scholarly journals Exploring EFL Students’ Gaming Experience in Acquiring Second Language Vocabulary

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Resna Suci Nurfalah
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Efl Students

Using Feedback in ESL and EFL Asynchronous Online Environments

2018 ◽  
pp. 206-222
Author(s):  
Larisa Olesova ◽  
Luciana de Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Online Courses ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Audio Feedback ◽  
Instructional Feedback ◽  
Oral Feedback ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Online Environments

Researchers and practitioners' interest in finding more effective ways to provide instructional feedback in order to help second language learners in online environments has increased. The majority of studies found evidence about effectiveness of written and oral feedback to improve student's writing in a target language when they enroll in online courses taught in English. However, some studies also found limitations of both types of feedback when they provided for second language learners. Therefore, researchers and practitioners investigated benefits of other types of feedback and among them is audio feedback. The purpose of this chapter is to overview instructional capabilities of written, oral and audio feedback and how they can support ESL and EFL students in asynchronous online courses. This chapter also discusses when and how to provide different types of feedback when ESL and EFL students are enrolled in online courses taught in English.

scholarly journals Pragmatic competence in English at the VG1 level: To what extent are Norwegian EFL students able to adapt to contextual demands when making requests in English?

2012 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Silje Brubæk
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
First Language ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Pragmatic Competence ◽  
Pragmatic Development ◽  
L1 Transfer ◽  
Strong Focus ◽  
Completion Test ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
The Subject

The present article presents an investigation of Norwegian students of English as a foreign language (EFL) and their pragmatic competence in English. The importance of developing such a competence receives a strong focus in the English subject curriculum. However, very few studies have been conducted in the field of pragmatics in Norway, and even fewer Norwegian studies have focused on students’ pragmatic competence in a second language. The purpose of this study was therefore to investigate whether Norwegian EFL students would be familiar with and show awareness of English politeness norms and pragmatic conventions when having to communicate in English. Would they be able to adapt their language, choice of strategy and level of formality to the contextual demands when making requests in the second language (L2)? Forty students answered a simplified version of a discourse completion test (DCT) consisting of four different situations in which the students had to make requests. The results, which were analysed by means of Brown and Levinson’s theory of face threatening acts, indicated that most of the students were at one of the beginning stages of English pragmatic development. Their language use was characterized by first language (L1) transfer and overuse of familiar and informal expressions. When faced with more formal and demanding situations, they fell short and clearly lacked the knowledge and competence that would allow them to communicate successfully. It can be argued that these findings might indicate a lack of focus in Norwegian schools when it comes to developing students’ pragmatic competence. If this is true, an important part of the subject curriculum is being neglected.

scholarly journals Washback effects of multiple-choice, cloze and metalinguistic tests on EFL students writing

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 536-544
Author(s):  
Danial Shirzadi ◽  
Majid Amerian
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Current Issue ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Multiple Choice ◽  
Present Perfect ◽  
Target Form ◽  
Test Formats ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Practical Implications

The washback effects of different test formats on the writing performance of students have always been of great importance. However, this area of research has not fully touched upon by researchers of second language testing. Despite the importance of the issue, there is a dearth of empirical studies to unravel the effects of different types of tests on learning. To shed some light on the current issue, the present study intends to look into the washback effects of tests on students who are learning and using some special grammatical points in writing tasks. In order to fulfil this project, we made a set question in three formats of cloze, multiple-choice and metalinguistic on a grammatical form(i.e. present perfect and present perfect continuous)to use after each session of teaching (2 sessions of training) as an activity. The researchers devised and validated three tests on the target form; each test contained 20 questions and was in different formats of cloze, multiple-choice or metalinguistic. At the end of this two-session trainings, two focused writing tasks were implemented. The results indicated that supporting teaching grammatical points with metalinguistic tests yields the highest positive washback on students writing. Finally, some practical implications were suggested.

scholarly journals Native-speakerism and professional teacher identity in L2 pronunciation learning

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharif Alghazo ◽  
Mahmoud Zidan
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Effective Teaching ◽  
Teacher Identity ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Professional Teacher ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
English Language Teachers ◽  
Global Language ◽  
L2 Pronunciation

Many studies in different contexts have examined both English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ convictions about the connection between nativeness in English and professional teacher identity; however, very few studies solely focused on that connection in second language (L2) pronunciation teaching. This paper explores EFL university students’ experiences in learning English pronunciation from ‘native’- and ‘nonnative’- English-speaking teachers (NESTs and NNESTs). Based on an empirical study of undergraduates-prospective English language teachers-at the University of Jordan, the paper finds that most students still view ‘nativeness’ as the main descriptor of effective teaching, strongly believing NESTs to be the ‘authority’ and source of ‘correctness,’ both of which convictions are emblematic of native-speakerism, which in turns leads to both cultural panic and voicelessness on the part of NNESTs and learners. The study concludes with calling for the need to raise awareness among EFL students of the various manifestations of English as a global language-particularly the irrelevance of nativeness to effective teaching-and incorporating NNESTs into teaching L2 pronunciation and rejecting their marginalisation in teaching pronunciation in EFL contexts.

scholarly journals An Investigation of the Learning Strategies as Bias Factors in Second Language Cloze Tests

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 91
Author(s):  
Parviz Ajideh ◽  
Massoud Yaghoubi-Notash ◽  
Abdolreza Khalili
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Learning Strategies ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Test Performance ◽  
Cognitive Strategies ◽  
Language Tests ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Positive Correlations ◽  
Cloze Test

The present study investigated the contribution of the EFL students’ learning strategies to the explanation of the variance in their results on language tests. More specifically, it examined the role of these strategies as bias factors in the results of English cloze tests.  Based on this aim, first, 158 intermediate EFL learners were selected from among 324 language learners of a private language institute in Urmia (Iran) as the participants of the study based on their results on a proficiency test. Second, the selected participants respectively received Oxford’s (1990) Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) and the cloze test of the study for the assessment of their learning strategies and English cloze test performance during two sessions in a one-week period. The standard multiple regression was employed for data analysis. The results of the study showed that, there were significant positive correlations between the learners’ metacognitive strategies and cognitive strategies and their cloze test performance. Based on these results, it was argued that, the learners’ learning strategies may be systematic test bias factors in second language cloze tests. The results of the present study may have useful practical implications for the EFL teachers and syllabus designers. Moreover, these results may provide certain theoretical guidelines for second language testing specialists. 

scholarly journals Morphological Intervention in Promoting Higher-Order Reading Abilities among College-Level Second Language Learners

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 1465
Author(s):  
Haomin Zhang ◽  
Weicheng Zou
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Contextual Information ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
Morphological Awareness ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Learning Ability ◽  
College Level ◽  
Short Period ◽  
Morphological Instruction ◽  
Efl Students

Reading success in a second language (L2) is vital to sustainable language and academic development because reading serves as a tool to absorb and learn new knowledge. Particularly in the context of college English as a foreign language (EFL), students constantly face the challenge to read English material to develop content knowledge. The current study investigated the effect of explicit morphological instruction on L2 students’ higher-order inferencing and comprehension abilities. Sixty-two Chinese collegiate EFL students who were taking an intensive reading course (31 in the treatment class and 31 in the control class) participated in this study. The morphological intervention in the treatment class focused on identifying, decomposing, analyzing, associating, applying word parts in context. The control class received no explicit instruction in morphological awareness. After one semester of instruction, a series of morphology, inferencing and comprehension measures were administered to the participating students. The results showed that the didactic intervention of morphological awareness contributed to morphological knowledge and word-meaning inferencing ability, whereas there was no significant relationship between morphological intervention and text-based inference and comprehension abilities. The findings suggest that the intervention has a direct impact on word learning ability; however, higher-order processing skills may not directly benefit from it in a short period of time. Given that reading comprehension requires fine-tuned understandings of both local meanings and global contextual information, morphological awareness may not have an immediate effect on comprehension. Applied implications are also discussed in relation to effective morphological instruction and reading development in L2 contexts.

Attitudes and Motivation of Turkish EFL Students towards Second Language Learning

2000 ◽  
Vol 129-130 ◽  
pp. 141-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Z. Kiziltepe
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Second Language Learning ◽  
English Teachers ◽  
Foreign Languages ◽  
English Teacher ◽  
English Classes ◽  
Motivational Intensity ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Learning English

This paper presents the results of a study of the influence of attitudes and motivation on the acquisition of English by Turkish students. It investigates the following factors : attitudes. towards the British and Americans; motivational intensity; interest in English and foreign languages in general; instrumental and integrative orientation; anxiety in English classes; family encouragement; the English teacher and course. Results indicate that students are highly motivated instrumentally as well as integratively although a moderate interest in the-British and the American community and culture is reported. Respondents' motivational intensity is high, their attitudes towards learning English and languages in general are positive. They do not show anxiety in class and their families are very supportive. Results about their attitudes towards their English teachers and courses vary according to the school they attend. Implications for EFL/ESL classrooms are also discussed at the end of the paper.

Peer and teacher assessment of second-language writing in high- and low-stakes conditions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amir Rezaei ◽  
Khaled Barkaoui
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Second Language Writing ◽  
Peer Assessment ◽  
Teacher Assessment ◽  
Future Research ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Rater Severity ◽  
Rating Criteria

Abstract This study aimed to compare second-language (L2) students’ ratings of their peers’ essays on multiple criteria with those of their teachers’ under different assessment conditions. Forty EFL teachers and 40 EFL students took part in the study. They each rated one essay on five criteria twice, under high-stakes and low-stakes assessment conditions. Multifaceted Rasch Analysis and correlation analyses were conducted to compare rater severity and consistency across rater groups, rating criteria and assessment conditions. The results revealed that there was more variation in students’ ratings than the teachers’ across assessment conditions. Additionally, both rater groups had different degrees of severity in assessing different criteria. In general, students were significantly more severe on language use than were teachers; whereas teachers were significantly more severe than were peers on organization. Student and teacher severity also varied across rating criteria and assessment conditions. The findings of this study have implications for planning and implementing peer assessment in the L2 writing classroom as well as for future research.

scholarly journals Second Language Writing and Assessment: Voices from Within the Saudi EFL Context

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rana Obeid
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Writing Assessment ◽  
Second Language Writing ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Efl Teachers ◽  
Teachers And Students ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Efl Students

This small scale, quantitatively based, research study aimed at exploring one of the most debated areas in the field of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL); and that is, the perceptions and attitudes of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers as well as EFL learners at an English Language Institute (ELI) at a major university in the Western region of Saudi Arabia, King Abdulaziz University, towards second language writing assessment. The research study involved, randomly selected twenty-two EFL teachers and seventy-eight EFL students between the period of September 2016 and December 2016. Two, purposefully designed, twenty-item, Likert scale questionnaires were distributed amongst the teachers and students. One for the participating EFL teachers and one for the participating EFL students. Data analysis using descriptive statistical methods indicated several concerns which EFL teachers and students have with regards to the writing assessment in general and to the obstacles EFL teachers face when teaching and assessing writing. In addition, there was an indication of general resentments and strong feelings amongst the EFL students where the majority indicated that they are sometimes graded unfairly and writing assessment should take another, more holistic approach rather a narrow one. The study makes recommendations for future research.

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