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…

This mixed method study aimed to investigate (i) EFL instructors' beliefs about written corrective feedback (WCF) (ii) whether these beliefs are congruent with their classroom practices. Firstly, a questionnaire was administered to 25 English instructors to understand their beliefs regarding WCF. Later, randomly chosen 175 student writing…

The significance of feedback in the learning process, including that in second language (L2) writing pedagogy has been widely recognized. Many studies investigating the effect of feedback on students' writing have indicated that the feedback process helps students improve their writing quality. However, few studies exist that focus on how the…

Fluency in L2 reading often seems a distant goal, and pleasure in the experience of L2 reading even more unattainable. This study investigated comparative EFL reading projects for university-age learners, using graded literature at one university and an authentic memoir at a second. The study explored whether integrating listening to audiobooks…

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…

Dramatically changing demographics of students learning English as another language across the world and in the United States pose a significant challenge for today's school systems. For example, an estimated 1.5 billion students are learning English in the world (British Council, 2014). Recent research on service-learning and TESOL (Al Barwani,…

This study is framed from a theoretical perspective that values the incorporation of reflection and multimodal products in service-learning that engage ELLs in "real-time" language learning. Using a pedagogical framework that is translingual and culturally sustaining, the author examines a community project in which the ELLs in a…

This study investigated teachers' perceptions of the practice of extensive reading (ER) in the Asian context. One hundred and nineteen L2 teachers in Asia responded to an online questionnaire that probed into their reasons for implementing ER, the difficulties they encountered, and their perception about the effectiveness of different ways of…

This study investigated the difference between peer and teacher assessment of writing compositions of advanced university students in English. Besides, it investigated the likely effect this type of evaluation might have on the learners' writing skill. To this end, 17 participants were surveyed over seven weeks. During every session, the…

Idiomatic expressions are among the most difficult and challenging aspects in the realm of lexicon. The focus of the present study was on investigating the effect of short stories and pictures on learning idiomatic expressions by beginner EFL learners. For this aim, 52 Iranian EFL learners were chosen and assigned to three groups randomly: two…

This study is an inquiry into the effects of reading short stories in improving foreign language writing skills through Read for Writing model, which is the adaptation of the approach called Talk for Writing (Corbett, 2013). It is a quasi-experimental 13-week field study which was implemented in a primary school. The purpose of this study is to…

Two groups of 12-year-old ethnic minority (EM) users of alphasyllabary (66 Tibetan and 45 Yi) were compared with 42 Han Chinese students in comprehending Chinese narrative and expository texts, each with inferential questions requiring short open-ended written answers. Three constructs (verbal working memory, orthographic and sentential…

The present study investigated the effects of educational computerized games on learning English spelling among Iranian children. In doing so, 66 young Iranian English learners with the average age of 9.5, attending the children's branch of Iran Language Institute (ILI), the most well-established state-run language teaching institute in Iran,…

While research has increasingly been focused on second language reading, it has primarily been centered on how the learner interacts and decodes printed text. However, there has been minimal research conducted on how the English language learner processes web text, navigates the Internet, or evaluates and comprehends what he/she is reading through…