Some learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) face difficulties learning Chinese characters (hanzi), particularly if they are from alphabetic language backgrounds such as English. Many CFL students need to develop the ability to self-regulate their learning to cope with the learning of hundreds of characters in the beginner and intermediate…

Several studies have examined the content of Japanese junior high school textbooks in relation to various frequency-based word lists such as the New General Service List (NGSL) (Browne et al., 2013) (e.g, Nakayama, 2022a,b) and the British National Corpus (BNC) (e.g, Wongsarnpigoon, 2018), and have identified potential issues in terms of lexical…

This study explores how reverse linguistic stereotyping (RLS) affects Thai English learners' evaluations of English speakers and their choices of pronunciation models. Ninety-five first-year Thai English majors were divided into an uninformed group, unaware of speakers' nationalities, and an informed group, knowledgeable of the same. Participants…

Formative assessment is an important dimension of teaching reform, and so introducing formative assessment into teaching is of great importance for transforming students' performance. It is also important to explore teachers' understanding and practices of formative assessment. The present research therefore examined how university English…

Grammatical and vocabulary knowledge (i.e., breadth and depth) are widely acknowledged as key predictors of reading comprehension in a second language (L2). However, it remains unclear how different aspects of vocabulary depth may independently contribute to L2 reading comprehension and how learners' proficiency may moderate the relative…

As creativity plays an essential role in conducting research, this study was an attempt to investigate how EFL researchers conceptualize creativity in their research. To this end, we adopted a descriptive narrative design, collecting, and analyzing the autobiographical narratives of 12 Iranian EFL researchers. The deductive thematic analysis…

This study investigated participants' perceived attitudinal learning in language massive open online courses (LMOOCs). A mixed-method design was used to evaluate the attitudinal learning outcomes of 151 participants who completed the attitudinal learning questionnaire at the middle and end of the course, as well as 10 participants who participated…

The generation of meaning in discourse is regarded as the process of knowledge-building, which can be analyzed by semantic waves. Combining the deep learning systems and polynomial fitting method, we present a method to compute multimodal semantic waves. With this method, four representative examples are discussed for the knowledge-building of…

This study investigates English teachers' beliefs and classroom practices regarding the teaching of creative thinking (CT) and explores the factors that hinder these practices. A mixed methods approach is adopted, drawing data from 63 middle school English teachers in China through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and classroom…

This study quantifies second language (L2) knowledge of aural single words and aural phrasal verbs (PVs) and investigates their relationship with L2 listening comprehension. An aural first language (L1) meaning recall test format was used to measure knowledge of 81 single-word and 81 PV target items (with equivalent frequencies of occurrence)…

This study attempted to examine the impacts of conceptual and perceptual primes on the word recognition and sentence comprehension of beginner, intermediate and advanced EFL learners. Consequently, 246 EFL learners were recruited for study and categorized into three English proficiency levels. The needed data was collected via Lexical Decision…

Background: Spelling acquisition requires the assimilation of the regularities of the writing system, but these regularities may differ between the native and a foreign language. English spelling acquisition is a challenge for Spanish-speaking children due to differences in the orthographic systems. The aim of this study was to examine to what…

The research studies attitudes toward selecting a cultural knowledge system conducted among Chinese high school English teachers. The research aims to reveal teachers' attitudes towards the cultural knowledge system in English textbooks for senior high schools and strengthen the reference base with the addition of materials about Chinese culture.…

This study investigated the contributions of flipped and blended teaching to EFL learners' pragmatic awareness. The participants were 90 Iranian intermediate female EFL learners in six intact classes divided into three 30-member groups each comprising two classes (i.e., two experimental and one control group). A Preliminary English Test (PET) was…

The aim of the study is to investigate the use of digital technology in English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom using various digital tools through computers and cell phones. These tools and their effect on self-perceived knowledge, learning, and English use were analyzed at the University of Tabuk. The study was conducted on a sample of 605…