The growing availability of mobile technologies has contributed to an increase in mobile-assisted language learning in which learners can autonomously study a second language (L2) anytime or anywhere (e.g. Kukulska-Hulme, Lee & Norris, 2017; Reinders & Benson, 2017). Research investigating the effectiveness of such study for L2 learning,…

This action research study aims to explore the contribution of the use of points of improvement as a reflective strategy to support eleven Chilean EFL pre-service teachers' ability to plan communicative-oriented lessons. Through questionnaires and a focus group, participants' responses were examined using thematic analysis. Findings yielded that…

The Ministry of Education in Taiwan encourages universities to adopt English ability as an exit requirement for graduates. Nearly 65% of universities use the General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) or other compatible standardized tests as an exit test for university graduates. However, it remains unclear what level of vocabulary knowledge a…

One of the emerging issues of the use of text-messaging over the WhatsApp application, among teachers and students is concerned with students' impoliteness. A body of literature has extensively argued that students are less polite language users when sending texts to their teachers, and the current study sought to examine the politeness strategies…

This study extracts the comments from a large scale of Chinese EFL learners' translation corpus to study the taxonomy of translation errors. Two unsupervised machine learning approaches are used to obtain the computational evidences of translation error taxonomy. After manually revision, ten types of English to Chinese (E2C) and eight types…

Language textbooks present cultural content in a typically homogeneous fashion, thereby ignoring inherent diversity both within and between cultures and reinforcing monodimensional views. Consequently, instructors must find ways to facilitate students' critical engagement with and reflection on cultural representations in order to provide them…

In this article, we show that "photovoice" and "photo-elicitation" are user-friendly, versatile techniques uniquely beneficial in International Business programs where English-mediated instruction is the norm. These techniques engage young adult students deeply in subject material as well as create the opportunity for students…

The study was a linguistic examination of the use of lexical cohesive devices in Ngugi Wa Thiong 'O's "Decolonising the Mind"- an autobiography. The study was aimed at revealing how Ngugi - an African L2 writer, deployed lexical cohesive devices to achieve cohesion and coherence and how this has contributed to the meaning of his…

Because a large number of Chinese characters are commonly used in both Japanese and Chinese, Chinese-speaking learners of Japanese as a second language (JSL) find it more challenging to learn Japanese functional expressions than to learn other Japanese vocabulary. To address this challenge, we have developed "Jastudy," a…

This paper presents the findings of a three-cycle action research study (Nunan & Bailey, 2009) that investigated the role of teaching presence (TP) in nurturing a Community of Inquiry (CoI) in a teacher training virtual exchange delivered in blended format. The study covers three iterations of such an exchange between three different cohorts…

In Pountain (2017), I argued that the indispensable foundation of an academic discipline of Modern Foreign Languages (MFL) must consist of (a) acquisition of and competence in the standard form of a foreign language, (b) awareness of its linguistic structure and varieties, and (c) critical study of cultural manifestations which depend on that…

A greater level of informal language learning is now taking place than at any time in human history. Much of that learning is linked to unprecedented levels of migration across the globe. This poses challenges to the identity of higher education language teachers, particularly in the UK, where numbers of modern language students have stagnated,…

In this randomized trial study, the authors examined the efficacy of a practitioner partnership language intervention addressing oral language learning (expressive and receptive) in young language-minority learners from multiple-language groups in Norway. Resource teachers in 16 elementary schools implemented the intervention in the first and…

Prior research has shown that EFL learners who wrote collaboratively with partners using wikis improved the content quality and language accuracy of their L2 individual writing more than students who wrote individually. Drawing on the dataset from Hsu and Lo's study, the current study explores the nature of the students' collaborative dialogue…

We test the interpretation of pronominal forms in L2 speakers of English whose L1 is Spanish. Previous research on learners of nonnull subject languages has shown conflicting results. The aim of the present study is to reconcile previous evidence and shed light on the factors that determine learners' difficulty to interpret pronominal forms in the…