Pedagogical agents, virtual avatars that are often included in online training or educational modules, have been studied in a variety of disciplines to determine the extent to which their inclusion in online or multimedia learning environments may influence both cognitive and affective outcomes in learners. The present study examined the effect of…

Mandarin Chinese verbs are composed of one to four characters that function together as a conceptual unit. However, in modern spoken Chinese, most of these verbs are two-character compounds. This dissertation is focused on adult second language (L2) learners' acquisition of these two-character verb compounds. Specifically, the acquisition of a…

A common drawback in traditional language education is that all students in the same class use the same content. Since students may have different backgrounds such as prior knowledge and learning speed, one single curriculum may not be able to accommodate every student. Unfortunately, most students cannot afford personalized language learning,…

Learning vocabulary and understanding texts present difficulty for language learners due to, among other things, the high degree of lexical ambiguity. By developing an intelligent tutoring system, this dissertation examines whether automatically providing enriched sense-specific information is effective for vocabulary learning and reading…

Interaction research on recasts has been largely confined to examining the effects of recasts delivered in an oral, face-to-face modality. The challenge of creating task conditions in a written interactive mode, in which the dynamism and immediacy of recasts can be brought to bear on L2 development, has been a formidable obstacle to advancing the…