This study explores the effectiveness of using ChatGPT, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) language model, as an Automated Essay Scoring (AES) tool for grading English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' essays. The corpus consists of 50 essays representing various types including analysis, compare and contrast, descriptive, narrative, and opinion…

Affordance refers to the opportunity available to a learning activity. Taking affordance as a theoretical and analytical construct, this exploratory study investigates learners' attitudes and the opportunities WeChat may provide for Chinese cultural knowledge (CCK) learning. The aim is to find out the potential new affordances and compare learners…

This paper compares and analyzes a selection of popular multilevel tests used for quick accreditation of English as a foreign language worldwide. The paper begins by stating the current need of accreditation of English language competence for both academic and professional matters. It then looks at their defining features and differences. After,…

Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) is now common in extra-curricular language learning, but, more recently, teachers have increasingly sought ways to utilise MALL as a communicative classroom tool. Research into the extent that MALL can transform a whole communicative language course, and learners' impressions of such courses, is scarce.…

Corpus-based studies have offered the domain definition inference for test developers. Yet, corpus-based studies on temporal fluency measures (e.g., speech rate) have been limited, especially in the context of academic lecture settings. This made it difficult for test developers to sample representative fluency features to create authentic…

This study conducts a comprehensive quantitative evaluation of OpenAI's language model, ChatGPT 4, for grading Task 2 writing of the IELTS exam. The objective is to assess the alignment between ChatGPT's grading and that of official human raters. The analysis encompassed a multifaceted approach, including a comparison of means and reliability…

Grounded in the activity theory, we adopted a sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach to explore the impact of automated written corrective feedback (AWCF) on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' academic writing skills (i.e. task achievement, coherence and cohesion, lexicon, and grammatical range and accuracy). To this end, two…

This convergent mixed method study aimed at exploring the English context of the widely used Emirates Standardized Test (EmSAT) by juxtaposing it to its sequel, the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). For this purpose, the study used the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) international standards which is used as a…

This study reports the results of a mixed-methods investigation on the impact of a virtual reality (VR) tool on Iranian EFL learners' willingness to communicate (WTC) and oral proficiency. Twenty upper-intermediate EFL learners were divided into experimental and control groups role-playing as museum guides with and without Google Expeditions VR…

This article reports on an experimental study that set out to investigate and compare the effectiveness of a direct and an indirect approach to data-driven learning (DDL) in facilitating Chinese learners' mastery of a challenging type of lexico-grammatical resource (i.e. hedges) in an undergraduate English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) writing…

The aim of this study was to investigate how test methods affect listening test takers' performance and cognitive load. Test methods were defined and operationalized as while-listening performance (WLP) and post-listening performance (PLP) formats. To achieve the goal of the study, we examined test takers' (N = 80) brain activity patterns…

The current paper examined the impact of Dynamic Assessment (DA) on the speaking skills of EFL learners applying socio-cultural theory, which was developed by Vygotsky (1934). The study also tried to compare the results from online synchronous DA sessions, which were done in the form of one-to-one online training over Google Meet, with the results…

As a high-stakes standardized test, IELTS is expected to have comparable forms of test papers so that test takers from different test administration on different dates receive comparable test scores. Therefore, this study examined the text difficulty and task characteristics of four parallel academic IELTS reading tests to reveal to what extent…

This article reports the results of a sequential explanatory mixed-methods approach to explore the impact of online peer-editing using Google Docs and peer-editing in a face-to-face classroom on EFL learners' academic writing skills. As the study adopted a quasi-experimental design, two intact classes, each with ten EFL learners, attending an…

To better understand the promising effects of data-driven learning (DDL) on language learning processes and outcomes, this study explored DDL learning events enabled by the Research Writing Tutor (RWT), a web-based platform containing an English language corpus annotated to enhance rhetorical input, a concordancer that was searchable for…