With the rapid development of on-line translation (OT), it is important to explore how we could integrate OT into EFL teaching. This article reports to what extent students were familiar with OT based on the questionnaire survey at a Japanese public university. The results show that, among the respondents, a majority of them make use of OT for…

Some researchers have argued that low-achieving students may never acquire sufficient levels of academic vocabulary to be successful in school without some form of explicit vocabulary instruction (e.g. Snow, Lawrence, & White, 2009). In this paper, I summarize the available data on the efficiency, in words learned per minute of instruction, of…

Increasingly, children enter the school system with a home language that differs from the language of the majority. Consequently, classrooms have students with diverse language backgrounds and teachers must develop reading comprehension instruction that meets the needs of all their students. To successfully plan instruction, it is critical for…

There is considerable evidence that incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading accounts for a large portion of the growth in word knowledge for both first (L1) and second (L2) language acquirers. In this paper, we evaluate the Markov Estimate of Semantic Association (MESA) technique for detecting small, incremental gains in vocabulary…

Learning English as a foreign language (EFL) has long been regarded a challenging task. Said challenge is clearly evident in the many studies attempting to delineate some of the major problems faced by EFL learners while trying to uncover both the sources and the solutions. This paper turns to the Vygotskian approach to language learning, in…

This paper examines the role of technology in the professional development of teaching assistants, and specifically, it addresses how applications of technology to teaching can provide continuity for the L2 curriculum beyond the basic levels. After a discussion about the importance of grounding instructional practice in research and theory, the…

Form-focused discovery activities allow language learners to grasp various aspects of a target language by contributing implicit knowledge by using discovered explicit knowledge. Moreover, such activities can assist learners to perceive and discover the features of their language input. In foreign language teaching environments, they can be used…

Research regarding the teaching of reading for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) is still ongoing. This study focused on metacognitive reading strategies for these learners, first revisiting the concept of metacognition as proposed by Flavell, and then going on to explain reading strategies that require…

Gee's (2000-2001) analytical framework was used to describe the constructed identities of two young Korean ELLs (English language learners) within the school context and were considered to gain insight into their academic success. The author argues that the "model minority" stereotype was influential in shaping the imposed identities…

This qualitative study surveyed university professors of literacy education to explore "how" and "if" they modeled differentiated instruction in their own college classrooms. A survey in questionnaire format on "how" and "if" University Reading Professors differentiate instruction was sent to a purposeful…

This study examined the gains in student affect, vocabulary, and reading fluency for 110 university students in an extensive reading program in Japan. It was important to measure all of these dimensions within a single study and teaching methodology, so gains could be appropriately compared against each other. The adopted teaching methodology was…

Many teachers and researchers believe learning preferences or learning styles can be used advantageously to enhance language study and motivate learners. Following an overview of Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences (MI) and research on multimedia-based approaches in foreign language instruction, this paper first describes a study comparing…

Over the last years, in many countries worldwide, there has been a decline in the reading skills of upper secondary school students, and their ability to read and understand advanced literature. Seeing this as an alarming change for the worse, governments, educational bodies and interested groups have taken various measures to address the issue.…

This paper describes and evaluates the Higher-Secondary School Certificate (HSC) exam in Pakistan that has been in place in its present form for more than thirty years. The author recounts her experience as a teacher of English in a representative high school in Pakistan and, reflecting on the impact of high school public exam, she argues that the…

Many course books for learners of English as a second or foreign language now claim to contain a strong lexical component. Other practitioners meanwhile continue to advocate the use of graded readers to augment vocabulary development. This article reports the findings of vocabulary profiling and analysis of both course books and graded readers and…