This dissertation explored Beninese English teachers' prior experience in writing in English and its implications for teaching writing in English in the Benin Republic. Grounded in a social constructionist paradigm, this dissertation used a qualitative research approach with initial survey, autobiographical narrative essay, and interviews to…

Aim/Purpose: This exploratory qualitative case study examines the perceptions of high-school learners of English regarding a pedagogical intervention involving progressive reduction of captions (full, sentence-level, keyword captions, and no-captions) in enhancing language learning. Background: Recognizing the limitations of caption usage in…

Background: There are a number of pathways available for international students to gain admission into universities in English-speaking countries. While many international students for whom English is not their first language succeed academically, there is concern that some do not cope with the demands of university which can affect their…

A growing number of studies have stressed the significance of foreign language anxiety in foreign language learning. However, these studies have generally demonstrated foreign language anxiety to be associated with foreign language achievement not with 21st century skills particularly decision-making strategies. Based on this, this study aims to…

Digital learning has become an inevitable trend with many benefits for students' learning performance and motivation. However, Virtual Reality, a pervasive mode of digital learning nowadays, has incurred ambivalence among teachers over the years due to its high cost and other technical concerns. Panoramic image VR (PIVR) is a cost-efficient…

The present study analyzes the effects of two variables on the proficiency development of 907 university students of Spanish and French: years of high school experience; and level of initial placement into university language study. A 3-year grant-funded project administered ACTFL proficiency tests in reading, listening, and speaking to students…

This study was intended to depict how Critical Literacy Pedagogy (CLP) principles were incorporated in EFL reading class in Indonesian secondary school and the students' Critical Thinking (CT) were fostered during learning process. This study was a classroom practice-based model of how the principles were transferred into the detailed teaching…

Answering calls to map college-level proficiency development (Modern Language Association, 2007) and longitudinally chart language learning (Barkaoui, 2014; Ortega & Byrnes, 2008), we mapped the oral proficiency growth of 1,922 lower-division college students of Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish (in the second, third, or fourth semester of…

Writing in L2 is considered a very challenging task by both teachers and students. Language teachers play a critical role in facilitating students' L2 writing development. Therefore, it is important to explore their beliefs about writing instruction as their beliefs exert influence on classroom practices. This study draws on the Repertory Grid…

African township schools are characterised by cultural and linguistic diversity, hence, teachers have the dual task of ensuring that learners grasp scientific concepts, while also catering for the diversity in the learners' backgrounds. The study reported on here was aimed at investigating teachers' beliefs and practices in teaching life sciences…

The present study investigates the effects of extensive reading on developing the language knowledge and reading abilities of high school learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) over the course of one school year. Participants were divided into control (n = 205) and experimental groups (n = 200), with the former receiving regular grammar…

The specific size of vocabulary has been prescribed in Thailand's basic education curriculum for decades, but less is known about Thai students' vocabulary size. This study focused on Thai freshmen who just finished their 12 years of basic education. The objective of the study was to assess their vocabulary size and examine the relationship…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of prelistening activities, particularly interactive brainstorming advance organizers that used a "Think-Pair-Share" structure, on the listening comprehension performance of L2 junior high school students. The term advance organizer is defined as a teaching activity that helps build or…

This article reports on a case study that investigates the learning preferences and strategies of Chinese students learning English as a second language (ESL) in Canadian school settings. It focuses on the interaction between second language (L2) learning methods that the students have adopted from their previous learning experience in China and…

This study investigates how previous exposure to a foreign language and culture influences student performance in online knowledge-building tasks. As knowledge-building tasks allow students to share and distribute their knowledge; this study examines whether foreign language and culture knowledge is also distributed amongst the group. The study…