The nature of peer feedback and its impacts on writing in English has attracted much attention of researchers and educators. Recent studies have indicated various types of peer feedback and its positive effects on writing development. This paper presents the results of an investigation into the nature of peer feedback and its effects on learners'…

Practice and research in the composition education that is using computer and network have been more and more active. Through online composition system, a large amount of written texts produced by students and teachers can be collected. This kind of information is called a learner corpus, which is important in second language education because the…

The theory of learning multimodality is receiving greater attention. Its application in language learning classes is also increasing in number. Since Chinese-speaking EFL learners are likely to be visual learners, as an instructor of Taiwanese EFL students, I have come to believe that arts integrated, multimodal projects help less confident and…

In this fast-changing information age, teachers and students can feast at a banquet of material on the Internet. This is a very good thing in these tight economic times, when education systems are strapped for cash and many arts and music courses are being cut in favor of classes to develop so-called marketable skills, such as business, biology or…

In this paper, we report on the development and implementation of a web-based mobile application, "Grammar Clinic," for an ESL writing class. Drawing on insights from the interactionist approach to Second Language Acquisition (SLA), the Noticing Hypothesis, and mobile-assisted language learning (MALL), "Grammar Clinic" was…

This paper explores the expression of certainty in a set of high- and low-rated Geography argumentative essays. Using one aspect of Hunston's (1989, 2000) concept of the evaluation of status, the paper compares the statement types used to construe the writer's expression of certainty in the construction of arguments. Drawing on the framework,…

Students who study English as a Foreign Language (EFL) often already speak two or more languages. Knowing more than one language is a necessity for many people worldwide, whether it is because their parents come from different language backgrounds, because their home, regional, national, or school languages are different, or for a variety of other…

One way to provide high quality instruction for underserved English Language Learners around the world is to combine Task-Based English Language Learning with Computer- Assisted Instruction. As part of an ongoing project, "Bridges to Swaziland," these approaches have been implemented in a determined effort to improve the ESL program for…

This article proposes a theatrically oriented, thematically structured course model for the upper level undergraduate German curriculum. The traditional focus on staging a single play in the German foreign language theater practicum neglects theater's potential to explore other literary genres and cultural texts and runs the danger of…

The study investigated the learner perceptions of a CALL component in a blended language learning context. 52 Taiwanese college students attended instructional classroom sessions and did weekly online assignments in the form of interactive web-based exercises over one semester. Their learning performance was measured by means of two computer-based…

Effective use of outside source texts is one of the key components of successful academic writing. This study aims at clarifying Japanese university EFL students' citation behaviors in producing argumentative writing. Twenty-six Japanese university EFL students wrote an argumentative essay. Their essays were analyzed quantitatively by six…

This paper presents the results of a one-year longitudinal study which sought to investigate the effect that strategy instruction may have on English language achievement. Two classes of junior high school students at Madina in Ghana were involved in an experiment. The experimental class was taught various language-learner strategies both…

Our contribution focuses on synchronous oral telecollaboration in secondary schools. With reference to the EU project TILA, aspects of task design and implementation are discussed against the backdrop of issues of technological quality in connection with class organisation in computer labs. Case study evidence is provided in favour of the…

Johns reports in his text "Kibbitzing one-to-ones" (1997) that corpus-informed metatalk with a foreign language expert helps apprentice writers to make progress in independent text revision. Expecting this progress to be based on the development of expert-like ways to observe language features, I integrated Johns' so-called kibbitzing…

Using conversation analysis as a methodological and analytical framework, this study presents a sequential analysis of disagreement episodes in small group interactions in an advanced academic writing class. Closer scrutiny of the sequences reveals that in order to bring disagreements to a close, participants make use of an array of interactional…