In modern methods, in line with the social constructivist and action-oriented approaches, knowledge should be (co-) constructed by the learner in interaction with his or her learning environment which has been established by the teacher prior to the session. A social constructivist approach can be described as learning-centered. This approach…

Corpus analyses of learners' dictionaries of English idioms have revealed that 11% to 35% of English figurative idioms show either alliteration ("miss the mark") or assonance ("get this show on the road"), depending on the type considered. Because English multiword combinations, particularly idiomatic expressions, present a…

This study describes how oral language was assessed in an advanced-level college foreign language (FL) conversation course. Learners used the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Proficiency Guidelines to guide self-analyses of their oral production at intervals throughout the course. The intent was to provide opportunities for…

This paper presents the findings of an experiment in which a group of 17 French post-secondary EFL learners used Google to self-correct several "untreatable" written errors. Whether or not error correction leads to improved writing has been much debated, some researchers dismissing it is as useless and others arguing that error feedback…

The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) aims to encourage language learners to think about what they do when communicating, and to think about what they can do to help themselves and others to learn a language better. This paper considers to what extent the CEFR supports language learning by looking at how a group of learners, in the…