Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine how the teachers implemented innovative feedback approaches in their writing classroom and the extent to which the innovative feedback approaches impacted upon student attitude and performance in writing. In the writing classroom, teacher feedback serves as an assessment as well as a pedagogical…

This research is an exploratory study that evaluates the affordances of WeChat for the development of a community of inquiry (CoI) in semi-synchronous language exchange supported by WeChat. WeChat is an instant messenger that facilitates a multimodal environment in which interaction can happen synchronously, semi-synchronously and asynchronously…

This research study explores the learning potential of a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) activity. Research suggests that the dual emphasis on content development and language accuracy, as well as the complexity of L2 production in natural settings, can potentially create cognitive overload. This study poses the question whether, and…

Well-designed game-based learning can provide students with an innovative environment that may enhance students' motivation and engagement in learning and thus improve their learning performance. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among elementary school students' flow experience and learning performances. We also…

This study addresses whether reading involves a process termed semantic and phonological ability to adjust recoding (SPAAR). It was hypothesized that SPAAR helps readers link inaccurate pronunciations to lexical entries (e.g., "spynitch" to "spinach"). Psychometric properties of the Mispronunciation Correction Task (MCT), a…

This study aimed to investigate the students' preferences toward the lecturer's corrective feedback in the business letter writing and their reasons why they preferred particular corrective feedback types. A case study was used by involving 15 EFL students who enrolled in the Business Correspondence Course. The questionnaire and interview were…

Leadership is a highly complex activity, as leaders respond to increasing diversity and external accountability. Additionally, there is increased recognition that leadership is deeply contextual, sensitive to macro-politics of systems and micro-politics of individual schools. In Ontario, Canada, the school improvement effort is focused on raising…

Certain functions are neurologically indicated to be lateralized to different brain hemispheres. Among numerous studies on impacts of communication strategy use and brain dominance on second language learning, only a small number of them, specifically in the Thai context, comprehensively explore possible relationships between learners'…

The study uses an elicited imitation (EI) task to examine the effect of the native language on the use of the English nongeneric definite article by highly proficient first-language (L1) Spanish and Russian speakers and to test the hierarchy of article difficulty first proposed by Liu and Gleason (2002). Our findings suggest that there is a clear…

Phrase drill, listening passage preview, and repeated reading are instructional methods that have been effective in improving reading accuracy and fluency. However, little research has examined these techniques' effects on prosody and retell. This study did so using a modified alternating treatments design. Four students who recently completed…

This study investigated the effects of two modes of corrective feedback, namely, face-to-face recasts and computer-mediated recasts during video-conferencing on Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' second language (L2) development. Moreover, the accuracy of the learners' interpretations of recasts in the two modalities was…

This paper looks at how corpus data was used to design an Italian as an L2 language learning programme and how it was evaluated by students. The study focuses on the acquisition of Italian verb-noun collocations by Chinese native students attending a ten month long Italian language course before enrolling at an Italian university. It describes how…

In this closing commentary, I first briefly recognize areas that have made the dialogue between the fields of second language (L2) writing and second language acquisition (SLA) difficult in the past. I then offer some comments on the interfaces that are brought to the fore by the contributions gathered in the special issue. The themes explored are…

For more than 30 years, different opinions about whether written corrective feedback (CF) is a worthwhile pedagogical practice for L2 learning and acquisition have been voiced. Despite the arguments for and against its potential to help L2 learners acquire the target language and the inconclusive findings across studies that have sought answers to…

This article reports empirical findings from an ongoing investigation into the acquisition of second-language (L2) phonemic contrasts. Specifically, we consider the status and role of the phenomenon of hypercorrection in the various stages through which L2 learners develop and internalize a target language (TL) contrast. We adopt the prevailing…