This study addresses if preservice English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers' beliefs about the effectiveness of authentic, commercial, and teacher-made instructional materials can be changed after a semester-long pedagogical treatment. Data were collected from 90 preservice EFL teachers (Experimental: 45, Control: 45) at a public university in…

Behind CALL teacher education (CTE) there is an unproblematized consensus of transfer, which suggests a positivist and tool-centered view of learning gains that differs from the sociocultural focus of recent teacher education research. Drawing on Beach's (2003) conceptualization of transfer as "consequential transition," this qualitative…

The problem: Poor listening skills may result in misinterpretation. Language teachers as well as researchers understand the need for improving listening skills, and the need to find the most effective way to accomplish this objective. The purpose of this study was to determine whether the use of feature films with subtitles can help improve Taiwan…

This study investigates how a teacher study group collectively examined problems in their current English curriculum and redesigned the curriculum into theme-based lessons for various grades. Comprised of seven elementary school teachers and a teacher educator, the teacher study group met bi-weekly for three hours for a total of eight meetings.…

The paper offers a case study of two bilingual girls aged 10, born in London, of Albanian-speaking families who arrived in the UK as refugees. An earlier study, when the girls were aged six, explored the strategies they used as they learned to read with their mothers in Albanian using dual language books. Four years on, supported by a primary…

This article presents the methodology adopted for transcribing and quantifying temporal fluency phenomena in a spoken L2 corpus (L2 English, French, and Italian by learners of different proficiency levels). The CHILDES suite is being used for transcription and analysis, and we have adapted the CHAT format in order to code disfluencies as precisely…

Computer technology improves the process of SLA by providing access to an ample amount of input within a communicative context in which participants can engage in synchronous and asynchronous conversations (Payne & Whitney, 2002; Sykes, 2005). This research project aims to investigate the role of alignment in learning a second language within the…

A preservice teacher learning community at California Polytechnic University was created to guide adult learners in being able to effectively teach diverse learners. From the spring quarter of 2008 to 2009, these preservice teachers engaged in working with each other to write their own lesson plans and teach mathematics and literacy to English…

Assessing the language development of bilingual children can be a challenge--too often, children in the complex process of learning both Spanish and English are under- or over-diagnosed with language disorders. SLPs can change that with "SALT 2010 Bilingual S/E Version" for grades K-3, the first tool to comprehensively assess children's language…

Recent "Focus on Form" studies have emphasized the importance of learner--rather than teacher--generated attention to formal aspects of interlanguage. In this study, we took advantage of EFL learners' analytical grammar knowledge and designed a post-task approach to foster learners' self-initiated attention. Student dyads transcribed their…

Wikis represent a particular type of collaborative learning environment where collaboration can result in aggregated, collective products. This study makes the claim that such potential challenges language production practices in school where the individual learner's output is often the focus of attention. The argument is put forth by juxtaposing…

Emerging social writing platforms offer possibilities for language learners to collaborate around joint assignments. One such environment is the wiki, generally hosting two prominent modes of usage, web pages and discussion forums. This study investigates software engineering students' use of a wiki as an integrated tool within the frames of a…

This study compares pauses, repetitions and recasts in matched task interactions under face-to-face and computer-mediated conditions. Six first-year English undergraduates at a Turkish University took part in Skype-based voice chat with a native speaker and face-to-face with their instructor. Preliminary quantitative analysis of transcripts showed…

Subtitling or captioning the dialogues of English movies can be very helpful to EFL learners in the Arab world. The present study reviews the importance of subtitling for language learning in general and listening comprehension in particular. A comparison is made between different levels of listening comprehension and different genres of English…

Objective: To record the views of individuals whose main professional role is community liaison on dental health education material for culturally and linguistically diverse communities. Methods: Tape-recorded interviews were undertaken, reviewed by two individuals and themes identified. Results: Twenty four individuals were interviewed out of a…