This study investigated the ways in which two groups of four adult learners of English as a second language (ESL) responded to unfamiliar words they encountered in four communication tasks and the effect that different levels of engagement with these words (including negotiation of form and meaning) had on subsequent recall of word meaning. Of the…

The study proposes an alternative approach to studying interpersonal trust. The researcher uses the Rasch analysis to design a quantitative instrument that can be used to measure trust when exploring the effects that various aspects of educational environment have on students' experiences. Prior empirical studies examined trust from a…

The United States is faced with a serious shortage of linguistically and culturally competent students to meet the needs of our global population and economy. In order to address this deficiency, the US government has funded several initiatives to increase our nation's capacity to train teachers and students in critical languages. The Office of…

One fundamental way to determine the validity of standardized English-language test scores is to investigate the extent to which they reflect anticipated learning effects in different English-language programs. In this study, we investigated the extent to which the "TOEFL iBT"® practice test reflects the learning effects of students at…

This article investigates the potential benefits of using children's literature in adult second language (L2) classrooms. A short-term, intensive university course for English reading and writing was designed incorporating children's literature into the curriculum. The author describes the course and discusses how children's literature can be used…

This article documents a curriculum reform of the second-year German program at the Department of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. This curricular reform had two goals: (1) compressing two semesters of intermediate-level language instruction into a single semester; (2) incorporating a strategy-based approach to literary…

Mobile devices have become a significant part of students' lives. The average number of hours that college students reported using their smartphones each day was nine hours--more than half of their daily waking hours (Roberts, Yaya, & Manolis, 2014). Although software developers and teachers have started to develop and incorporate various…

Past research has found that many pre-university L2 learners, having completed an Intensive English Program (IEP) still have difficulty in undertaking various disciplines in English-speaking tertiary institutions and continue to exhibit numerous linguistic problems (Bialystok, 2001, Celce Murcia 2001). The purpose of this paper is to present the…

Intensive English programs are courses in which students participate in a higher number of classes in a shorter period. The available literature on intensive English courses indicates inconsistent results necessitating further research in this area. This study investigated the effect of an intensive English program on a group of Malaysian…

Students in the University of Rhode Island's International Engineering Program (IEP) spend a semester studying at an overseas university and another six months interning at a company abroad; at the end of five years, they earn two degrees, in engineering and a foreign language. Despite the extra academic demands, nearly a third of Rhode Island's…

This dissertation focuses on quantum linguistics, a sub-field of philosophy of language, preoccupied with studying of the processes on a virtual drive of the human mind: patterns and dynamics of thoughts, verbal and non-verbal codification, cultural conditioning, and foreign language acquisition. While adopting an educational perspective fitting…

TESOL theory is intended to inform teacher practice, but studying what teachers actually do in a given teaching context can sometimes lead to better theory. This report illustrates an area in which practice informed theory in the context of 1-on-1 writing conferences for prematriculated ESL writers. This report describes the creation and…

This dissertation explores how teaching Spanish and English as second languages in the United States has been traditionally defined, the common assumptions that are held about each context, and the influence these assumptions have on instructional practices and student learning. In order to explore how teaching English and Spanish is constructed…

This ongoing project seeks to investigate the impact, inside and outside of class, of instruction focused on developing learner awareness of social-networking site (SNS) use in an American Intensive English Program (IEP). With language socialization as an interpretative framework (Duff, in press; Ochs, 1988; Watson-Gegeo, 2004), the project uses a…

Evaluating existing foreign language programs on a regular basis is essential because program evaluation leads to more effective programs. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate the modular intensive general English language teaching program applied at a university in Turkey by investigating students' and English instructors' perceptions of…