Task-based language teaching (TBLT) is well known for providing authentic opportunities for second and foreign language (L2) skill development. However, for many learners the use of traditional grammar within TBLT lacks the functional support necessary to create accurate and fluent L2 output. The current study replaced traditional grammar…

This empirical study investigates the effectiveness of using corpus-based activities on 70 Turkish upper-intermediate level teacher candidates' learning of 40 phrasal-prepositional verbs, verb + particle + preposition combinations. The purpose of the study is to determine whether six-hour instruction via corpus-based activities is effective with…

This cross-sectional study compares the written language of Thai EFL students in their first two years of university study. First- and second-year students (N = 170) wrote opinion paragraphs by hand in response to six prompts. Using automated textual analysis tools, clausal (subordination), phrasal (coordinated phrases and complex nominals), and…

This study investigated the effects of teaching vocabulary through the lexical instructional approach in EFL intermediate level students. Ninety-five (95) students participated in a non-equivalent pre-test-post-test quasi-experimental design study. The participants were given vocabulary competence pre-test in order to check their homogeneity in…

Recent research in SLA indicates that collocations are an indispensable aspect of language learning. Its importance in learners' writing ability is, therefore, undeniable. Thus, the present study attempted to explore the effect of explicit teaching of collocations on learners' awareness and use of them in their writing. It differed from previous…

Developing the appropriate linguistic and documentation skills in specialised domains is one of the greatest challenges in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses. Among other tools, corpora are intended as efficient resources students can use to improve and develop their thematic, terminological, and phraseological knowledge (Sánchez Ramos,…

This timeline looks at explicit uses of corpora in foreign or second language (L2) teaching and learning, i.e. what happens when end-users explore corpus data, whether directly via concordancers or integrated into CALL programs, or indirectly with prepared printed materials. The underlying rationale is that such contact provides the massive…

Purpose: This study investigated the effects of a complex sentence treatment at 2 dosage levels on language performance of 30 school-age children ages 10-14 years with specific language impairment. Method: Three types of complex sentences (adverbial, object complement, relative) were taught in sequence in once or twice weekly dosage conditions.…

Aside from learning the basic and common grammatical structures, English as foreign language learners ("hereafter EFL") have to be familiar with a wide range of lexical chunks called collocations. Being sensitive to collocations is the key of attaining a native-like fluency in English. The aim of this study is twofold: to explore the…

The present study aimed to examine the effect of proficiency on the pragmatic comprehension of speech acts, implicatures, and routines, as well as the way learners of different proficiency levels employ strategies when comprehending a pragmatic task. Thirty-three high-proficiency and forty-one low-proficiency Chinese learners of English completed…

Increased trade, commerce and business transactions at the international level are placing a substantial demand upon working professionals and college students who must learn English, the lingua franca of international business, in order to thrive in a competitive global workplace. Learning English as a second language (L2) can be a daunting task…

Collocation is an often-neglected language form that foreign language teachers and students should focus on to achieve competence in a target language. In this research, the researchers studied purposely to facilitate both second language teachers and students to produce correct and appropriate collocations. The purposes of this research were 1)…

This mixed-methods study explored the effects of employing a genre-based approach (GBA) to descriptive report writing on the understanding of text structure and ideational, interpersonal and textual meanings among Japanese university students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) over a 15-week course divided into three units. Applied within a…

This article describes how to help students connect what they learn in the language classroom to the outside world as they learn to understand, produce, and analyze spoken, written, visual, and cultural information in their second language (L2). As learners make connections between course material and the physical and virtual spaces where the L2…

This study examines the difficulty shown by Spanish-speaking university students in decoding pre-modified noun phrases (NPs) in English. NPs carry a heavy lexical and conceptual load and foreign language (L2) readers may be challenged by first language (L1) crosslinguistic influence triggered by cognate NPs. Therefore, this study also attempts to…