Since the Korean pronoun system does not specify gender indication, Korean speakers of English tend to have difficulties when they use English pronouns. This paper explores how absence of obligatory gender marking in Korean affects gender errors in the production of English. Gender pronoun errors made by Korean learners of English were analyzed…

The first part of the paper offers the characteristics of the affective variables of willingness to communicate, motivation, language anxiety and boredom as located within the framework of the complex dynamic systems. The second part aims to discuss the results of a study intended to examine the effect of "Second Life" on two English…

Recent research has shown that reading and listening together can be helpful in developing EFL reading fluency, but learner-autonomous bimodal reading research remains scarce. The present study, in an intensive academic English program in Japan, was intended to explore whether reading rates and related reading skills might improve while…

Role models and motivators can influence young people in a general sense and have a significant effect on their values and beliefs. As part of a larger project, we investigated the presence of L2 (second language) role models and motivators among 12 Japanese high school students (aged between 15 and 18), who took part in one-to-one interviews with…

The present study investigates the preferences of students regarding the principles for the effective design of instructional videos to identify factors that influence engagement. A questionnaire was distributed to 232 students enrolled in online liberal arts classes at a private university in South Korea. Frequency analysis was conducted to…

English writing plays a vital role in language teaching and learning and is compulsory in Chinese secondary education. Chinese EFL junior high school students need to master English writing. However, in the process of English writing teaching and learning, the Chinese EFL students still face problems in writing ability and self-efficacy even…

The present paper addresses the age issue in the context of learning English as a foreign language in instructional settings. Our attention has been directed towards the examination of potential differences in students' perceptions of their foreign language teacher and motivation in relation to age. A total of 592 participants attending higher…

Promoting students' digital literacy has become a significant challenge for educational authorities and course designers. However, very limited attention has been directed toward junior high school students' digital literacy in the literature of computer-assisted language learning (CALL). Thus, this mixed-methods study explored junior high school…

Self-assessment (SA) allows students to evaluate their language performance, as well as encourage and stimulate their language learning. However, only a few studies have been conducted on self-assessment in EFL contexts, particularly in Thailand. Among these studies, they have rarely focused on students' perceptions and how they use…

Task-Based Language Teaching has been developed in response to the teacher-dominated, focus-on-forms methods such as Present, Practice, Produce (PPP). The body of literature is replete with studies examining the learning efficacy of the PPP approach versus TBLT; however, these studies did not use assessment tasks in comparing these two methods. To…

Effective teaching practice requires that teachers know their students not as 'faceless average learners', but as individuals. The most individual of learner characteristics is personality, and yet language education research has made little progress in understanding the role of personality. As the field of language learning motivation seeks to…

This study aimed to explore the perceptions of English Language Teaching (ELT) students regarding 21st century skills and learning environments. A qualitative content analysis method was used, which involved conducting semi-structured interviews with 62 ELT students. The findings of the study revealed that ELT students perceive critical thinking,…

Pragmatic formulas have been recognized as linguistic building blocks necessary for successful speech act performance. Current approaches to speech act teaching overlook pragmatic formulas, promoting an incomplete view of pragmatics instruction. This paper reports on the results of a classroom-based study in which a formula-enhanced treatment…

Mobile-assisted language learning is a growing feature of contemporary language learning, and their distinct gamification design produces new and increasingly popular contexts for language learning. This paper explores the gamification features of the two most popular EFL vocabulary learning applications widely used by Asian learners --…

This article reports on an intervention related to L2 learner well-being based on Oxford's (2016) EMPATHICS theoretical framework. The intervention was conducted at a women's university in Tokyo in three of the researcher's own first-year, compulsory, four-skills English-language classes. Forty-six learners agreed to take part in the study. To…