The study analyzes a strand of online discussion messages entitled "a Tale of Blue Rain Cafe" from an online community of English learners on the Chinese mainland. The strand of messages was part of the collective reflection made by members of an English learning club on their participation. Using sociocultural learning theory, the paper explores…

The School of Language Studies at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) offers full-time, intensive language training in more than 70 languages to US diplomats and other government employees preparing to serve at US Embassies abroad. Students at FSI, the primary training institution of the US foreign affairs community, have access to a fully…

The research reported in this paper investigates what types of inter-cultural contact Hungarian schoolchildren have, what kind of language-related attitudes they can give account of and how they see the role of contact situations in affecting their attitudinal and motivational dispositions towards the L2, the L2 speaking communities and the…

Studies on the effect of cooperative learning have demonstrated its efficacy in improving the cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes of schooling. However, it remains unclear what forms of cooperation are especially effective in multilingual contexts. This research examines the connection between positive goal interdependence and positive resource…

Foreign language anxiety in classroom-based language learning has a long history of research, but there are fewer studies examining this particular phenomenon with respect to the distance language learner. The isolated context and the physical absence of tutor and peers suggest that FL anxiety might be intensified in a distance setting. A…

This investigation aims to assess awareness of genre and writing skills among science students via an abstract writing task, with recall and follow-up protocols to monitor the students, and to characterize the relationship between the abstract and the base article. Abstract writing involves specific data selection techniques of activities involved…

Self-access and language advising are relatively recent and increasingly common types of language support offered in schools and tertiary institutions around the world. There is a great deal of anecdotal support for the positive contribution of such support to student learning. Self-access and language advising hold strong potential as…

This paper reports on a study which examines the extent to which specified cognitive, social, and metacognitive strategies, are used by language students when working with computer-based materials (CBMs), in self-study contexts outside of the language classroom; particularly in a self-access centre (SAC). Data were collected using questionnaires,…

This paper discusses the extent to which both crosslinguistic and intralingual differences may be considered as factors causing errors committed by Malay learners in the acquisition of the present perfect which has been identified as an area of considerable difficulty in the learning of English grammar. Using elicitation procedures that probe into…

This study examined the relationship between the metalinguistic reflections produced by French-speaking elementary school students and their actual learning of ESL. Using a before-after design, data was collected at the beginning (Time 1) and at the end (Time 2) of a 3-month period during which the participants kept a metalinguistic journal.…

This article reports on a qualitative study concerning the use of interactive whiteboard (IWB) technology in the teaching of English for Academic Purposes (EAP)/Study Skills to international students. The study was carried out at a British University in the summers of 2003 and 2004. Its primary aim was to throw detailed light on the potential of…

Second language tasks are often described as classroom activities that promote greater student participation, yet many studies only discuss participation in aggregates, such as total turns at talk or total words per turn. The aim here is to demonstrate that a qualitative inquiry into tasks can equally reveal important participatory and…

This article outlines criteria to define a figurative idiom, and then compares the frequent figurative idioms identified in two sources of spoken American English (academic and contemporary) to their frequency in spoken British English. This is done by searching the spoken part of the British National Corpus (BNC), to see whether they are frequent…

Current attention in L2 acquisition research focuses on the integration of message-focused and form-focused instruction. One way to accomplish this is through the incidental focus on form during meaning-focused activities. Some studies have investigated incidental focus on form in different contexts and shown that it exists in L2 classes and…

According to Smith and Nelson [Smith, L.E., Nelson, C.E., 1985. "International intelligibility of English: directions and resources." "World Englishes" 3, 333-342.], "intelligibility" refers to word/utterance recognition, whereas "comprehensibility" is the understanding of word/utterance meaning. This study examines the intelligibility of American…