Critical thinking (CT) is widely viewed as an essential skill for college students. Nevertheless, the use of CT skills in the classroom often varies across disciplines. This article summarizes perceptions of CT, including various definitions and constructs as well as barriers to its implementation in higher education. Faculty members from various…

Language is subject to a variety of pressures. Recent work has documented that many aspects of language structure have properties that appear to be shaped by biases for the efficient communication of semantic meaning. Other work has investigated the role of social pressures, whereby linguistic variants can acquire positive or negative evaluation…

Although a range of studies has explored the effectiveness of group-dynamic assessment (G-DA) and process-based instruction (PBI) in second language (L2) learning, no study has compared the effects of G-DA and PBI on EFL learners' metacognitive awareness (MA) and listening comprehension (LC). Thus, this study aimed to explore the effects of G-DA…

This study investigates whether statistical learning ability, conceptualized as a cognitive ability to learn regularities implicitly, is a good predictor for L2 learners' online language processing performance. Native-English-speaking adults, as a control group, and native-Korean-speaking adult L2 learners of English participated. They completed:…

Although using video to facilitate language learning is an exceedingly common practice, both for in-class and out-of-class learning, at present the literature exploring the use of authentic videos for intentional language learning is void of a user-friendly framework that educators and learners can refer to when selecting and using authentic…

Despite a growing body of knowledge regarding the relevance of queer people and their lives to language education, we still know little about the power of classrooms, institutions, and larger macro structural forces to shape--and be shaped by--the identity experiences of queer L2 learners. This article presents a comparative analysis of the…

The aim of this study is to examine the satisfaction of EFL teachers with gamification platforms as well as to investigate how EFL teachers perceive gamification and its effects on pupils' motivation and learning outcomes. Five major databases (ERIC, Scopus, WoS, EBSCO, ProQuest) and Google Scholar were used to search for relevant studies. The…

This study sought to investigate the relationship between language mindsets and grammar learning strategies and grammatical performance among English as L2 and L3 learners. Moreover, this study examined fixed and growth language mindsets across gender and language groups. The sample included 320 (N[subscript L2] = 160, N[subscript L3] = 160)…

This study investigates the acquisition of genericity in L2 French and L3 English. While some exponents become generic by assembling morphological, syntactic and discursive cues, definite singular nominals additionally require the well-established kind restriction. It is a pragmatic and language-specific constraint. The participants are L1 Arabic…

According to the speech learning model [Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In W. Strange (Ed.), "Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research" (pp. 233-277). York Press], learners whose first language (L1) is a tonal language (e.g. Cantonese) can be…

Purpose: This study aims to examine the impact of the transformation of an assessment on students' performance and perspectives in an English for Academic Purposes course in Hong Kong. The assessment was changed from the traditional pen-and-paper mode to an unproctored online mode. Design/methodology/approach: Using mixed methods, the research…

Various stakeholders, such as policymakers and educators, require diagnostic feedback and actionable test results. One particular context in which fine-grained test results are of utmost importance is English language proficiency (ELP) assessments as they are used for critical decisions for students. Diagnostic classification models (DCMs) afford…

Previous studies have shown that Chinese speakers and non-Chinese speakers exhibit different patterns of cross-modal congruence for the lexical tones of Mandarin Chinese, depending on which features of the pitch they attend to. But is this pattern of language-specific listening a conscious cultural strategy or an automatic processing effect? If…

Language mindsets and second language motivational self system (L2MSS) are two important motivational frameworks in understanding second language (L2) engagement. We argue that whether and how mindsets predict academic engagement can be explained by L2MSS components (ideal L2 self, ought-to L2 self, and learning experience). Using a multi-stage…

The teaching and learning of Chinese remains a fragile undertaking across all stages of Australian schooling. This paper reports on a practitioner inquiry into pedagogic practices and student engagement with disadvantaged primary school students in a Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) classroom in Sydney, Australia. Drawing upon studies of affect…