwhile, Byram's (1997) intercultural communicative competence (ICC) model was adopted to explore if students' English proficiency and ICC abilities could enhance…

Digital storytelling (DST) is one of the areas which has entered the field of foreign language education and has proved to be beneficial in learning different language skills. However, it remains underexplored whether and how DST can affect learners' writing skill and motivation to write. The present study sought to investigate the impact of DST…

Research evidence suggests children experiencing adversity are at risk of language disparities in early childhood. This puts these children at risk of poor language outcomes, perpetuating disadvantage in later development and academic life. This study aimed to investigate associations between Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) attendance,…

Language proficiency testing serves an important function of classifying examinees into different categories of ability. However, misclassification is to some extent inevitable and may have important consequences for stakeholders. Recent research suggests that classification efficacy may be enhanced substantially using computerized adaptive…

Though revising the existing syllabus is part of the Ethiopian education system, the study of the implementations of the notions of the syllabus attracts a few researchers' interests. Therefore, this study investigates teachers' practices of teaching speaking and compares them with the principles of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), the…

L2 pragmatics have explored the effects of different factors on different aspects of learners' pragmatic performance, but often not simultaneously. In addition, syntactic complexity is rarely examined in L2 pragmatics. This cross-sectional study aimed to conduct a multidimensional analysis to explore the effects of proficiency and study-abroad…

Grammatical and lexical cohesion are necessary conditions to guarantee a text's coherence (Halliday and Hasan 1976). Grammatical cohesion is classified into four types of relation: reference, conjunction, substitution, and ellipsis. This study aims to investigate the use of the cohesive device of reference in written discourse produced by…

This research project sought to explore the influence of English L2 on Spanish L1 in an environment where the L1 (Spanish) is the dominant language. Participants were recruited through voluntary response sampling at the University of Puerto Rico Secondary School (UHS). They completed a language survey on Google Forms that collected general…

This study examines the effects of English Learner (EL) status on subsequent Special Education (SPED) placement. Through a research-practice partnership, we link student demographic data and initial English proficiency assessment data across seven cohorts of test takers and observe EL and SPED programmatic participation for these students over…

The rapid growth of Mandarin Chinese and English dual-language (DL) programs and the differences between these two languages have fostered the need to investigate the early literacy performance of young students in a Mandarin/English DL program. This study used the interactive transfer framework (Chung et al., 2019) to understand the Mandarin and…

As validity pertains to test use rather than the test itself, using a test for unintended purposes requires a new validation program using additional evidence from relevant sources. This small-scale study contributes to the validation of the use of originally academic language tests--the International English Language Testing System and the Test…

Semiotics has been investigated in the literature to enhance second language vocabulary acquisition. The previous studies have examined how semiotics could aid second language (L2) learner to learn concrete words. This study aims at investigating the effect of semiotics on learning abstract words. Fifty-five Arab learners of English as a foreign…