To explore email request patterns in the institutional context of university settings, this study combines speech act research with conversation analysis methods to examine how native speakers of American English and native speakers of Chinese formulate email requests to faculty. 100 authentic email requests sent by Chinese and American students…

Writing native-like has always been a primary purpose for non-native writers of English and, accordingly, many language components have been investigated to develop writers' fluency. One of these language components is syntactic complexity (SC), which is often regarded as a reliable way to grade any texts from easy to difficult. This study aims to…

Recognizing the importance of multinational telecollaboration and form-focused instruction in computer-assisted language learning teacher education, this article investigates teaching English grammar through a seven-week-long telecollaborative project with 41 pre-service language teachers from the United States (US), Poland, and China. The…

Language learning strategy (LLS) has been long considered as one of the most important variables impacting language performance. Learning context, as a major effect on LLS choices, has not been paid much attention compared to other individual variables in LLS research. For the purpose of highlighting contextual influence in LLS research, the…

This exploratory study examines the role of foreign and second language contexts in the acquisition of conventional expressions. A group of 21 ESL learners was compared to 25 EFL learners randomly selected from a larger pool. Both groups completed an aural multiple-choice discourse completion task (MC-DCT), which was developed from a previously…

This paper examines whether a web-based training on English discourse intonation leads to better spontaneous speech quality for Mandarin Chinese speakers who reside in the U.S. and in China. The four-week fully online training consisted of meta-instruction videos as well as listening and speaking activities, including instant visual pitch contour…

Purpose: This study systematically examined the role of intensified exposure to a second language on accommodating talker variability. Method: English native listeners (n = 37) were compared with Mandarin listeners who had either lived in the United States for an extended period of time (n = 33) or had lived only in China (n = 44). Listeners…

Lexical stress is an important contributor to foreign accent as well as intelligibility of second language (L2) speech. The present study intends to find out to what extent Chinese-speaking learners whose native language has less evident stress can acquire English lexical stress. A production test was administered to nine advanced Chinese learners…

The global spread of English has made it the dominant language in academic publishing (Hyland, Ken. 2015. "Academic Publishing: Issues and Challenges in the Construction of Knowledge." Oxford: Oxford University Press). Influenced by enterprise culture, scholars from peripheral non-Western countries face mounting pressure to publish in…

Although the effectiveness of computer-mediated collaborative writing (CMCW) is confirmed by many recent studies, only a few have investigated whether linguistic knowledge and writing skills learned through collaboration can be internalized and transferred to individual writing. This study uses a pre-and post-test design to investigate the impact…

Different from the traditional term language input, affordance, an ecological term, has been deployed to analyze the perceived opportunities for second language (L2) learning an environment provides to L2 learners. L2 learning occurs only when the semiotic resources in the environment resonate with the learner's capacities such as their abilities,…

Speech prosody is a multi-faceted dimension of speech which can be measured and analyzed in a variety of ways. In this study, the speech prosody of Mandarin L1 speakers, English L2 speakers, and English L1 speakers was assessed by trained raters who listened to sound clips of the speakers responding to a graph prompt and reading a short passage.…

Over the past decade, English Language Teaching (ELT) scholars have shown an increased interest in exploring the intersections of racism and native speakerism, leading to more articles, special journal issues, and edited collections dealing with this topic. While this work has been valuable, it has largely been limited to considering one's…

The literature on formulaic language lacks sufficient research on how L2 learners make progress in native-like formulaicity of their target language. This study analyzed the use of formulaic sequences (FSs) by 56 Chinese university English majors in their prepared monologues at the beginning and end of a three-year period and compared the student…

A study examined the validity of the distinction between interactional language, used to express social relations and personal attitudes, and transactional language, which conveys factual or prepositional information and is message oriented, within and across languages and cultures. Data were drawn from natural telephone conversations of three…