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…

Engagement with online media among learners is closely linked to language proficiency and cultural comprehension, offering a platform for enhancing English language skills. This has given rise to the field of online informal learning of English (OILE), with numerous studies exploring learners' habits in this domain and indicating positive impacts…

Language is a tool for communication. People use it when they converse with each other. One way to comprehend what is being said is based on understating the intended meanings of the conversation, or what is called the underlined meanings (pragmatics). Pragmatic studies how different meanings are conveyed, depending on the utterances provided. A…

The present study focuses on email communication in the multilingual university setting. Previous studies dealing with similar settings point to the lack of politeness markers in students' email messages [Bjorge, A. (2007). Power distance in English lingua franca email communication. "International Journal of Applied Linguistics", 17(1),…

In the field of applied linguistics, Diane Larsen-Freeman is widely recognized, among her numerous contributions, as the originator of Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST). Over the years since her seminal publication (Larsen-Freeman, 1997), CDST has evolved into a meta-theory that guides the field's thinking on a variety of developmental…

In this qualitative study, we designed an online mentoring program to complement school-based mentoring to enrich the quality of existing mentoring experiences and explored the impact of this project on the professional development of 12 EFL pre-service teachers in an English-medium university in Turkey and six qualified English teachers.…

This paper presents the technology used in teaching speaking and its effects to students as they learn to speak in English. Phenomenology was used to gather the data with the three groups of Focus Group Discussion (FGD) of 21 participants from the junior, sophomore and senior students in language classes in the University of Southern Mindanao,…

The present study seeks to delve into the intricacies of feedback strategies adopted by male and female Jordanian EFL postgraduate university instructors when responding to their students' assignment submissions and inquiries via asynchronous communication mode, namely email communication, to see if there are any significant differences in their…

This study explores English-dominant speakers' and English learners' knowledge of (in)formal stylistic variants, their choice of (in)formal styles in relation to social context, their preferences in the use of select (in)formal stylistic variants, and their beliefs about the influence of their other languages. Ten English-dominant undergraduates…

Email remains a key mode of communication between faculty and students in higher education institutions. Composing appropriate email texts is an important skill for learners; however, little technological support is available for the pragmatic aspect of email communication -- the ways in which social context influences language choices.…

Research on pragmatic awareness of language learners has mainly focused on the target language. As argued by some scholars, a multilingual perspective should also be adopted in the analysis of pragmatic awareness. In fact, existing findings point to the peculiar characteristics of multilingual pragmatic comprehension and awareness. Bearing these…

This study investigated the effects of explicit and implicit discourse marker (DM) instruction on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' speech. Two different teaching methods were used over seven weeks of online English classes at a university in Japan. Participants were split into two groups, and in the first week, a pre-test comprising…

This study used a pre-test post-test research design to investigate the role of explicit strategy instruction on Spanish English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' ability to write authentic email requests to faculty. Drawing on Taguchi's (2018) classification of pragmatics learning strategies, the instructional intervention followed a…

This study examines the effect of enhanced input of lexical chunks on the performance of Arabic-speaking English learners' writings. Lexical chunks, containing their forms, meanings, and functions, stored and recovered as a single component in brains, may alleviate language processing problems and increase language proficiency. The research…

This paper examines email requests sent by Indonesian students to Japanese university professors using English as their lingua franca. It particularly analyzes how students modify their email requests using internal and external modifications as a way to soften the force of the imposed requests. Data were gathered from a total of 56 authentic…