This study analyzes four English synonyms -- clear, obvious, apparent, and evident -- concentrating on meanings, distribution across genre, collocations, and semantic preference and prosody. The data were drawn from learner's dictionaries and the Corpus of the Contemporary American English (COCA). It was discovered that the four synonyms share the…

For English language learners, mastering the use of near-synonyms can be challenging. Despite the semantic similarities of English synonyms, they are not interchangeable in all contexts. The objectives of this corpus-based study are to examine differences between the near-synonymous adjectives "blank," "empty" and…

This paper studies the two English synonymous words "little" and "small," and their Thai equivalents n??j4 and lek4. In addition to monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, British National Corpus, Thai National Corpus and an English-Thai parallel corpus were used in this study. It is found that "little" and…

The COVID-19 pandemic, has greatly affected the lives of everyone. One major concern during this period has been that of communication including content dealing with possibilities and ideology concerning freedom. This study aims to analyze the application of if-conditionals expressing options and possibilities during the COVID-19 pandemic using…

Even in this digital age, as educational technologies are increasingly integrated into teaching and learning, textbooks continue to play a significant role within language classrooms. Many textbooks maintain a traditional approach to presenting grammar, including using grammatical terminology. However, students seem to have little knowledge of…

Perhaps the greatest challenge to creating a research timeline on teaching and learning collocation is deciding how wide to cast the net in the search for relevant publications. For one thing, the term "collocation" does not have the same meaning for all (applied) linguists and practitioners (Barfield & Gyllstad 2009) (see timeline).…

ESL/EFL teachers can face several challenges when it comes to a focus on language forms in the classroom. How should teachers integrate the instruction of structural language forms with meaning-based activities? How necessary is a focus on form for student language learning? In what contexts is an explicit focus on form in the classroom most…

Teaching adjectives and adverbs is a very important subject in English language education. If the students who learn English as a second or a third language can use adjectives and adverbs effectively, they can be more successful in understanding the articles they read. They can also be more successful in business life. Because people can speak…

A key element in vocabulary instruction is to get the students to "feel" the vocabulary and make it a part of their new language identity; that is, helping the students to "own" the terms is a top priority of language instructors. Using verbpathy as a tool meets this goal. The idea of using verbpathy in vocabulary instruction…

The glossary contains over 2,000 words introduced in the 28 units of the "Beginning Pashto" and "Intermediate Pashto" instructional series and replaces the original glossary (ED 323 768). Listings are alphabetical by Pashto orthography, and consist of the Pashto word, phonetic transcription, English equivalent, form class, gender (when…

Derivations of the term "gerund" are examined as they pertain to native English speakers learning French, Italian, and/or Spanish. The form's etymology is chronicled from Latin, and its current usage in student textbooks in the three languages is examined. A solution to the terminological confusion surrounding the term is proposed. (41…