This article discusses and compares how Chinese and English postgraduate students manage a harmonious relationship with university instructors by managing rapport and doing relational work in their academic request emails. The rapport-management strategies were explored and then further evaluated in relation to the taxonomies of relational work…

Much research has been completed that focused on the role of drafting strategies in first language (L1) writing, but its role in second language (L2) writing is missing. The present study investigated the impact of outlining and free writing strategies on L2 academic writing in terms of overall quality, as well as more specifically in terms of…

Communication apprehension (CA) is one important communication barrier, which can have significant negative impacts on many aspects of a person's life including perceived ability in communication, study, work performance, and promotions. On the other hand, CA has been found to be caused by many possible factors, including a lack of self-confidence…

The way we ask for something, or "request," is hardly the same across all contexts. The degree to which we show politeness in these instances is closely related to a number of contextual factors (Brown & Levinson, 1987), manifested in the linguistic features that we employ (Blum-Kulka, House & Kasper, 1989; Searle, 1975).…

The writers of any scientific community are inherently expected to fulfil some agreed-upon discourse conventions of the academic discourse community (Molino, 2010) in the sense of creating a successful dialogic interaction through their texts. In line with this, Akbas (2014b) raised the question of "how and to what to extent writers…

As in many other parts of the world, "academic literacy" has emerged as both a concern and a contested concept in South African universities. In this article we focus specifically on academic reading, which we argue is a relatively underemphasized aspect of academic literacy. This article is the product of reflections on academic reading…

This article explores the perception and reasons for Korean students' silence and low levels of oral participation in U.S. graduate programs. It analyzes a case study conducted with two Korean students currently attending graduate school in urban settings. The researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with the participants, using a constant…

The article investigates a system of academic education called tutoring implemented in a blended format. It looks at this teaching and learning experience based on the results of a student satisfaction survey (N = 9) as well as the analysis of the discourse between the tutor and six tutees recorded during four meetings: two traditional and two…

Ten adult readers, advanced in their control of two languages, Korean and English, were recruited for a study of academic literacy practices to examine the various linguistic repertoires on which they drew. Analysis of their language use revealed many instances of "translanguaging," that is, a flexible reliance on two languages to serve…

This paper describes an action research project to develop online, self-access listening resources mirroring the authentic academic contexts experienced by graduate university students. Current listening materials for English as an Additional Language (EAL) students mainly use Standard American English or Standard British pronunciation, and far…

The role of grammar teaching in foreign language education is a controversial one both in second language acquisition (SLA) research and language pedagogy and, as a result, a potential source of confusion to student teachers. The objective of this study was to gain insight into the beliefs on grammar teaching of student teachers of English as a…

The telecollaborative project under study involves, on the one hand, Masters students who are studying to become teachers and who design the tasks as well as tutor them, and, on the other hand, French language students. The relationship in this type of telecollaboration has been shown to be both asymmetric and symmetric. The hypothesis this paper…

This study investigates the perception of Jordanian EFL learners' (JEFL) pragmatic transfer of refusal strategies in terms of contextual and cultural factors. Data were collected using a discourse completion test (DCT) and a scaled-response questionnaire (SRQ) to elicit perception data from the participants. Data from the SRQ were analyzed based…

Although academic dishonesty has received considerable attention in recent years, there is little research on how non-serious cheating issues in a discipline such as biology or chemistry can become highly serious offenses in the context of instruction in the modern languages (MLs). One of these "grey areas" is (unauthorized) editing by a…

This study aims to investigate the effect of peer review training on the Iranian EFL students' subsequent revision in an advanced writing class in Larestan Islamic Azad University. After 12 weeks class demonstration, teacher-reviewer conferences with 20 male and female students, the students' first drafts, revisions, and reviewers' comments were…