This study aims at measuring the amount of the effect of the reader's background knowledge on performance in reading comprehension tests through the assessment of information gained in reading comprehension (RC) tests across-four testing techniques, short answer questions ,true-false items, multiple-choice items, and cloze test and re-test. This…

Discourse analysis, as Murcia and Olshtain (2000) assume, is a vast study of language in use that extends beyond sentence level, and it involves a more cognitive and social perspective on language use and communication exchanges. Holding a wide range of phenomena about language with society, culture and thought, discourse analysis contains various…

Dynamic Assessment (DA), is grounded in Vygotsky's idea on Sociocultural Theory (SCT) of mind, his concept of Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and its related metaphor; scaffolding. This study examined the effects of dynamic assessment on improving reading comprehension of Iranian intermediate students who were learning English as a foreign…

In recent years, teachers' self-efficacy has demonstrated a profound influence on the daily lives of teachers and their students. However, little is known about the relationship between teachers' personality traits and their self-efficacy. To gain more insight into this area, this study sought to explore the interface between 100 male and female…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between foreign language classroom anxiety (communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation) among Mainland Chinese students undergoing the Laureate English Programme in INTI International University, Malaysia. The participants of this study consisted of 75…

Portable multimedia devices shape the intensity of intercultural contacts not only through content consumption but also through content creation. Enabling learners to participate in content exchange via the Web 2.0 paradigm (audiences as both media consumers and media creators) can be employed to create new forms of acquiring knowledge. This study…

This report explores participant perspectives on L1 (English) use in foreign language classrooms. The study includes data collected from 25 participants, 23 students and 2 professors, from the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS). A combination of classroom observations, interviews, and questionnaires were used to collect data. The…

In this article, I explain how I used my interdisciplinary expertise in a TESOL classroom. The class consisted of 24 high-intermediate students ages 25 to 35, with a 65/35% male-to-female ratio. Of the students, 75% were Spanish speaking, while the remainder consisted of Farsi, Arabic, Hindi, Russian, Mandarin, Korean, and German speakers. The…

While there is much that Australia has done well with respect to languages education, many problems still persist in terms of mainstream provision of quality languages programs, attaining real outcomes and gains in language learning, and in relation to retention of students studying languages through to the senior years of school. The success of…

The use of songs and music in the Languages classroom is common practice. Research literature contains positive statements about music as a cognitive, linguistic and affective enhancer. Music and Languages risk becoming marginalised in the Western Australian curriculum due to curriculum pressures. Reduction of time in these learning areas could…

The present study aimed to explore the strategies that could be potentially employed in the Iranian ELT context to bridge the gap between research and practice. Data were collected through conducting a "focus group discussion" with a number of practitioner-researchers. The findings showed that to improve the relationship between…

Studying task repetition for adult and young foreign language learners of English (EFL) has received growing interest in recent literature within the task-based approach (Bygate, 2009; Hawkes, 2012; Mackey, Kanganas, & Oliver, 2007; Pinter, 2007b). Earlier work suggests that second language (L2) learners benefit from repeating the same or a…

This paper reports on a study that examines the attitudes of university students and immigrants to the introduction of Swahili at a tertiary institution in South Africa. Data were obtained from a questionnaire survey and interviews with questions that covered the domains in which Swahili could be most useful, who should learn it and the reasons…

This article explores the relationship between language, hegemony and identity in a desegregated school in suburban Johannesburg, South Africa. Drawing on post-structuralist theories of language learning and identity that evaluate cultural models of literacy, ideologies and institutional discourses, this article examines how multilingual learners'…

This study demonstrates the application of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) in English language teaching materials evaluation, focusing in particular on its potential for systematically integrating different components of evaluation criteria in a variety of teaching contexts. AHP is a measurement procedure wherein pairwise comparisons are made…