The ability to understand listening is an essential skill for non-native speakers of English as a foreign language (EFL). Research has shown that several factors can influence EFL students' English listening comprehension, including the listening strategy they use during listening activities. This study, therefore, used the meta-cognitive…

This paper explores linguistic life-histories from five participants in a larger interview study with U.S.-based adults. These five interviewees were middle-class White women from monolingual English-speaking families who pursued multilingual learning trajectories in young adulthood. Having previously attained proficiency in one language through…

Chinese has a rich and diverse vocabulary of terms, especially verbs, expressing power relationships. This paper selected 25 power relationship terms from the Chinese Proficiency Scale for International Chinese Education, and used a true-false format to test the differences in acquisition between international students from Confucian cultural…

The present study investigated how Cantonese speakers learning English as a second language (L2) would comprehend English irony and whether their L2 proficiency and use would moderate their irony processing. Thirty Cantonese speakers with differing English proficiency (intermediate vs advanced) were asked to complete an irony comprehension task in…

This study investigates how L1-Korean L2-English learners perform with regard to articles in both explicit and implicit tasks. It also examines the role of L1-transfer from Korean demonstratives to English definites in L2 article production. 21 native English speakers and 27 adult intermediate L1-Korean L2-English learners were tested. The…

Given that societies across the globe are increasingly multicultural and multilingual, the notion of communicative competence grounded in constricting definitions of national cultures and languages reflects neither our instructional realities nor the sociolinguistic reality of the languages and cultures we teach. To foster students' development of…

Rapid improvements in the capabilities of machine translation (MT) raise questions about possible increases in overreliance on MT among lower-proficiency or novice level language learners. This study investigated how such learners described their use of online MT for independent reading and writing tasks, and whether this included descriptions…

Social media is a communication tool that facilitates EFL students to improve their speaking proficiency as it enables them to fully engage in oral communication, exchange information, and form long-term bonds in this modern era. This study intended to investigate EFL students' social media as speaking strategies used vis-a-vis their speaking…

This experimental research examined the effectiveness of using chatbots in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms at a Chinese elementary school. Seventy-four students were divided into two groups: one employing traditional methods, and the other using chatbots. Before and after the 3-month teaching period, pre- and post-tests were used to…

Journalism's societal role hinges on effective communication, demanding proficient language skills. This study assesses a South African University of Technology's Department of Journalism, probing existing selection methods' efficacy in predicting success in two English modules. Concerns persist about these methods accurately identifying students…

A growing body of research has provided evidence for the foreign language effect on thinking, notably decision-making. Our prior work found reduction of recency effect following positive feedback in a foreign language as compared to the native tongue during even-probability gambling. However, the fundamental mechanisms underlying this effect…

This paper presents insights from two interview studies with the aim of shedding light on the learning potential of studying abroad in an area where English is used as a lingua franca. The majority of previous research on study abroad focuses on students' experiences of studying abroad in target-language regions, for example learners of English…

Second language learning requires conscious and persistent efforts on the part of the learner, to achieve significant proficiency. Generally, students show complacency towards learning a new language, as a result of frustrating factors such as unfamiliar vocabularies, mixing words with different textual meanings, difficulties in adopting the…

Second language (L2) learners often have difficulty perceiving L2 sound contrasts when the first-language (L1) and L2 sounds are acoustically similar and these similar L2 sounds correspond to an existing L1 sound (Flege, 1995). To improve L2 learners' perception of sound contrasts, researchers have used high-variability phonetic training (HVPT)…

The study used quasi-experimental research with pre-test and post-test design approach to analyse the effectiveness of using the Gallery Walk technique in enhancing reading comprehension and oral English language proficiency among junior high school students. Cluster sampling technique was used in determining the respondents who experienced the…