The UK government has been called on to reform the Visitor immigration route by increasing the length of time short-term exchange students are permitted to stay in the UK from six months to one academic year. The contribution of international students to the UK is celebrated and discussed within the higher education sector. However, not as much…

The current advancement of vlogs in YouTube channel has challenged lecturers to make use of its potential for students' speaking enhancement. This research was aimed to investigate students' speaking ability seen from their video projects. These video projects were vlogs made by the first semester students of English language education department…

Stance is a feature of academic writing that refers to how writers interact and engage with their readers by means of linguistic devices. This study focuses on the grammatical devices--and semantic distinctions thereof--that are employed by academic writers of English to express stance in research article abstracts in the areas of applied…

In recent decades, a plethora of empirical work has indicated that collaborative writing (CW) affords more opportunities for collective scaffolding and language negotiation (Li & Kim, 2016; Li & Zhu, 2013; Storch, 2019) and promotes the development of second language (L2) writing skills (Bikowski &Vithanage, 2016; Storch, 2013; Strobl,…

This study aimed to investigate the role that phonetic convergence plays in the acquisition of L2 segments. In particular, it examined whether phonetic convergence towards native speakers could help Arabic-speaking second-language (L2) learners of English improve their pronunciation of four problematic English segments (/p, v, [open-mid front…

The present dissertation investigated the impact of scales/scoring methods and prompt linguistic features on the measurement quality of L2 English elicited imitation (EI). Scales/scoring methods are an important feature for the validity and reliability of L2 EI test, but less is known (Yan et al., 2016). Prompt linguistic features are also known…

Naturalistic language learning is contextually grounded. When people learn their first (L1) and often their second (L2) language, they do so in various contexts. In this dissertation I examine the effect of various contexts on language development. Part 1 describes the effects of textual, linguistic context in reading. I employed an eye-tracking…

Most Taiwanese English language learners have been exposed to traditional approaches to acquiring English as a second or foreign language. Studies demonstrate current/traditional teaching practices are not the most effective for struggling English language learners, and the rate of improvement has been limited. Therefore, this study explores…

The processing of structurally ambiguous sentences has proven resourceful in understanding the human parser. In particular, the resolution of globally and temporarily ambiguous relative clauses (RC) preceded by a complex noun phrase (NP) such as "Someone shot [the servant]NP1 of [the actress]NP2 [who was on the balcony]RC" has been found…

Adult second-language learners are a growing population of students in many countries throughout the world as the global community continues to expand beyond not only physical borders, but cultural and language borders as well. 200 expatriates, who lived in Denmark during the time span of 2006-2016, who were required to show proficiency in their…

While discourse studies have uncovered regular structural patterns in classroom interactions, these patterns are often the result of interpretive decisions teachers make in performing various pedagogical actions. Notably, however, teachers' instructional decisions often stretch beyond topical boundaries and are thus not limited to the current…

This paper adopts an ethnomethodological, conversation analytic approach to analyze the social organization of the instruction-giving sequences that were accomplished by a teacher of Italian as a foreign language during the last phase of a writing task conducted in pairs. Specifically, the paper explores the linguistic, prosodic and embodied…

This chapter delves into the theoretical underpinnings of praxeological and dialogical research on the emergence of opportunities for learning in teacher-student interactivities. First, I introduce the emergence of objects of learning as a social phenomenon; then I argue for the intersubjective-intercorporeal understanding of those objects as…

This chapter is dedicated to the presentation and discussion of the results of the empirical investigation undertaken for the purpose of the present book. It concentrates on the outcomes of the in-depth analysis of the patterns of WTC, motivation, boredom and language anxiety, the relationships of these variables as well as the influences shaping…

Although a number of studies have been conducted to explore how various individual difference (ID) factors such as aptitude, motivation, and anxiety contributing to L2 learners' speech performance over a period of time of L2 learning, only a few examined the effect of the three ID factors on learners' L2 speech performances based on classroom…