In this paper, both a cognitive and a sociocultural theoretical perspective are used to bring together findings from two studies that investigated the effects of instruction designed to enhance the potentially positive effect of peer interaction on L2 development. Despite differences between the studies' learning contexts, participants' age, and…

This article is based on a survey on the attitudes towards the error correction by their teachers in the process of teaching and learning and it is intended to improve the language teachers' understanding of the nature of error correction. Based on the analysis, the article expounds some principles and techniques that can be applied in the process…

Repair strategies are the ways in which students resolve conversational problems in speaking, hearing and understanding. While there is a plethora of research on college and adult students' repair strategies usage, limited research has been done on the repair strategies usage of elementary school students, more specifically, English as a Second…

In society, expertise bestows directive power--the authority to tell others what to do and how to do it, or simply to do it for them. In a school system that still operates on an authoritarian model, the author's expertise as a writer and teacher gives her directive prerogative when responding to student writing. Traditionally, teachers have used…

Wikipedia is a reliable encyclopedia with over seven million articles in several languages all contributed and maintained by volunteers. To learn more about what drives people to devote their time and expertise to building and maintaining this remarkable resource, surveys with Likert-scaled items measuring different types of motivations were…

Drawing on an interview-based study of the beliefs, practices, and experiences of 16 proofreaders of student writing at undergraduate and/or graduate level in a university setting, this paper focuses on the ethical concerns informants associate with the proofreading act. "Proofreading" is defined for the purposes of this research as "third-party…

A substantial number of studies have examined the effects of grammar correction on second language (L2) written errors. However, most of the existing research has involved unidirectional written feedback. This classroom-based study examined the effects of oral negotiation in addressing L2 written errors. Data were collected in two intermediate…

This study investigates the use of writing portfolios in improving the accuracy of French immersion students' written French. It emerged from regularly observed notable and repeated errors in many of the author's students' writing (entitled fossilized errors due their resistance to correction). This study reaffirms that students of French…

This paper presents a comparative analysis of corrective feedback provided by participants in an eTandem interaction between university students in Japan and Australia who were learning each other's language. Corrective feedback provided to tandem partners during interaction via text-based Synchronous Computer Mediated Communication (SCMC) is…

University programs often require preservice music educators to complete some small- or large-group instruction before beginning student teaching. One of the tools used to deepen these preservice teaching experiences and consequently the pedagogical knowledge for these teachers is to have them reflect on their teaching episodes. Video reflection…

This study was conducted to examine the differences in high school biology achievement and student affect towards teacher and content from the use of individualized correctives as part of mastery learning. An experimental pretest-posttest with control group design was used during the fall 2011 semester. Over a thirteen-week period, 99 students in…

Teacher feedback and interaction are factors of success and satisfaction in online courses, but courses designed for computer-assisted instruction (CAI) require less communication between a teacher and student. The goal of this research was to examine the impact of teachers' feedback in online self-paced secondary math courses where CAI was…

We investigated whether 19-36-month-olds (1) differentiate mistakes from jokes, and (2) understand humorous intentions. The experimenter demonstrated unambiguous jokes accompanied by laughter, unambiguous mistakes accompanied by the experimenter saying, "Woops!", and ambiguous actions that could either be a mistake or a joke, accompanied by either…

This paper presents some findings from a case study of repair sequences in conversations between a dysarthric speaker, Chris, and her interactional partners. It adopts the methodology of interactional phonetics, where turn design, sequence organization, and variation in phonetic parameters are analysed in unison. The analysis focused on the use of…

Most introductory physics instructors administer several quizzes and/or exams each term. Instructors are willing to invest the significant time it takes to develop, administer, and grade these assessments because they believe that regular assessments help students learn. However, instructors also believe that students do not make full use of the…