This paper reports on the use of feedback as part of a tuition strategy applied in a distance design course at The Open University in the United Kingdom. A blended feedback model (audio and summary text) was compared to the existing written-only feedback model in terms of student attainment, use, and perception. Comparison of feedback models…

Although the importance of developing students' academic literacies has been well-established, academic oracy has been forgotten. There is a paucity of attention to oracy in higher education, despite the key role played by students' oral communication in academic achievement and graduate employability. This study offers a scoping review of the…

In 2015, over 40% of UK higher education (HE) institutions employed oral assessment when assessing and awarding fellowship on HE Academy-accredited schemes using the UK Professional Standards Framework. This article develops research on assessed 'professional dialogues' for this purpose. Data collected at four UK institutions, in which 12 assessed…

Peer feedback has been proposed as a way to boost student feedback literacy and learners' evaluative judgment. However, the notion of peer feedback and its related processes present numerous challenges for teachers and learners. By adopting the principles of Exploratory Practice with my undergraduates studying academic and business English, I…

This study investigates the immediate and sustained effects of a pre-departure study abroad training on the oral production of L2 Chinese formulaic language across a range of social and transactional interactions. Eighteen upper-intermediate learners of Chinese were assigned to either an instructed or non-instructed group to determine the efficacy…

Studies that have measured pragmatic fluency in the form of planning time and speech rate, as indicators of processing ability, have confirmed that learners' processing ability and pragmatic knowledge are independent from each other. The present study is a longitudinal, developmental investigation which investigates whether the study abroad stay…

While most empirical studies have investigated the improvement of learners' L2 spoken proficiency via speaking-related interventions, the present study examined the same topic through a different modality: listening. Ninety-five first-year tertiary-level students of English as a second language (ESL) in Hong Kong participated in this three-month…

Language in chemistry is highly specialized, and for students, transitions in language complexity from high school to university can be extremely challenging. With an increasingly diverse cohort of students enrolled in UK chemistry degree programs, better understanding the linguistic challenges students face is becoming a greater pedagogical…

Assessment for learning approaches, such as peer review exercises may improve student performance in summative assessments and increase their satisfaction with assessment practices. We conducted a mixed methods study to evaluate the effectiveness of an oral peer review exercise among post-graduate students. We examined: (1) final assessment grades…

This research paper explores the processes and outcomes of a peer review system which was introduced to 74 first-year students on a BA Education programme in 2016-17. In this one-year action research study, students completed a series of tasks linked to both their academic work and professional teaching placements. The scaffolded nature of these…

The use of group-based, task-oriented, peer interaction formats in classroom and public L2 speaking tests has grown in recent years. However, these assessments have received comparatively little attention when compared to other formats such as the oral proficiency interview (OPI). In order to better understand the local exigencies of this…

Integrated test tasks, such as listening-to-speak or reading-to-write, are increasingly used in second language assessment despite relatively limited empirical insights into what they assess. Most research on integrated tasks has primarily focused on the productive skills involved; studies exploring the receptive skills mostly investigated tasks…

To prepare their students for the increasingly demanding workplace of the 21st century, business schools resort to using experiential learning techniques to make explicit connections between knowledge and experiences students already have, encouraging them to make their own interpretations. In this case study, 50 multilingual students participated…

This provocation shares findings from the use of bespoke voice-recognition performance software in a number of seminars (which took place in the 2014-2016 academic years at Glasgow School of Art, University of Warwick, and Falmouth University). The software, made available through this publication, is a web-app which uses Google Chrome's native…

Although participation in academic speaking events is a key to developing disciplinary understanding, students for whom English is a second language may have limited access to these learning events due to an increasingly dialogic and active higher education pedagogy which places considerable demands on their oracy skills. Drawing on the Oracy…