This paper intends to examine the efficacy of song education to develop English proficiency in China's EFL context. By conducting a comparative study between two parallel classes and analyzing the results of forty-eight questionnaires, the paper reveals the following: 1) song education can help improve pronunciation and intonation skills to a…

This study was designed to firstly develop a corpus of Indonesia's junior high school (JHS) and senior high school (SHS) English textbooks (TB) and national examination (NE) texts. By means of corpus analysis, this study then attempted (1) to find out the vocabulary levels (i.e. distribution among the K1-K20, where K refers to 1000-word band in…

Previous research has illustrated that learner initiatives have the potential to generate learning opportunities in second language (L2) classrooms. Despite a small body of recent research indicating that teachers' responses to learner initiatives play a significant role in facilitating learning opportunities in teacher-student interactions, more…

Writing is a skill that has increased in significance for both researchers and classroom teachers due to changes in recent standards. Currently, many high school English Language Learners (ELLs) are struggling to master this priority skill. A strategy that has been shown to be effective for adolescent writers is Self-Regulated Strategy Development…

This study uses conversation analysis (CA) to investigate the coupling of specific linguistic items with specific gestures in second language (L2) learning over time. In particular, we are interested in how gestures accompany learning of new vocabulary. CA-informed studies of gesture have previously shown the importance of embodiment in L2 use and…

Since the late '60s, the field of second language acquisition (SLA) has grown enormously. Throughout its development, SLA researchers have investigated a wide range of issues including the processes involved in second language learning, as well as the psycholinguistic, affective and social factors that influence its success or failure (Spada,…

Previous studies (Barcroft & Sommers, 2005; Sommers & Barcroft, 2007) have demonstrated that variability in talker, speaking style, and speaking rate positively affect second language vocabulary learning, whereas variability in overall amplitude and fundamental frequency (F0) do not, at least for native English speakers. Sommers and…

The terms used to designate ordinary relational identities seem easy to learn and translate. However, these interpersonal identities reflect complex mental constructs that are very sensitive to the variables that interact in human communication, particularly cultural variation. This paper describes a pilot project developed at the University of…

This study employs the Specificity Principle to examine the relative impacts of external (input quantity at home and at school, number of books and reading frequency at home, teachers' degree and experience, language usage, socioeconomic status) and internal factors (children's working memory, nonverbal intelligence, learning-related…

The extent to which learners benefit from instruction may be largely dependent on their individual abilities. However, there is relatively little work on the interaction between instructional effectiveness in second language learning and learner individual factors. In this study, we investigated the relationship between instruction, individual…

Teaching English as a Foreign Language from a New Literacy Perspective (2nd edition) is intended to be both a guide for EFL student teachers (i.e. prospective teachers of English enrolled in pre-service EFL teacher education programmes provided by faculties of education at the undergraduate level), and a resource book for EFL teacher educators…

This study investigates the differential effects of the iPad on first and second language learning by Saudi children in the home environment. The subjects consisted of 78 parents and 118 children. The children were grouped into: 1-6 years old (young children in kindergarten and pre-school); 7- 9 years (grades 1-3); and 10-12 years (grades 4-6).…

Word cloud generating applications were originally designed to add visual attractiveness to posters, websites, slide show presentations, and the like. They can also be an effective tool in reading and writing classes in English as a second language (ESL) for all levels of English proficiency. They can reduce reading time and help to improve…

Two groups of freshman students, enrolled in a Vocabulary I and Reading I courses, participated in the study. Before instruction, both groups took a recognition (vocabulary) and a production (oral reading) pre-test. Comparisons of the pre-test scores showed no significant differences between the experimental and control group in decoding skills…

The current study examined the effects of first language (L1) textual and audio glosses along with the moderating effect of learners' visual and auditory perceptual style on second language (L2) vocabulary learning. The participants were first divided into two groups of auditory and visual learners based on their scores obtained from a learning…