This study investigated the relationship between a metaphor-based approach to teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) and involvement of the brain's right hemisphere. Specifically, it examined learners' understanding of three levels of sureness associated with different expressions in English -- those that are "certain,"…

This article discusses an innovation within one Canadian institution that focuses on linguistically responsive activities in an internationalized, Anglophone university. The study draws on recent research in applied linguistics that addresses language and content integration within disciplinary courses as an innovation. Drawing on Rogers' (1995)…

In the present study, three groups of interpreter trainees were formed, two experimental groups, i.e., blended prosody instruction (BPI) and computer-assisted prosody training (CAPT), and one control group (CON). In this experiment the participants took part in a four-week teaching program for 16 sessions (60 minutes per session), i.e., 16 hours…

Local tour guides' English speaking competence determines inbound international tourists' travel experiences. This study investigated student tour guides' English learning by adopting role-play tasks. The communicative tasks were designed to explore how real interactions prepared English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners to become cultural…

This study examines the influence of pre-departure proficiency on English as a second language (L2) oral development after a semester studying abroad in two distinct learning contexts. The data analysed were collected from tertiary level students (N = 33) who undertook an ERASMUS exchange semester in a European country where English was either the…

This study investigated the use of spoken-reflection instruction to improve the communicative competence level of English as Foreign Language learners in a second language acquisition classroom. A listening and speaking test was administered before and after the study to determine the participants' level of speaking competence. A quantitative…

Son and daughter metaphorical expressions are common in general as well as technical languages. This study explores the similarities and differences between English and Arabic ibn (son) and bint (daughter) expressions, and the difficulties that student-translators have with them. A corpus of English and Arabic general ibn (son) and bint (daughter)…

This article aims to give a comprehensive guide to planning and designing vocabulary tests which include Identifying the skills to be covered by the test; outlining the course content covered; preparing a table of specifications that shows the skill, content topics and number of questions allocated to each; and preparing the test instructions. The…

Even though there is wide agreement on the importance of argumentation in modern societies, only a minority of students in secondary and postsecondary education receive direct and explicit instruction in argumentation. The present study describes the design and results of a test that was used to measure everyday argumentation skills of 186…

TOEFL has been provided as a standardized test to measure the English proficiency of non-native speakers. However, one thing should be considered that TOEFL is still a big challenge for non-native English learners, especially for EFL learners. This is one of the factors, related to how proficient the vocabulary knowledge which students have.…

As an attempt to shed more light on the effectiveness of strategy instruction in second language (L2) learning, the present study was set to investigate the contribution of listening strategy instruction to improve listening comprehension of English as foreign language (EFL) learners in Iranian context. In so doing, a number of 52 English…

John Read is about to retire as Professor in Applied Language Studies at the University of Auckland. He previously taught applied linguistics, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at Victoria University of Wellington, the SEAMEO Regional Language Centre, the University of Texas El Paso,…

After thirty years of development, the teaching of interpreting in China has achieved a moderate scale giving the credit to the growing demand for interpreting talents, as well as the spread of interpreting teaching among universities. This study reviewed the papers on interpreting teaching research published for the past decade in China covered…

Cognitive diagnostic models (CDMs) have recently received a surge of interest in the field of second language assessment due to their promise for providing fine-grained information about strengths and weaknesses of test takers. For the same reason, the present study used the additive CDM (ACDM) as a compensatory and additive model to diagnose…

Learning English as a foreign/second language is never a straightforward process. Several constraints may come along the way that tend to hinder students' learning. Studies have shown that the successes and failures of L2 learners in an English language classroom are dependent upon various psychological and social factors including anxiety. This…