A number of assessment methods are used to improve teaching which accelerates students' achievement. This study investigates the effect of two assessment methods (Think - Pair - Share and Choral Response) on academic achievement of prospective science teachers in a public sector university in Lahore, Pakistan. It employed a quasi-experimental…

This study examined high-leverage teaching practices (HLTPs) in foreign language instruction. Specifically, this study sought to identify teaching practices that Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) learners and instructors think could enhance learners' oral communicative competence. It attempted to answer the following questions: (1) What are the…

While known to influence visual lexical processing, the semantic information we associate with words has recently been found to influence auditory lexical processing as well. The present work explored the influence of "semantic richness" in auditory lexical decision. Study 1 recreated an experiment investigating semantic richness effects…

Humans are born storytellers as they use oral narratives as a vehicle to share their experiences. This study aimed to study how female Egyptian speakers formulate their personal experiences in oral narratives in the English Language. A need of this study was felt because not much is known how Arab EFL speakers build their oral narratives when its…

Stronger metacognition, or awareness and regulation of thinking, is related to higher academic achievement. Most metacognition research has focused at the level of the individual learner. However, a few studies have shown that students working in small groups can stimulate metacognition in one another, leading to improved learning. Given the…

Motivation and anxiety are two crucial factors influencing learning outcomes, yet limited empirical research on expectancy-value theory can be found within previous literature about Chinese undergraduate students studying English as a foreign language (EFL). Moreover, few studies have examined the interaction between motivation and skill-specific…

This study explores whether English-dominant (ED) speakers and speakers of English as a foreign language (EFL) perceive the same degrees of formality in combinations of (in)formal greetings (Hi/Dear) and address forms (informal First Name/Ms. Last Name) with (in)formal nouns, verbs, and adjectives (Latinate/Germanic). It also explores which of…

This study explored the potential of adopting speech-to-text recognition (STR) technology for English as a foreign language (EFL) oral training in class at the university level. An action study method was set to investigate the effects of implementing STR app tasks for EFL oral training with 27 students in one class for one semester at a…

This paper reports on a qualitative replication study investigating the impact of the novelty effect on findings from interventions about the assessment of mathematics at university. The replication study used the same data collection tools of a previous study on oral assessment of mathematics, but data were collected in a context where oral…

This longitudinal study examines the effects of a pre-study abroad (SA) pedagogic intervention and subsequent SA experience on second language (L2) Mandarin fluency. It explores two temporal aspects of oral fluency--planning time and speech rate--along with one performance measure, duration of response. Additionally, L2 contact data were included…

Australia has recently implemented Teaching Performance Assessments (TPAs) as a national accreditation requirement to assess final year preservice teachers' classroom readiness. In 2019, an Australian university developed a TPA to meet this requirement, comprising three written components and one oral component. This exploratory study investigated…

This study examines language demands in undergraduate university mathematics classes with a view to better preparing and supporting international and other culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in the United States universities. We observed and analyzed the language demands of 13 entry-level mathematics classes across two large…

While several studies support the appropriateness of tasks delivered through Spoken Dialog Systems (SDSs) for L2 oral communication assessment, few studies have explored the construct of interactional competence (IC) as measured by such tasks. This study aims to address this gap in the literature by investigating the use of IC features by high-…

There is growing evidence that student contributions via classroom talk (oracy) are subject to social judgements premised on cultural evaluation of accent and dialect, with particular varieties often viewed in deficit terms and pathologised, both within and beyond the classroom. We reflect on a university-community project involving researchers…

Research has noted that virtual reality (VR) environments can lessen language learners' foreign language anxiety (FLA). However, previous research has relied primarily on participants' qualitative opinions, leading to a lack of studies empirically assessing how VR impacts anxiety and, consequently, second language (L2) oral production. This pilot…