The purpose of this study was to describe the relationship between the students' motivation and attitude and their English Language performance. The subjects were the part two students from three UiTM campuses in the Northern Region. The research tool used was in the form of a questionnaire. The mean scores analysis of the motivation and…

Researches have showed that joke telling is a type of verbal behavior associated with the field of sociolinguistics (e.g., Al-Khatib, 1999). This study aims to report Taiwanese jokes and their sociological functions that people in Taiwan attempt to communicate in jokes. Besides, this study will report what the typical topics and characteristics…

The present study sponsored by Islamic Azad University of Bandar Abbas, Iran, intended to see if locus of control really affected students' language achievement. It was hypothesized that subjects' loci of controls affected their GPA's in meaningful and significant ways. The study also tried to measure the effects of students' major and their…

This study investigates English as a second language (ESL) teachers' beliefs in grammar teaching. A 32-item questionnaire was administered to 11 ESL teachers in a language school in California. The results show that the participants generally believe that the formal study of grammar is essential to the eventual mastery of a foreign or second…

School districts have been struggling with the challenges of teaching English Language Learners (ELLs) for decades. Yet few studies have examined strategies for districtwide instructional reform for ELLs. To address this need, the Council of the Great City Schools sought to explore the experiences of large, urban districts with differing levels of…

Learners who begin to acquire a second language (L2) in a naturalistic environment after puberty are thought to be constrained by biological age factors and to have greater difficulty obtaining native-like L2. However, the extant literature suggests that L2 acquisition may be positively affected by post-maturational factors, such as acculturation.…

This study was designed to investigate the effect of English reading comprehension on cognate knowledge among a sample of Spanish-speaking bilinguals alongside their monolingual English-speaking counterparts. In order to understand this developmental relationship, the effects of English reading comprehension were controlled in regression analyses,…

This study examined the amount, the purposes, and the reasons why L1 is used in L2 classrooms. Data consist of video and audio recording of samples of two instructors' L2 classes over the course of a 12-week semester in two second-year German conversation university courses, instructor interviews, and stimulated recall sessions. Results revealed…

Two hundred and ninety-six English majors at universities in Poland, Austria and Hong Kong were given a 50-item questionnaire designed to evaluate their knowledge of grammatical terminology. The main aim was to identify whether the three populations were subject to differing "terminological cultures". This was found to be substantially…

This study, incorporating survey and interview data, investigates the English writing habits of graduates of a bachelor's degree program in English at a public university in Thailand. Survey data show that the majority of the former students who responded (N = 104) write in English regularly, and they correspond with people in Inner, Outer, and…

The motivation of 145 learners of Chinese was examined in light of self-determination theory through a questionnaire survey. The results showed that the more learners felt they were learning Chinese because it was personally meaningful and fun, the more they engaged in the learning process. This orientation was promoted to the extent that learners…

This study explores the relationship between aptitude, phonological memory (PM), and second language (L2) proficiency in nonnovice adult learners of English as an L2. Native speakers of French (N = 77) enrolled in a university Teaching English as a Second Language program were the participants in the study. Exploratory factor analysis revealed…

This work reports on the construction of a rated database of spontaneous speech produced by second language (L2) learners of English. Spontaneous speech was collected from 28 L2 speakers representing six language backgrounds and five different proficiency levels. Speech was elicited using formats similar to that of the TOEFL iBT and the Speaking…

Publishing research papers in English journals is now a requirement for many scientists in developing countries. Writing journal papers in English, the lingua franca of the scientific world, however, often places an additional burden on non-native speaking scientists in EFL settings due to their lack of English proficiency. With these concerns in…

We investigate how L1 phonology and semantics affect processing of interlingual homographs by manipulating language context before, and auditory input during, a visual experiment in the L2. Three experiments contained German-English homograph primes ("gift" = German "poison") in English sentences and was performed by German (L1) learners of…