Teaching grammar is still a topic of heated debate in second/foreign language teaching. One major approach to teaching grammar holds that the learners should receive reactive focus on form in the context of communicative language teaching. The present study is an attempt to examine the effect of task repetition along with reactive focus on form on…

This study surveys the opinions of both teachers and students involved in the Year 1 course "University English" in the Language Centre at City University of Hong Kong. The survey involved 265 students and 37 teachers. The issues studied were: 1) how useful is peer and teacher feedback? And 2) how effective are direct vs indirect…

Many students with physical disabilities have difficulty with writing fluency due to motor limitations. One type of assistive technology that has been developed to improve writing speed and accuracy is word prediction software, although there is a paucity of research supporting its use for individuals with physical disabilities. This study used an…

English writing, an indispensable skill in English learning, plays an important role in improving learners' language proficiency. With the wide spread and use of wired or wireless internet, EFL students can easily help and be helped with English writing. Therefore, the application of internet-based peer feedback training on writing to foreign or…

In this article we report on the development of an interactive open source extensible software, dubbed "The 7 Keys of the Dragon," for the teaching/learning of Albanian and Russian to students (9-12 years old) with the respective languages as their heritage languages. Based on the assumption that games in language learning are associated…

This study is the result of continuous four-year work in the field of noting and reviewing of errors in learning English. The object of this research were 50 students at the State University of Tetova who study English. In this work were studied errors made by students during tests, interviews, dictations, writing paragraphs and different essays.…

Many second language acquisition researchers (e.g., Doughty & Williams, 1998; R. Ellis, 2007; Long, 1996, 2007; Lyster, Lightbown, & Spada, 1999; Russell & Spada, 2006) have advocated the use of negative feedback to promote learner noticing of errors and the internalization of correct forms. At the same time, the true efficacy of this practice is…

People are generally skilled at using a confidence scale to rate the strength of their memories over a wide range. Specifically, low-confidence recognition decisions are often associated with close-to-chance accuracy, whereas high-confidence recognition decisions can be associated with close-to-perfect accuracy. However, using a 20-point rating…

The concept of fail-forward can be used as a teaching technique to motivate students to learn from their mistakes. For example, when students are allowed to re-work incorrect responses on a test for a partial grade they are failing-forward. In this paper we look at the effects of failing-forward on student effort in online learning environments.…

In order to explore effective ways to develop Chinese English learners' communicative competence, this study first briefly reviews the advantages of communicative language teaching (CLT) method which widely practiced in the Western countries and analyzes in details its obstacles in Chinese classroom context. Then it offers guidelines for…

The question of whether marking speed is related to marking accuracy is important for training examiners and planning realistic marking schedules. We explored marking speed in the context of a past examination for an international biology qualification for 14- to 16-year-olds. Forty-two markers with differing backgrounds experimentally marked 23…

Too many multiple-choice tests are administered without an evaluative component. Teachers often return student assessments or Scantron cards--computerized bubble forms--without review, assuming that the printing of the correct answer will suffice. However, a more constructivist approach to follow up multiple-choice tests can make for more…

To investigate the pedagogical effectiveness of oral corrective feedback (CF) on target language development, we conducted a meta-analysis that focused exclusively on 15 classroom-based studies (N = 827). The analysis was designed to investigate whether CF was effective in classroom settings and, if so, whether its effectiveness varied according…

This study surveys the opinions of both teachers and students involved in the Year 1 course "University English" in the Language Centre at City University of Hong Kong. The survey involved 265 students and 37 teachers. The issues studied were: 1.) How useful is peer and teacher feedback? 2.) How effective are direct vs. indirect…

Researchers in career and technical education often ignore more effective ways of reporting and treating missing data and instead implement traditional, but ineffective, missing data methods (Gemici, Rojewski, & Lee, 2012). The recent methodological, and even the non-methodological, literature has increasingly emphasized the importance of…