Concept maps are widely used across disciplines as a graphical tool for organizing and representing knowledge. While the effectiveness of concept maps as a learning tool to organize subject knowledge is well-documented in the literature, there is scant research on concept maps as a visual tool to augment L2 learners' multimodal communication…

Writing and its role in English as a foreign language (EFL) context has been one of the primary areas of focus for many years. The present study examined the effects of mobile-based concept mapping on EFL learners' writing fluency and motivation. To fulfill the objective, 70 upper-intermediate level Persian EFL learners were assigned into one…

In language learning, it is important to foster students' computational thinking and improve their skills of building arguments and dialectical structure, teamwork, and decision accuracy. This is especially so in English language courses which aim to promote students' cultural learning interest, creative thinking, and oral presentation.…

Machine translation (MT) provides a seemingly accelerated alternative way to communicate in the target language (L2). A convenient service to the public, MT renders a potential disservice to language learners. In this pedagogically focused article, we show concrete and detailed examples of how language instructors can turn MT and other electronic…

The important role of vocabulary has long been established in second language acquisition, and many theories have been proposed for vocabulary teaching and learning. The current study aimed to investigate the effects of concept mapping and notebook keeping on self-regulation in vocabulary learning. To this aim, 90 female language learners in three…

Despite widespread agreement among ELT researchers that vocabulary lies at the heart of communicative competence, currently no consensus exists as to how learning of previously presented lexical items can be guaranteed. Given the inconclusiveness of findings, the present study attempted to delve into the differences in the learning of target…

This interlanguage study examines the L2 mental lexicon of Thai EFL learners with different degrees of language exposure--i.e., the high exposure group and the low exposure group. The scores from the English Language Exposure (ELE) Questionnaire were used to select the two groups of participants. To explore the lexical processing and the…

This study examines four elements of learner motivation, attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction, in an EFL speaking course that uses the computer mediated communication (CMC) tool Google Hangouts. The study found that a preparatory concept mapping task before the CMC sessions improved students' perceived attention, relevance,…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of using group story-mapping of English as a second language (ESL) on students with learning disability while reading comprehension. The researcher focused on a specific graphic organizer in this study, called group story-mapping. This strategy required students with learning disabilities…

This study examines the impact of teaching learning strategies on learners' beliefs about language learning and reading comprehension ability. Participants were 78 university freshmen studying English language teaching, translation, and literature. They were divided into two groups. The experimental group received a number of learning strategies…

The study presented in this article explores the ways in which discursive-technologies shape interaction in "digitally-mediated" educational settings in terms of affordances and constraints for the participants. Our multi-scale sociocultural-dialogical analysis of the interactional order in the online sessions of an "Italian for…

The present study, framed from a critical and transformative approach to teacher education, aims to investigate whether language portraits (Prasad, 2010)--the mapping of one's language and cultural make-up on a body template--can help improve student teachers' self-understanding about language and identities and can foster critical reflection…

International university students are often multilingual with proficiency in their native or heritage languages, but may have very little exposure to the English language; hence, listening, speaking, reading, and writing in English can be challenging to them. As a result, using texts with difficult vocabulary and organization may pose a threat to…

One of the four basic language skills of children, writing, is central to expressing themselves and to developing high level thinking capabilities. Competence in writing is a rather complex learning structure in which cognitive and, especially, psycho-motor learning processes are intensively employed and it further needs to be fed by perceptive…

Idioms have long been regarded as problematic for L2 learners due to the arbitrariness of their meanings and forms. Traditional methods of teaching idioms focus on rote learning and memorization. Recent developments in cognitive linguistics research have considered idioms as analyzable expressions which are motivated by conceptual metaphors and…