This study investigated the effect of direct and indirect written corrective feedback (WCF) on the grammatical accuracy in the use of past tense and articles by grade eight learners (n = 45). The study also explored the extent to which the use of WCF may affect the syntactic complexity in the learners' writing. The learners were selected and…

This study examined the development of text complexity for the past 25 years of reading comprehension passages in the National Matriculation English Test (NMET) in China. Text complexity of 206 reading passages at lexical, syntactic, and discourse levels has been measured longitudinally and compared across the years. The natural language…

Research writing is an important part of doctoral study. Previous studies suggest that students who speak English as an additional language (EAL) may experience difficulties in writing a thesis in English. This study investigated the nature of the writing challenges experienced by EAL doctoral students. Drawing on data collected from individual…

This study examined the sources of reading comprehension difficulties in English language learners (ELLs). The characteristics of ELL poor comprehenders were compared to their English as a first language (EL1) peers. Participants included 124 ELLs who spoke Chinese as an L1 and 79 EL1 students. Using a regression technique based on age, non-verbal…

Studies have found that morphology awareness could assist writers to increase productive vocabulary (e.g. Green et al., 2003; McCutchen & Stull, 2015), reduce vocabulary errors (e.g. Karakas, 2012; Ririn, 2010), and produce complex sentence structures using various forms of words. Postgraduate students as second language users of English (L2)…

One effort considered quite effective in assisting vocabulary mastery and facilitating understanding of English texts is the provision of a bilingual glossary (English-Indonesian). This glossary becomes more essential especially for non-English Department students because basically English for Specific Purposes has a higher level of difficulty…

In higher education, understanding discipline-specific vocabulary can be challenging. Insufficient vocabulary can be a major challenge for students as they begin their university studies. This study examined university undergraduate English language learners' discipline-specific vocabulary retention when they used an in-house developed mobile app,…

Effective test preparation for high-stakes English language tests is crucial for candidates whose futures depend on attaining a particular score. An increasing number of studies have investigated the role of test preparation; however, these studies have been exclusively conducted in individual contexts and countries around the world. This study…

Spelling is a language problem-space, not only a school subject. Successful spelling demands going beyond letter to sound mapping and gaining access to a full representation of the orthographic structure of words. We traced bilingual Catalan/Spanish speakers' spelling performance in Catalan across elementary school in two tasks: isolated words to…

This exploratory study investigated the usability of immersive virtual reality (VR) as a way of creating a role-play task to examine pragmatic competence, specifically the ability to produce the speech act of request. The study created a closed role-play task in two versions. One was a standard computer-based version in which participants read a…

In response to Canada's growing ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity, educators in French immersion classrooms are increasingly responding with enhanced cross-linguistic initiatives, and dual language books are promising resources in the promotion of multilingualism (Zaidi, 2020; Zaidi & Dooley, 2021). This paper details a research…

Latinx students with limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE; ages 18-20), not enrolled in school, often do not fully employ mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) strategies to acquire English and may experience barriers to using MALL strategies. The purpose of this study was to explore what MALL strategies Latinx SLIFE (ages 18-20), not…

Grammatical and lexical cohesion are necessary conditions to guarantee a text's coherence (Halliday and Hasan 1976). Grammatical cohesion is classified into four types of relation: reference, conjunction, substitution, and ellipsis. This study aims to investigate the use of the cohesive device of reference in written discourse produced by…

This paper reports on a study investigating features related to Chinese linguistic complexities among international students enrolled in Chinese courses in China. The main objective of this study is to highlight the major feature of Chinese complexities encountered by international students and explore whether international students' native…

Undergraduate psychology majors (n = 277) completed a survey assessing their rationale for pursuing either a Bachelor of Arts (BA) or Bachelor of Science (BS) degree. Only 52.9% correctly identified the differences in degree requirements. Of those, BA students indicated greater science anxiety and avoidance than those pursuing a BS. BS students…