This study examines low-intermediate to advanced ESL learners' awareness of semantic prosody. Semantic prosody is a word/unit association that expresses an attitudinal meaning (described as favourable, neutral, unfavourable), which emerges from the word's typical lexical environment. Sensitivity to and awareness of such associations is an…

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning has automatically become a normal practice of the "Next Normal". Intensive English is a compact three-week course offered to get first-year students ready for university study. Online learning was something new for both students and instructors. A key challenge in online learning was how to…

This study investigates the acquisition of null subjects by Mandarin Chinese native speakers ('Chinese NSs' hereafter), with different levels of L2 English proficiency, at initial stages of L3 Italian acquisition. The aim is to find out if, when acquiring Italian null subjects, Chinese NSs resort to their L1, which, like the L3, allows null…

This study aims to identify Saudi English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' perspectives towards using the English language in their studies. The study explores students self-confident and its association with students' actual performance in English course in their different academic programs. A multimodal methodology was used to fulfill the…

This article is the first large-scale study to document the speaking proficiency outcomes of intensive programs in less commonly taught languages in US higher education. Speaking proficiency was measured by pre- and postprogram ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interviews (N = 484) in 14 languages: Arabic, Bengali, Brazilian Portuguese, Hindi, Indonesian,…

L2 test developers often use scripted spoken texts in their L2 listening tests, because it is efficient and practical to create scripted spoken texts that meet predetermined test specifications. But because scripted spoken texts differ in a number of fundamental ways from unscripted spoken language, there are potential threats to validity when…

It would not be presumptuous to say that the younger generation is not reading at a sustained level. Many people view sustained reading as overly time-consuming and unable to meet the instant gratification that social media so readily provides. Educators are embracing the reality that, as a consequence, students' learning styles have also changed.…

The growing popularity of authentic materials provides English language teachers with more resources to practice the real language in language classrooms (Guo, 2012). However, integrating these types of reading materials can be difficult and time-consuming even though there are many benefits to using them to teach language learners how to read.…

Teacher scaffolding plays a crucial role in shaping the quality of classroom learning, yet little is known about the effective features of scaffolding in classes using content language integrated learning (CLIL), especially in terms of its effects on learners' language and cognitive development. To address this issue, the study adopts a classroom…

With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, online education has been embraced as an instructional delivery mode to ensure continuity in all levels of education including higher education. Given the fact that the success of online learning heavily relies on the learner's ability to autonomously regulate their learning, this study focuses on…

Often, second/foreign (L2) language learners receive little opportunity to interact orally in the target language. Interactive, conversation-based spoken dialog systems (SDSs) that use automated speech recognition and natural language processing have the potential to address this need by engaging learners in meaningful, goal-oriented speaking…

Intensive English programs (IEPs) strive to make certain that international students have sufficient levels of speaking ability, which is typically assessed through a combination of different tasks. One drawback of including multiple tasks is that the development, administration, and scoring might not be practical. Therefore, it is important to…

Action research has enjoyed phenomenal growth in the field of education as a catalyst for teacher professional learning with a view to school improvement, but it is commonly remodelled across various local settings. Adopting a Schatzkian perspective, this study investigates the experiences of a range of teachers engaging in an action research…

Correct pronunciation of English words is of vital significance for mutual intelligibility in the EFL context. Despite its prominence in L2 learning, teachers of English cannot decide whether and how to implement pronunciation practice into their teaching practices. For this reason, pronunciation training is widely neglected in language classes or…

Language policies of countries have focused especially on the teaching and learning of English, the universal language of communication because of the increase in international exchange of information. In this context, one of the changes which were made in the field of foreign language teaching in recent years in Turkey is that the intensive…