The "Filière Bilingue" (FiBi) is a Swiss public two-way immersion program integrating French-speaking, German-speaking and allophone learners (having neither French nor German as an L1) in each class. Located in the bilingual city of Biel/ Bienne, the "diglossic" situation represented by the use of Swiss German and standard…

This study investigated the effect of synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) text chat and voice chat on Iranian EFL learners' oral proficiency and anxiety. To this aim, 81 Iranian pre-intermediate EFL learners were selected from among 125 students at private English language institutes. The selected participants were divided into two…

Building on previous studies investigating the multidimensional nature of lexical use in task-based L2 performance, this study clarified the roles that the distinct lexical features play in predicting vocabulary proficiency in a corpus of L2 Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPI). A total of 85 OPI samples were rated by three separate raters based on a…

This paper represents a summary and discussion of the three studies presented at the morning session of the Fall 2022 JALT Vocabulary SIG. The papers, which were written by Ali Al-Hoorie, Masaki Eguchi, Derek Canning, Stuart McLean, Christopher Nicklin, and Joseph Vitta, represent a range of topics and study designs that are common in recent…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify and describe latent dual language profiles in a large sample of school-age Spanish-English bilingual children designated as English learners (ELs) by their school district. Method: Data for this study include 847 Spanish-speaking ELs from kindergarten to third grade. Spanish and English narrative…

The assessment of English speaking in EFL environments can be inherently subjective and influenced by various factors beyond linguistic ability, including choice of assessment criteria, and even the rubric type. In classroom assessment, the type of rubric recommended for English speaking tasks is the analytical rubric. Driven by three aims, this…

This study followed the development of Hong Kong Sign Language (HKSL) proficiency in 31 deaf bimodal bilingual children (kindergarten through Primary 6) over two years. The Hong Kong Sign Language Elicitation Tool (HKSL-ET) was used at three time points to elicit the production of agreement, classifier, modal, negation, and wh-question structures.…

The purpose of this article is to provide a review of current research on two of the original ACTFL (American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages) research priorities areas, model teacher preparation programs and teacher oral proficiency, as well as a look at future directions for research in these areas. Driven by the call for continued…

The ability to speak in a second language (L2) requires a certain level of linguistic proficiency, but the ability to "live" in a second language requires a certain level of "sociolinguistic" proficiency. L2 sociolinguistic variables present acquisitional challenges for language learners, since informal discourse features are…

Purpose: Best practices recommend promoting the use of the home language and allowing caregivers to choose the language(s) that they want to use with their child who is deaf or hard of hearing (DHH). We examined whether Spanish-speaking caregivers of children who are DHH receive professional recommendations on oral bilingualism that follow best…

Anxiety is an affective factor that plays an important role in affecting the mastery and achievement of language learning. This study aims to examine the level of oral language anxiety and its relationship with learning outcomes among religious secondary school students in Malaysia. The questionnaire was distributed to 500 form four students from…

Learners' anxiety has drawn widespread attention in the field of second language/foreign language (L2/FL) teaching and learning (e.g. classroom anxiety, communication (with foreigners) anxiety, and anxiety associated with the four macro-skills, namely listening, reading, speaking, and writing). However, this topic is under-explored in L2/FL public…

Oral communicative activities (OCA) play a significant role in the English learning and teaching process due to its positive effects on improving speaking skills. However, not all English language teachers and learners have adequate knowledge about these activities. In some countries, like Libya, teachers focus more on silent individual learning…

Amid globalization, the demand for English oral proficiency continues to grow. This study employs a quasi-experimental design to investigate the integration of an AI chatbot into the mobile-assisted blended learning (MABL) framework. It examines the impact of this approach on the spoken English abilities of Chinese non-English major university…

This study aims to investigate whether the Visual Thinking (VT) methodology and multimodal resources can enhance emotional challenges, such as stage fright, in an English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom in primary education. This research addresses a pressing issue in contemporary society - performance anxiety - characterised by heavy…