The traditional focus of English phonetic teaching in China has consistently been on the segmental acquisition, which is mainly highlighting the pronunciation of vowels and consonants, while its suprasegmental knowledge in speech naturalness, coherence and understanding is relatively insufficient. In addition, Chinese students have a serious…

This study investigated the underlying structure of a set of eight cognitive tests from the two most recent language aptitude test batteries: the LLAMA (Meara, 2005) and the Hi-LAB (Linck et al., 2013) to see whether they had any underlying constructs in common. The study also examined whether any of the observed constructs could predict L2…

Adopting Linacre's guidelines for evaluating rating scale effectiveness, we examined whether and how a six-point rating scale functioned differently across raters, speech acts, and second language (L2) proficiency levels. We developed a 12-item Computerized Oral Discourse Completion Task (CODCT) for assessing the production of requests, refusals,…

This paper examines the strategies used by speakers of Spanish as a second language (L2) for marking Information Focus, a phenomenon found at the syntax-discourse interface. Sorace and colleagues have proposed the Interface Hypothesis, according to which the syntax-discourse interface poses unique challenges for bilinguals (Sorace, 2011). With…

In line with the Global Englishes principle, translanguaging, the most recent extension of codeswitching, plays a crucial role in English language teaching since translanguaging is seen as an effective tool for communicating. This paper reports the findings of an observational study aimed at investigating the use of translanguaging to foster…

As a result of the important role English has played as a lingua franca in various world regions, a question has been asked whether this Anglo-American property has already been shared by speakers in non-native countries. This concern voices calls for increased attention to ESL/EFL learners' sense of self and their positioning with respect to…

The present study investigated whether the bidirectional cross-lagged paths between teacher--child language interactions and receptive vocabulary would be significantly different between English language learner (ELL) and non-ELL children. The FACES 2009 cohort was used to address the research goals. Cross-lagged analysis was conducted with the…

This research is designed to determine the relationship between English teachers' effectiveness and students' English proficiency at Selected Colleges in Dili, East Timor, as input for enhancement programs. The English teachers' effectiveness consist of three aspects namely (1) English Proficiency, (2) Pedagogical Knowledge, and (3)…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the level of anxiety in learning Chinese, discover the dominant factors of anxiety in learning Chinese language and analyze differences in Chinese language anxiety based on gender, year of study and HSK in foreign students in Wuhan, China. The research method used was quantitative using a survey…

The current study explored Iranian learners' prior L1 (i.e., Farsi) experiences, their L2 (i.e., English as a foreign language) writing-related perceptions, and the effects of these writing-related L1 experiences on L2 writing-related perceptions. The data were gleaned from 15 students in a wide range of proficiencies using qualitative interviews.…

A challenge in designing tests is ensuring fairness for all test takers. Pupils who are not yet sufficiently proficient in the language of schooling taking a test that was designed for native speakers is unfair, since they will not be able to demonstrate their true abilities (Abedi, J., and C. Lord. 2001. "The Language Factor in Mathematics…

This study is an attempt to investigate the acquisition of translation competence of the English tense and aspect system by Behdini learners who are students at the Translation Department at the College of Languages in the University of Duhok. This paper is an experimental study that adopts the Translation Competence Acquisition model. There are…

This study investigates pre-service teachers' twenty-first-century skills using a quantitative survey design. Four hundred and two senior pre-service teachers studying at a state university in Turkey participated in the study. Their twenty-first-century skills were explored through different variables such as the pre-service teacher education…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare masked English speech recognition thresholds between Spanish-English bilingual and English monolingual children and to evaluate effects of age, maternal education, and English receptive language abilities on individual differences in masked speech recognition. Method: Forty-three Spanish-English…

This study sought to examine the effectiveness of two categories of feedback, namely recasts and prompts. Also, the study focused on the relationship between subsets of each feedback type and the extent to which they led to learner uptake and repair in an EFL context. Data were collected through non-participant observations of three intact…