The "College English Teaching Reform Project", issued by the Chinese Ministry of Education aims to strengthen the practical English instruction and improve the English language proficiency of the college students (Ministry of Education, 2007). However, the problem of "naturalness" in handling English by the college students…

This study examined the use of non-standard English features in 16-year-old students' writing in the UK. Adopting a diachronic approach to the investigation of students' written production, the study sought to identify changes in students' use of non-standard English over the course of a decade, specifically from 2004 to 2014. It involved an…

This study employed a large-scale cross-sectional survey (n = 443) to develop and validate second language (L2) regulatory styles [Noels et al. 2000. "Why are You Learning a Second Language? Motivational Orientations and Self-Determination Theory." "Language Learning" 50 (1): 57-85] in the sample of successful English learners…

This study examined the effectiveness of cooperative learning (CL) in enhancing the English communicative abilities (ECA) of 4th grade students in a remote Bhutanese school in South-west Bhutan. Traditionally, teaching in Bhutan has been by the rote method where students learn the material primarily to pass tests and have limited opportunities or…

The current study investigates the effects of more explicit versus more implicit corrective feedback on beginner Mandarin learners' perception and production of Mandarin tones. The effects of oral corrective feedback have been extensively investigated for various domains of second language acquisition (see Mackey & Goo, 2007). For phonological…

Stakeholders of language tests are often interested in subscores. However, reporting a subscore is not always justified; a subscore should provide reliable and distinct information to be worth reporting. When a subscore is used for decisions across multiple levels (e.g., individual test takers and schools), it needs to be justified for its…

This study examined the influence of formulaic language on second language (L2) listeners' lower-level processing, in terms of their ability to accurately identify the words in texts. On the one hand, there were reasons for expecting the presence of the formulas to advantage the learners, because the learners would process these formulaic words…

Though the relevance of language teachers' native/non-native (N/NN) background has been researched extensively, little is known about its applicability to cases where the lecturer uses English as the medium of instruction (EMI). This study's purpose, which was conducted in Israeli higher education institutions, was to elicit students' perceptions…

How languages are acquired and what stages learners go through has been the focus in language teaching area, and this cross-sectional study investigated the use of English adverbs by elementary, pre-intermediate and intermediate level Turkish EFL students at Anadolu University School of Foreign Languages by analyzing it from acquisitional…

The Houston Independent School District offers two different English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for language minority students. One of these is a Content-Based ESL (CBESL) program where ESL methodology is used to deliver English instruction across a variety of subject areas. The second is a Pullout ESL program (PO-ESL) where students…

This paper reports the qualitative analysis of an interlanguage study investigating Thai EFL students' pronunciation of English loanwords used in the Thai language. It aims to analyze the extent to which the stress and tonal systems in Thai affect the stress placement of English polysyllabic loanwords in the pronunciation of Thai students, as…

This study investigates the role of proficiency in the acquisition of conventional expressions as a pragmalinguistic resource in second-language (L2) Chinese. One hundred and four undergraduates, including 57 learners of Chinese as a foreign language at 3 levels of university instruction and 47 native speakers completed an aural-oral discourse…

Recent trends in formative assessment seek innovations to link assessment, teaching, and learning characterized as assessment for learning. This new assessment stance has rarely been studied in the context of English language teaching. Hence, there is a need for research to shed light on assessment for learning practices. The current study set out…

The Revised Preschool Language Assessment (RPLA) is a standardized measure for examining the language status of and determining potential language difficulties among preschoolers between 3 and 6 years old. To facilitate the applicability of the RPLA for use with Mandarin-speaking children, the present study adopted exploratory factor analysis…

Information literacy is an essential proficiency for success in academic studies, yet many first-year students find it hard to use information sources efficiently and to develop academic information literacy. This study reports findings from first-year students' self-estimation of their information skills according to two information literacy…