This article outlines a rational for responsive, differentiated writing instruction that targets students' identified needs with respect to various dimensions of the writing process. Discussed is a cycle that requires ongoing assessment, instructional decision-making, responsive, differentiated instruction, guided practice, and assessment.…

Currently there is a general uncertainty about what makes collocations (i.e., fixed word combinations with specific, not easily interpreted relations between their components) hard for ESL learners to master, and about how to improve collocation recognition and learning process. This study explored and designed a comparative classification of…

This article investigates the reading practices of 45 EFL Yemeni students using the "learning by design" framework. The framework organizes the teaching and learning of literacy into four processes: experiencing, conceptualising, analysing, and applying. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect data on a sample of…

The case study investigates what impact extensive reading of authentic picture books/illustrated books had on the learners' writing skills in a Norwegian EFL (English as a foreign language) classroom of 11-year-olds. Furthermore, the study also looks into the importance the pictures/illustrations had for the learners and what type of picture-text…

In this article, we examine whether the effectiveness of processing instruction (PI) is limited to forms targeted in the instructional treatment (primary effects) or whether it also extends to other forms (transfer-of-training effects). L2 Spanish learners (N = 123) received either PI or traditional instruction (TI) targeting third-person…

This one-term practitioner research study, conducted with 33 Year 5 children, considers the impact of teaching exploratory talk skills on the learning of the class, with particular consideration of the development of the ability of gifted and talented children to manipulate and control sentence structure to create effect. Beginning with metatalk…

Prereading questions can be an effective tool for directing students' learning. However, it is not always clear what the online effects of a set of prereading questions will be. In two experiments, this study investigated whether readers direct additional attention to and learn more from sentences that are potentially relevant to a set of…

The Common Core State Standards emphasize the value of teaching students to engage with complex text. But what exactly makes a text complex, and how can teachers help students develop their ability to learn from such texts? The authors of this article discuss five factors that determine text complexity: vocabulary, sentence structure, coherence,…

English textbooks are widely used in every discipline in the majority of colleges and universities in Taiwan. To prepare college students for their future careers, it is necessary they be given systematic training and practice in reading these books. However, due to time constraints, most content teachers focus on the delivery of content rather…

The present study aimed at analyzing writing errors caused by the interference of the Persian language, regarded as the first language (L1), in three writing genres, namely narration, description, and comparison/contrast by Iranian EFL students. 65 English paragraphs written by the participants, who were at the intermediate level based on their…

The Comprehensive English Course (CEC) plays a vital role in English language learning for college students in China. However, students' motivation for this course is low due to the fact that they are bored with the instructivist-based teaching environment. This paper first reviews the theories of Constructivism, and then demonstrates how to apply…

Conference interpreters form a special case of language users because the simultaneous interpretation practice requires very specific lexical processing. Word comprehension and production in respective languages is performed under strict time constraints and requires constant activation of the involved languages. The present experiment aimed at…

Students with writing difficulties and learning disabilities struggle with many aspects of the writing process, including use of sentence-level skills. This literature review summarizes results from 19 published articles that used single-case or group-experimental and quasi-experimental designs to investigate effects of intervention on the…

In order to promote mathematical understanding among English Language Learners (ELLs), it is necessary to modify instructional strategies to effectively communicate mathematical content. This paper discusses the instructional strategies used by four pre-service teachers to teach mathematics to secondary students in English-medium schools in…

This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the 2014 International Conference of Pragmatics and Language Learning at Indiana University. It includes fourteen papers on a variety of topics, with a diversity of first and second languages, and a wide range of methods used to collect pragmatic data in L2 and FL settings. This volume is…