Volume 13 Issue 2
Innovating Writing Centers and Online Writing Labs outside North America
This study highlights the writing difficulty of tertiary students in ESL or EFL contexts. It describes two successful innovations, writing center and online writing lab, initiated by North American institutions of higher learning to intervene in the writing crisis. Enquiries on initiative efforts by a few Asian and European universities in innovating writing centers and online writing labs…
Second Language and Cognition: Conceptual Categorization of Count/Mass Nouns in English with Japanese University Students
This paper reports on a study designed to explore the conceptual basis of count/mass noun distinction with Japanese students. It focuses on the perceptual cues used to match pictures with count or mass noun phrases, when there is the effect of distance, size, and clarity between pairs of pictures.
Teachers’ Intention vs. Learners’ Attention: Do Learners Attend to What Teachers Want Them to Attend to in an EFL Vocabulary Class?
The main thrust of this study was to investigate whether there is compatibility between teachers’ intention and learner’s attention in a vocabulary class. The focus is on pronunciation, spelling and meaning. Two possible explanatory variables were further considered: frequency and order of occurrenceof lexical items in classroom discourse.
Learners’ Beliefs and the Use of Metacognitive Language-learning Strategies of Chinese-speaking ESL Learners
This paper reports the findings of a study on the relationships between beliefs about language learning and the use of the metacognitive language-learning strategies (MCLLSs) of Chinese-speaking ESL learners undertaking vocational education in Hong Kong. A survey questionnaire containing items measuring these two areas was administered to 243 Chinese-speaking ESL learners at a vocational institute.
Anxiety and Reading Comprehension Performance in English as a Foreign Language
This study conducted in Taiwanese English as a foreign language reading classes investigated the relationship between language anxiety (LA) and reading anxiety (RA), and if students’ reading comprehension performance differs across different levels of LA and RA. The issues of whether students’ LA and RA vary with gender and the length of language learning were also explored.
Discourse Markers in the ESL Classroom:A Survey of Teachers’ Attitudes
There has been increasing research on the study of discourse markers (DMs) in terms of their pragmatic use. However, their pedagogic use in the ESL classroom has received less attention. This paper explores the attitudes of Hong Kong teachers towards the pedagogic values of DMs using a questionnaire (N=132), a reliability test, factor analysis, and interviews (N=3) with NS and NNS teacher-informants.
The Relationship between Iranian EFL Teachers’ Sense of Self-Efficacy andtheir Pedagogical Success in Language Institutes
The following study, in the first place, attempted to examine the relationship between EFL teachers’ self-efficacy and their pedagogical success in Language Institutes. In the second place, the role of teachers’ years of teaching experience in their self-efficacy was investigated. Finally, the relationship between teachers’ age and their self-efficacy was studied.
Developing Pragmatic Competence: Challenges and Solutions
With all the progress made in pragmatic knowledge description, instruction and assessment, foreign language teachers still face many challenges in teaching it. These have been discussed in the voluminous literature on teaching and assessing pragmatic competence. In this paper an attempt is made to investigate teachers’ perceived challenges related to their pre-service education program, in-service training, textbooks, teacher guides, tests, and opportunities for learners’ exposure to natural language use outside the classroom.
English Test-Taking Strategy Use and Students’ Test Performance
This paper reports on a study of English test-taking strategy use and its effect on students’ test performance at the tertiary level. After administering an 83-item survey to 526 students in three different study years at a university in Beijing, the study revealed that (1) the students had a medium use of English test-taking strategies….
The Effect of Electronic Portfolios on Promoting Egyptian EFL College Students’ Writing Competence and Autonomy
As a response to the ongoing developments in Egyptian Higher Education which call for the implementation of more innovative technology-assisted methods of teaching, and out of the universal paradigm shift that emphasises learner autonomy and perceives learning as a lifelong process, this study examines the effects of electronic portfolios, as a non-traditional tool, on enhancing Egyptian EFL college students’ writing competence and autonomy.
