In investigations of the second-language writing process the aim of interviews and questionnaires has often been to find shared difficulties among them. However, in practice some writers are more successful than others. The aim of this study is to examine how some writers succeed in mastering scientific discourse in English, in a non-English…

There is a dearth of research involving advanced second language (L2) learners in the USA [Brantmeier, C., 2001. Second language reading research on passage content and gender: challenges for the intermediate level curriculum, Foreign Language Annals 34, 325-333; Young, D.J., 2003. Workshop on overcoming anxiety in the foreign language classroom.…

The aim of this study is to reveal the differences in the process of learning reading strategies by EFL learners whose English proficiency levels differ. For this purpose, portfolios made by 10 Japanese female college students learning English (five in the higher proficiency group and the other five in the lower) were analyzed. The results found…

Cognitive load can be defined as the amount of mental effort that performing a specific task imposes on a learner's cognitive system. It can be measured by the number of new concepts embedded in a learning task. English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners, with their limited English proficiency and minimal entry knowledge of a subject matter,…

Team teaching between native English speaking teachers and local L2 English teachers has become an increasingly common phenomenon in schooling in the East Asia region. The relevant literature reports some positive impacts of team teaching and also highlights some of the challenges or conflicts which arise. The aim of this paper is to focus on…

The development of accent and fluency are traced in the speech of 20 Mandarin and 20 Slavic adult immigrants to Canada over a period of 10 months. The participants were enrolled in an ESL program but had no special instruction in either pronunciation or fluency. The immigrants' self-reported exposure to English outside of class was used to…

This study investigated the language learning strategy use of 55 ESL students with differing cultural and linguistic backgrounds enrolled in a college Intensive English Program (IEP). The IEP is a language learning institute for pre-admissions university ESL students, and is an important step in developing not only students' basic Interpersonal…

Until recently, research in applied linguistics has tended to treat learners in relative isolation from their context, and to study primarily classroom and other educational contexts. This paper in contrast focuses on the contexts which frame learning, and in particular the resources which these contexts provide. A model is outlined which includes…

In the field of SLA, there have been various attempts to define second language learning motivation and to discover relationships between motivation and gender. Using two well-known motivational models: Expectancy-value theory, and Gardner's Socio-educational model, the present study sought to (1) first define foreign language learning motivation…

This paper reports on the findings of an investigation into the perceptions held by English students aged 16-18 years regarding listening comprehension in French and how they view the reasons behind their success or lack of it in this skill. The study suggests that listening comprehension is the skill in which students in the post-compulsory phase…

The transition from the teacher education institution to life in a real classroom has been characterized as a type of reality shock in which beginning teachers realize that the ideals they formed while training may not be appropriate for the realism they are faced with during their first year of teaching. Unfortunately, teacher education programs…

"Interest" is a widely used term not only in language education but also in our everyday life. However, very little attempt has been made to investigate the nature of "interest" in language teaching and learning. This paper, using a definition of interest proposed in the field of educational psychology, reports on the findings…

The goal of the study was to test whether student teachers trained using a peer coaching training program after teaching practicum sessions in teaching of English as a foreign language would demonstrate greater improvement on measures of a number of identified instructional skills and self-efficacy than those just receiving traditional supervisor…

To find an easy-to-use, automated tool to identify technical vocabulary applicable to learners at various levels, nine statistical measures were applied to the 7.3-million-word "commerce and finance" component of the British National Corpus. The resulting word lists showed that each statistical measure extracted a different level of…

Focusing on the implementation of a task-based curriculum at a Thai university, this paper examines the continuation stage of the innovation by looking at how and why the curriculum has changed in its first four years. Based on course documentation and teacher interviews, the major changes to the curriculum were a reduction in the number of tasks,…