Learning a foreign language includes learning vocabulary together with grammar rules and using language skills by means of them. Words are presented to learners through teachers and coursebooks in educational processes. Yet, it is not possible to teach all the words through lessons, so learners are expected to become independent vocabulary…

Previous findings indicate that the way words are organized in the mental lexicon may differ in Arabic and English. While words are organized according to both orthographic and morphological form similarity in English, they are organized primarily according to morphological form similarity in Semitic languages (Frost et al. in J Exp Psychol Learn…

Foreign-born Arab international students face many stressors that may increase their acculturative stress levels and may be associated with their overall well-being. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between acculturative stress and well-being, and relevant socio-economic factors among foreign-born Arab international…

Since the Shallow Structure Hypothesis (SSH) was first put forward in 2006, it has inspired a growing body of research on grammatical processing in nonnative (L2) speakers. More than 10 years later, we think it is time for the SSH to be reconsidered in the light of new empirical findings and current theoretical assumptions about human language…

Isabelli-García, Bown, Plew & Dewey (forthcoming) presented the 'state of the art' in research on language learning abroad. Beginning with Carroll's (1967) claim that 'time spent abroad is one of the most potent variables' predicting second language (L2) abilities (p. 137), the scope of study-abroad research has grown multifold in guiding…

Listening is one of the basic language skills that must be possessed by student in elementary teacher education study program. As a teacher candidates, listening ability can be used as knowledge for student in teaching practice in elementary school. The listening ability is still relatively low. Listening ability for students its important, so…

In ASL spatial classifier expressions, the location of the hands in signing space depicts the relative position of described objects. When objects are physically present, the arrangement of the hands maps to the observed position of objects in the world (Shared Space). For non-present objects, interlocutors must perform a mental transformation to…

It has been conceived that being taught by native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) leads to more improvement in speaking proficiency given the fact that English is their mother tongue. This paper aims to examine whether or not being taught by NESTs ends up with more achievement in adult EFL learners' speaking skills. Experimental research design…

Conversation-for-learning (Kasper and Kim 2015) is a pedagogical arrangement set up with a view to maximizing the potential benefit of interaction for language learning. As participants for conversation-for-learning are recruited for their relative expertise in the target languages, the talk is often characterized by asymmetries in knowledge and…

Pronunciation presents a significant, persistent challenge to second language (L2) learners (Derwing & Munro, 2015; Piske, McKay, & Flege, 2001). Fortunately, pronunciation instruction works (Lee, Jang, & Plonsky, 2015). However, pronunciation receives relatively little attention in language classrooms. Further complicating the matter…

This study aims to identify whether the acquisition of the English copula by Arabic-speaking learners of English provides evidence for a performance or representational-based account of errors. The representational theory tested in this study is the Interpretability Hypothesis (Tsimpli & Mastropavlou, 2007) which proposes that language…

This longitudinal study explores the effects of time and proficiency pairing on the amount and purpose of L1 use in task-based peer interaction by EFL primary school learners. Most of the studies available to date on L1 use in peer interaction involve adult learners, and we have little empirical evidence on the role played by the L1 in child peer…

The research reported in this paper explored secondary Science teachers' experiences in a large-scale and top-down CLIL initiative where schools and teachers had little agency in implementing educational change. Through a grounded theory approach, analysis of data suggests that teachers' insufficient English language proficiency and the lack of…

The present study aims to explore critical thinking from EFL Thai students' perspectives in collaborative writing activity. The subjects were 32 second-year English major students composing paragraph writing in the Writing II course. They were divided into three groups based on their English proficiency: advanced, intermediate, and novice, and…

Assessing language learners' needs has been abundantly studied by a large number of researchers interested in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and Needs Analysis (NA). However, task-based language needs of the students of marine (maritime) engineering have not been well-investigated, to the date. A qualitative research method was used. We…