Spelling and grammar checkers help to make surface errors more apparent; do they influence the way in which people revise the content of their writing? We investigated whether the presence of checkers distracts students from making content revisions. Twenty-five freshmen, 20 English majors and 20 graduate students revised two essays on a computer,…

The purpose of this study was to compare two oral reading fluency treatments (repeated readings and phrase drill error correction) which differ in the way they prompt student responding. Repeated readings (RR) and phrase drill (PD) error correction were alternated with a baseline and a reward condition within an alternating treatments design with…

The purpose of the College English Test (CET) is to examine the English proficiency of undergraduate students in China and ensure that Chinese undergraduates reach the required English levels specified in the National College English Teaching Syllabus (NCETS). In accordance with the courses on the syllabus, the CET consists of three tests: Band 4…

Most research on language awareness in a second language (L2) has been carried out with adult learners. This research presents data showing that pedagogical techniques can be devised enabling children as young as 8 to develop metalinguistic awareness of their emerging L2 system. Building on existing work by Canadian researchers, this…

We present two case studies of two different pedagogical tasks in a Computer Assisted Language Learning environment called Grim. The main design principle in Grim is to support "Focus on Form" in second language pedagogy. Grim contains several language technology-based features for exploring linguistic forms (static, rule-based and statistical),…

Learner corpora, electronic collections of spoken or written data from foreign language learners, offer unparalleled access to many hitherto uncovered aspects of learner language, particularly in their error-tagged format. This article aims to demonstrate the role that the learner corpus can play in CALL, particularly when used in conjunction with…

Drawing on the second phase of a 2-year study of students' linguistic and compositional processes, this article describes students' reflections on their online revision processes, those revisions made during the process of translating thoughts into written text. The data collected were from classroom observation and post hoc interviews with 34…

This study reflects a social constructivist theoretical framework in which the zone of proximal development (ZPD) is a central element, as two teaching approaches, communicative language teaching (CLT) and explicit focus on form (FonF) are examined. Research questions include: Are CLT and explicit FonF conducive to reaching the ZPD? Is there a…

Research addressing the effectiveness of feedback for learning has focused on many dimensions of feedback, including the timing (Kulik & Kulik, 1988), type (Mory, 2004), and amount of available information (Dempsey et. al, 1993). Much of the feedback research in education has tacitly assumed that the available information is perceived, and any…

In a study conducted to see which method of error treatment was more effective in EFL writing classes, 288 Iranian EFL learners took the TOEFL test to be grouped in two homogeneous classes. Each student in each group wrote a paragraph on a general topic which was proofread for mistakes/errors by three experienced EFL writing teachers (i.e.,…

In an examination of the effects of timing of feedback on student learning, participants were randomly assigned to complete five introductory course tests using either control (Scantron form) or one of three feedback (end-of-test, 24-hr delay, immediate) procedures. A cumulative final examination with 50 new items and 10 items repeated from each…

In this article we report on a study undertaken with ESL children between 7 and 8 years old. They carried out communicative tasks in pairs in second language classrooms. We examined patterns of their task-based conversational interactions while we manipulated their familiarity with the procedure and content of the tasks. We found that learners…

This paper explores the extent to which students appear to their assessors to act on feedback they have received, and questions the assumption that providing feedback alone is sufficient to effect higher standards of work by students. Feedback provided to 51 undergraduate social work students, on two consecutive assignments involving a similar…

Current guidelines on teacher--student rapport, while providing helpful suggestions, fail to address the question of how rapport building can be achieved in contextualised classroom interaction in which a balance needs to be reached between rapport and instructional tasks. Using discourse analysis informed by a conversation analytic approach and…

Using a multiple probe design across responses, we demonstrated the effectiveness of intensive intervention in establishing spontaneous verbal responses to 2 3-year-old children with autism with generalization to novel settings involving novel persons. Intervention involved discrete-trial instruction (i.e., repeated instructional opportunities…