Previous studies have shown positive effects of self-assessment on L2 English learners' speaking performance, but it is unclear whether the same is true with peer assessment. Research is also scarce on the effects of such assessments on the learner's sense of autonomy. This study thus investigated the effects of self- and peer-assessment on L2…

The role of communication variables such as communication apprehension (CA), self-perceived communication competence (SPCC), and intercultural willingness to communicate (IWTC) in improving L2 WTC has rarely been compared or even considered in detail in project-based learning (PBL) classroom contexts. Given this research gap, a mixed-methods study…

Effective citation contributes to the success in master's (MA) thesis writing. The current study investigates cross-disciplinary citation practice in EFL Master's theses. First, the corpus was compiled by collecting 20 Applied Linguistics (AL) and 20 Biology (BIO) MA theses Discussion sections. The forms and rhetorical functions of citations were…

This study takes a fresh look at vocabulary learning from the lens of professional translation practice and proposes integrating parallel texts with translation tasks to foster vocabulary learning. The study adopts a quasiexperimental design to examine the effectiveness of using parallel texts in pedagogical translation to foster EFL learners'…

This study investigated the effects of advance organizers on Taiwanese middle school students' English listening comprehension after they watched videos. The participants were 82 eighth-graders in Taiwan, and they were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a control and two experimental groups. Two language proficiency levels- low-to-medium…

This study evaluates the development of L2 collocational competence in texts written by learners of differing proficiency levels, compared to native speaker collocation patterns from a reference corpus. We address: (1) whether learners develop their collocation competence as their proficiency grows; and (2) How is this development mediated by…

A great number of investigations have focused on the subject of task rehearsal (repetition) and its likely influence on language learning. Giving language (L2) learners an opportunity to repeat the task may help them to redistribute their focus on form, since they have already become fairly familiar with the content. Several studies have also…

In this study, a quasi-experimental within-subject design was adopted to examine the intervention effects of teaching academic formulaic sequences (FS) for writing with one intact class consisting of 15 EFL third-year college students. Fifty target FSs were chosen from five recently compiled academic formulas lists (mostly derived through corpus…

The present study investigated how self-related English learning motivation among Taiwanese adolescent learners differs between students who only receive English instruction in formal schooling and those who have additional private tutoring. A total of 1,698 teenage English learners in public secondary schools across Taiwan completed a…

Most of the research on second language (L2) narratives has focused on whether or how L2 learners carry their L1 narrative styles into L2 narration; few studies have explored whether L2 learners' knowledge of the L2 also in turn affects their L1 narrative performance. The present study attempted to probe the issue of cultural transfer in narrative…

In an attempt to compare how orthography and phonology interact in EFL learners with different reading abilities, online measures were administered in this study to two groups of university learners, indexed by their reading scores on the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC). In terms of "accuracy," the less-skilled…

Idiom transparency refers to how speakers think the meaning of the individual words contributes to the figurative meaning of an idiom as a whole (Gibbs, Nayak, & Cutting, 1989). However, it is not clear how speakers or language learners form their assumptions about an idiom's transparency level. This study set out to discover whether there are…

Since it was published, Coxhead's (2000) Academic Word List (AWL) has been frequently used in English for academic purposes (EAP) classrooms, included in numerous teaching materials, and re-examined in light of various domain-specific corpora. Although well-received, the AWL has been criticized for ignoring some important facts that words still…