Main Editions
The Influence of Motivation and Attitude on Writing Strategy Use of Undergraduate EFL Students: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives
The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of motivation and attitude on the writing strategy use of undergraduate EFL students at Jimma University, Ethiopia. The students are required to develop their writing skills to meet academic requirements and future demands of writing in professional settings. Data was collected from respondents about their motivation and attitude, writing ability and writing strategy use using questionnaires, proficiency test and interviews (n=680, 668 and 46 respectively). Analyses and summaries of the data were done using quantitative and qualitative techniques.
Archiving Self-Access: Methodological considerations
This study has illustrated how a long-term ethnographic approach of archiving data and profiling its key participants represents an effective means of revealing perceptions of a new Self-Access Learning Center (SALC) within a university in Japan. This on-going process of conducting qualitative interviews and conversational narratives with center staff, accompanied by student questionnaires, has required methodological reduction of the large amount of ensuing data. Such a process is achieved by a combination of crystallization of themes emerging from dialogues, and analysis of questionnaire data from various perspectives.
Do Recasts Promote Noticing the Gap in L2 Learning?
This paper reports the effects of implicit negative feedback in the form of recasts on noticing. Twenty Japanese-speaking learners of English were assigned to an experimental group (the recast group, n = 10) or a control group (the no-feedback group, n = 10). They engaged in an information gap task, during which the recast group received recasts to their erroneous utterances or non-corrective repetition of their target like utterances, whereas the no-feedback received no corrective feedback.
How English L2 Learners in China Perceive and Interpret Novel English Compounds
This study aims to investigate how English learners in China interpret novel English noun-noun compounds. Relevant research literature is for the most part limited to L1 children’s interpretations of noun-noun compounds. Therefore the current study extends the research area into the L2 domain with a view to comparing interpretations of L2 learners with those of L1 children in the study of Krott, Gagné and Nicoladis (2008). Fifty-two students from two universities in Shanghai, China participated in the research.
The Ability of Taiwanese College Freshmen to Read and Interpret Graphics in English
This study is intended to assess the ability of Taiwanese college freshmen to read and understand English graphics, and at the same time evaluate the quality of English text-usage training dispensed in the high schools in Taiwan. The subjects, 211 freshmen, were drawn from a medical university in central Taiwan.
The Effect of Metacognitive Strategy Instruction on EFL Learners’ Reading Comprehension Performance and Metacognitive Awareness
As learners have an important role in new teaching methodologies, raising their awareness of learning strategies and helping them utilize these strategies is a crucial aim of teachers. One type of these learning strategies is metacognitive strategies including planning, self-monitoring and self-evaluation.
Understanding the influence of L1 and lexical aspect in temporal acquisition: Quantitative and qualitative studies.
The two presented studies aim to make a comparative investigation on L1 influence and lexical aspect effect in temporal acquisition by Chinese and Japanese EFL learners. By using a mixed methods approach, two studies were conducted in order to present a more comprehensive and in-depth analysis of learners’ performance in temporal marking.
The Role of Portfolio Assessment and Reflection on Process Writing
Language teaching and testing have always been highly interrelated in the sense that it’s been impossible to work in either without taking the other into account. By the movement of language teaching in the direction of learner-centered approach, testing and assessment have begun to apply the same approach. However, it seems that applying a single test at the end of the course is still popular.
Writing Performance Relative to Writing Apprehension, Self-Efficacy in Writing, and Attitudes towards Writing: A Correlational Study in Turkish Tertiary-Level EFL
The purpose of this study is to identify whether writing performance in students of English as a foreign language (EFL) is related to writing apprehension, self-efficacy in writing, and/or attitudes towards writing. The subjects were tertiary-level EFL188 students at Çukurova University School for Foreign Languages (YADIM) in Turkey.
Effects of L2 proficiency and gender on choice of language learning strategies by university students majoring in English
This study investigates the use of language learning strategies by 128 students majoring in English at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) in Oman. Using Oxford’s (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learners (SILL), the study seeks to extend our current knowledge by examining the relationship between the use of language learning strategies (LLS) and gender and English proficiency…