iTunes U has become the main worldwide provider of educational podcasts but, despite its popularity, little is known about the type of user who downloads iTunes U language resources, or how those resources are used. This paper presents the results of the first major survey (1891 responses) of users of one of the most successful iTunes U content…

This article presents the findings of an action research study on developing learner autonomy through project work in an English for Specific Purposes class. The study was conducted at a Colombian regional and public university with environmental engineering undergraduates. The instruments for data collection were field notes, semi-structured…

In many African countries, English is the medium of instruction in higher education even though students may not always be entirely familiar with "standard" English. This study aimed at investigating the relevance of English language competencies for teaching and learning from the perspective of students and lecturers. The study was…

It is predicted that Hispanic school-aged children will outnumber non-Hispanic white students in public schools by 2050 (Wolf, Herman, & Dietel, 2010). While the number of Latino English language learners (ELLs) continues to grow, their educational achievement remains problematic. Data reveal that ELL dropout, mobility, and poverty rates are…

This article investigates assessor decision making when using and applying a marking guide for a note-taking task in a specific purpose English language listening test. In contexts where note-taking items are used, a marking guide is intended to stipulate what kind of response should be accepted as evidence of the ability under test. However,…

The purpose of this preliminary study was to look at forensics-based competition events and determine what, if any, impact they could have on the language learning and public speaking skills of interpreters in training. This paper details the nature of the impromptu and extemporaneous speaking events in forensics competitions and introduces a…

In this paper we outline an approach to learner preparation that provides a framework to effectively structure a collaborative and cooperative student research assignment using a wiki site as a writing platform. While students are familiar with posting pictures and videos online, they may not be aware of how to effectively integrate text and…

The present study examined the process and product effects of note-taking strategy training on Iranian EFL learners' comprehension and retention of written material, with gender as a moderating variable. Intermediate undergraduate EFL learners (N = 108) were assigned to experimental and control groups. The Experimental (intervention) Group…

This study is an assessment procedure which focuses on the learners' reflection administered as an alternative assessment strategy at a Teaching Language Course, Azad University, Tehran South Branch at graduate level. In fourteen sessions, thirty participants were involved in a progressive learning through reflection-focused assessment and…

This paper describes an experiment carried out at International Pacific College (IPC) as part of an EAP (English for Academic Purposes) paper taught in year one of the BA programme. The trial was aimed at instilling students with the motivation to self-monitor their pronunciation, attempting to raise it to an internationally acceptable level of…

Studies on using still images and dynamic videos in multimedia annotations produced inconclusive results. A further examination, however, showed that the principle of using videos to explain complex concepts was not observed in the previous studies. This study was intended to investigate whether videos, compared with pictures, better assist…

This paper reports on the piloting of podcasts created to support Anglophone French Immersion (FI) students in academic listening. The authors developed a series of seven English language podcasts grounded in metacognitive and L2 listening theory to provide FI students with strategies to enhance L2 listening ability and note-taking skills for…

The main focus of research papers on listening teaching published in recent years is the theoretical meanings of decoding on the training of listening comprehension ability. Although in many research papers the bottom-up approach and top-down approach, information processing mode theory, are applied to illustrate decoding and to emphasize the…

Independent lexical development initiatives empower and equip language learners with skills to boost their lexical repertoires. Language instructors can train learners to be autonomous word learners. A sample activity, namely word of the day, is presented in this article. The activity is an independent lexical learning task, which aims to develop…

The purpose of this study was to explore the effectiveness of using learner-generated and instructor-provided multimedia annotations on foreign language reading comprehension and attitudes. The four research questions are: (1) what are the effects of using different multimedia annotations on reading comprehension for learners of different…