The present study reports on the development of a questionnaire that evaluates children's experiences of their physical classroom environment, activities and interactions. It also explores the psychometric properties of the questionnaire and how acoustical characteristics of the classroom, class size and student characteristics (age, sex and…

Students of Southeast Asian Heritage Learning Chinese (SSAHLC) in Taiwan have frequently demonstrated difficulty with traditional Chinese (a graphical character) radical recognition due to their limited exposure to the written language form since childhood. In this study, we designed a Chinese radical learning game (CRLG), which adopted a drill…

As a result of a university partnership, elementary students at two midwest Catholic elementary schools have been provided with exploratory world language instruction (FLEX) from pre-service teachers. To investigate students' attitudes and learning of Spanish, researchers interviewed second and fourth graders. The students' parents and pre-service…

Telepresence has been playing an important role in a mediated learning environment. However, the current design of telepresence seems to be dominated by the emulation of physical human presence. With reference to social constructivism learning and the recognition of individuals as intelligent entities, this study explored the transformation of…

This study developed a 5-step vocabulary learning (FSVL) strategy and a mobile learning tool in a situational English vocabulary learning environment and assessed their effects on the learning motivation and performance of English as a foreign language (EFL) students in a situational English vocabulary learning environment. Overall, 80 EFL…

Foreign language anxiety (FLA) has been mainly associated with adult language learners. Although FLA forms a serious problem in the foreign language learning process for all learners, the effects of FLA on children have been mainly overlooked. The underlying reason is that there is a lack of an appropriate measurement tool for FLA among children.…

This research is conducted to examine novice ELT teachers' perspective on the possible motives behind young learners' problem behaviours in English classes. The gender of ELT teachers have been also considered in order to investigate whether there is a difference between the perception of male and female teachers on the leading causes of problem…

Both for the first language (L1) and for all additional languages (L2 or L3), grammatical knowledge plays a vital role in understanding texts (e.g., Grabe, 2005). However, little is known about the development and interaction of grammar and reading comprehension in beginning foreign language learning, especially with respect to children with a…

We explored the use of technology-assisted, trialogue-based tasks to measure the English language proficiency of students learning English as a second or foreign language. A presumed benefit of the system for language assessment is its suitability for use in scenario-based tasks that integrate multiple language skills. This integration allows test…

The current study, with 409 fourth graders in two-way immersion programs, explored the writing self-perceptions of native English and native Spanish speakers and the relationship between self-perceptions and writing performance. An adapted version of the Writer Self-Perception Scale (WSPS) was administered along with a writing task. Native English…

This paper presents findings from a study investigating young English language learners (YELLs) in Sweden in 4th grade (N = 76, aged 10-11). Data were collected with the help of a questionnaire and a one-week language diary. The main purpose was to examine the learners' L2 English language-related activities outside of school in general, and their…

In Taiwan, English was only officially taught at the secondary and tertiary levels before 2001. Since 2001, English courses have been formally incorporated into the curriculum in primary schools. Research on teaching and assessing English in primary school education is relatively new compared with research on other levels of education in Taiwan.…

The aim of this study is to make a new attempt to explore the potential of integrating game strategies with automatic speech recognition technologies to provide learners with individual opportunities for English pronunciation learning. The study developed the Game Embedded CALL (GeCALL) system with two activities for on-line speaking practice. For…

This paper presents findings from a study investigating young Swedish learners' extramural (out-of-school) contact with English. In contemporary Sweden, the influx of English is great and research has shown that extramural contact with English correlates positively with students' proficiency in English (Olsson, 2011; Sundqvist, 2009; Sylvén,…

This study asked elementary school teachers how educational policies affected their science instruction with a majority of English language learners. The study employed a questionnaire followed by focus group interviews with 43 third and fourth grade teachers from six elementary schools in a large urban school district with high populations of…