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Incorporating counterarguments can be challenging for many student-writers, including those for whom English is a second or other language. In this study, we present findings that may lead to improvements in students' understanding of the benefits of integrating counterarguments. In our study, expert readers were presented with excerpts of student academic writing in order to assess the degree to which counterarguments could be identified through student deployment of metadiscoursal features. The results suggest that student-writers deploy metadiscoursal features with insufficient frequency and consistency. The results further suggest that when metadiscoursal features are used in counterarguments, their deployment is largely restricted to the sentence-initial position. The study also considers the pedagogical and technological issues associated with the findings.

Computer-based test (CBT) and paper-based test (PBT) are two test modes to the test takers that have been widely adopted in the field of language testing or assessment over the last few decades. Due to the rapid development of science and technology, it is a trend for universities and educational institutions striving rather hard to deliver the test on a computer. Therefore, research on the comparison between these two test modes has attracted much attention to investigate whether the PBT could be completely replaced. At the same time, task difficulty is always a key element to reflect test takers' performances. Numerous studies have laid a solid foundation and guidance about the comparative study of test takers' performance on CBT and PBT, but there still remains a scarcity from the perspective of task difficulties with different Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) task levels in particular. This study, therefore, compared the test takers' performance on both CBT and PBT across tasks with different CEFR levels. A total of 289 principal recommended high school test takers from Macau took the pilot Test of Academic English (TAE) at a local university. The results indicated that there was a difference between test takers' performance on different test modes across different CEFR levels, but only CEFR A2 level showed a statistically difference between CBT and PBT. And since science and technology are continuously developing, it is essential for the university to consider switching the test mode from PBT to CBT.

This study aimed at designing a model of instructional materials for Academic Writing Course focusing on research paper writing. The model was designed based on the Curriculum at the English Education Study Program, Faculty of Language and Art Education of IKIP PGRI Bojonegoro, East Java, Indonesia. This model was developed in order to improve students' skill in writing research paper which is one of the prerequisite tasks before graduating from university. The steps of this research and development consist of needs analysis, document analysis, model design, model development, and model experimentation. The researchers conducted needs analysis to the fifth semester students and three academic writing teachers, in order to generate information dealing with the students' needs in academic writing course materials. The needs analysis and documents analysis were dug up through questionnaire, interview, and discussion among students and academic writing teachers. The documents analyzed in this study were syllabus, lesson plan, and the existing textbook. The model design used is derived from Borg and Gall (1983) and Sukmadinata (2008), in which there are four steps, i.e. (1) exploration phase; (2) model development phase; (3) model experimentation phase; and (4) dissemination and model implementation phase. The results of needs analysis questionnaire reveal that students need to be taught how to write academic writing in terms of journal article since it will be the final project of the students at the end of their study in university. Instructional materials with different strategies focused on research paper writing are needed by the students.

Advent of technology has caused growing interest in using computers to convert conventional paper and pencil-based testing (Henceforth PPT) into Computer-based testing (Henceforth CBT) in the field of education during last decades. This constant promulgation of computers to reshape the conventional tests into computerized format permeated the language assessment field in recent years. But, enjoying advantages of computers in language assessment raise the concerns of the effects that computerized mode of testing may have on CBT performance. Thus, this study investigated the score comparability of Vocabulary in Use test taken by 30 Iranian undergraduate students studying at a state university located in Chabahar region of Iran (CMU) to see whether scores from two administrations of testing mode were different. Therefore, two similar tests were administered to the male and female participants on two testing mode occasions with four weeks interval. Employing One-Way ANOVA statistical test to compare the mean scores and Pearson Correlation test to find the relationship between mode preference and performance revealed that two sets of scores were not different and gender difference was not also considered a variable that might affect performance on CBT. Based on the results, computerized version of the test can be considered a favorable alternative for the state undergraduate students in Iran.

The purposes of this study were to investigate the effects of the use of paper-based and weblog-based electronic portfolios on the writing achievement of limited English proficiency students, to survey the students' attitudes towards the use of the portfolio assessment, and to compare the viewpoints of the students in the control and experimental groups. The study was conducted with 60 second-year hotel and tourism students enrolled in the Writing for the Service Industry course. They had limited English proficiency, as their previous English grades were C or below in average. The simple random sampling technique was used for subject selection and group assignment. Google's free weblog website (located at www.blogger.com) was used as a tool for creating and developing the students' personal electronic portfolios. At the beginning of the course, the students in the control group and the experimental group were trained in the concept of portfolios, and the purposes, content, and criteria used for assessment were discussed with the students. A writing achievement test and a closed-ended questionnaire were used for the quantitative data collection, while the qualitative data were gathered from the open-ended questions, interviews, and reflection. Descriptive statistics and t-tests were employed for the data analysis. It was found that the effects of the use of paper-based portfolios and weblog-based electronic portfolios on the writing achievement were not significantly different, but some promising results of the use of weblog-based electronic portfolios for language learning and assessment are indisputable.

This paper investigates the use of politeness strategies in 32 discussion sections of research papers produced by Thai graduate students at Graduate School of Language and Communication, National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA), Bangkok, Thailand. The study reported in this paper adopts Brown and Levinson's (1978, 1987) and Myers' (1989) models of politeness strategies. The project as a whole aims to identify what politeness strategies are most commonly used in the whole corpus, whether differences exist in the use of these politeness strategies and how politeness strategies are employed. The analysis of the data reveals that these student researchers rarely employed politeness strategies in their discussions. However, they used more negative politeness strategies than the positive ones and the differences in the use of these two strategies were highly significant. This study provides some pedagogical implications for ESL/EFL academic writing and syllabus designing.

In today's world, there are lots of methods in language teaching in general and teaching writing in particular. Using two different tools in writing essays and conducting a study to compare the effectiveness of these two tools namely blog and pen-and-paper was the basis of this study. This study used a quantitative true experimental design aimed at comparing the students' writing performance scores by using pen-and-paper essay writing and blogging among Iranian graduate students of University Putra Malaysia (UPM). The result of this study showed that the tools by themselves could not effect on the quality of writing essays and improvement in the students' writing performance. However, using technology and in this study, Internet can motivate the EFL learners to write more eagerly since they may like innovation in learning in contrast with traditional old methods of learning writing and practicing it. Yet it does not necessarily improve their writing performance only because of using computer and Internet. The Iranian graduate students of UPM found blog more interesting and motivating tool for writing, but it was not as easy using as pen-and-paper for them with which everyone is familiar. This research could find answers to the research questions posed at the beginning of the study and investigated the hypotheses presented then.

Corporate mission, a core part of corporate culture, plays an important role in the development and competition of companies. The study of mission statements is beneficial to both companies and stakeholders. This paper explores corporate mission from the perspective of linguistics on the basis of speech act theory and adaptation theory and reveals that assertives account for a large proportion with a small proportion of commissives and zero proportion of directives, expressives and declarations. Some skills can be used to polish the language of mission statements, like pun, personification and parallel structures. And some high frequency words are summarized. Several characteristics and writing skills are summarized about mission statements. The criteria of judging whether the mission statements are good or not are given in this paper.

Some studies have reported the positive outcome of using concordancers and dictionaries in (ESL) context. This study aims to examine how an EFL writer consulted with concordancers and dictionaries along with Google and Google Scholar when engaging in academic writing at university level. The researcher investigated a non-English-major postgraduate student corpus consultation over five months. The researcher provided a toolkit including corpus tools; concordancers, collocation dictionaries, thesaurus, Google, in combination with traditional reference resources such as monolingual and bilingual online dictionaries. The participant received a three-session training to consult with different resources while writing research paper. Real-time data, stimulated recall interview, participants' writing and query logs served as the main sources of data. Results showed that the participant was aware of the applicability of each corpus tool. He could successfully solve 604 linguistic problems, and promoted his linguistic awareness. It is implied that corpus tools have the potential to assist EFL writers in proofreading and editing the surface levels of their writing.

This study details the procedure and results of developing a mission statement at a language institute for the purpose of obtaining a program accreditation from an international language commission. A serious self-study process results in the development of a solid, true and ambitious mission since the mission covers all areas related to achieving students learning outcomes. It shows how the mission was changed and why. It also details how the new mission resulted in the improving quality, especially in the areas of curriculum and professional development of faculty and staff. Other aspects, such as facilities and student affairs were modified to achieve the goals and objectives of the new mission. This essay reports the changes that were implemented during the process of mission statement development. These changes resulted in plans to improve the quality of the English language teaching at the English Language Academy (ELA) which offers an English language program to Foundation Year students whose success in the program is a college requirement at the University of Business and Technology (UBT) in the academic year of 2016-2017. The program also aims at improving the English language proficiency of students so that they can use it in their future professions considering that the university logo is "Education for Job Opportunities." The third main goal or aim is related to the use of English to assist students in personal and social life. Critical thinking surfaced as a main concern of those surveyed for needs assessment. The report concludes with recommending conducting thorough and genuine self-study process which certainly ends with quality improvement. The report uses data collected from five questionnaires completed by students, faculty, alumni and employers of UBT graduates. The purpose of the survey was to identify the needs of the students. Based on those needs, the learning outcomes are identified and accordingly, the new mission statement is developed.

The paper takes 414 graduates from ZJU in 2011 and 2012, NIT as a case, analyzing the status of their writing of graduation thesis. It is found that a considerable number of students have problems in selection and report of topics, writing of each part and debating in the whole process of graduation thesis. In view of the situation, based on the effective measures and some practical experience by English majors in NIT, ZJU, it is suggested we should raise both teachers' and students' awareness and consciousness in the importance in thesis writing, establish quality management and monitoring system, strictly check selection and report of topics, give play to the library, have topic verification and application guide, being familiar with the writing requirements of the abstract, optimize English curriculum and make professional management features outstanding and enhance the students' and teachers' ability, thereby improving the writing of the graduation thesis and reflecting subject construction in English major.

The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which "plagiarismdetect.com," an internet help/tool to detect plagiarism helps academicians tackle the ever-growing problem of plagiarism. Concerned with term papers, essays and most of the time with full-blown research reports, a tool like "plagiarismdetect.com" may provide an avenue to ease the burden of detecting plagiarism. As far as plagiarism is concerned, not being computer savvy itself can be a bane when faced with students who appear like wizards in the area of managing information from the internet. Tracking down plagiarists is made easy and free by this site and it may still prove to be the nightmare that is needed to check the unprecedented unethical practices within the academic circle as well as curtail plagiarised work from students. Although some people use other people's material as "seed" for generating ideas and to support their own, the point where material ownership becomes plagiarised material is also another area that a detection tool for plagiarism should be able to handle. Other than this, paraphrasing has always been the solution by lecturers for consistent occurrences of students' plagiarised work. How much of paraphrasing can be considered before it borders on plagiarism? Will "plagiarismdetect.com" be able to live up to its reputation as a tool to detect and to help students and academicians to turn in original pieces of work?

This paper discussed the relationship between language, ecology, and culture, and claimed that the study of linguistic communication as pragmatics should not be confined to the traditional context, but should focus on a broader ecological environment. It analyzed the context of practical communication from the perspective of language ecology beginning with the discussion of the ecological crisis in communication and found that language, like plants and animals in nature, needed the support of the external environment with certain "soil fertility". This paper classified ecological context into two types: internal ecological context (psychological-cognitive context) and external ecological context (natural environment and social environment). Based on this classification, the ecological context of pragmatics was further divided into environment-friendly context, addressee-friendly context, and speaker-friendly ecological context. This paper was an exploratory analysis of language ecology in pragmatics, aiming at helping communicative participants find their ecological niche and adopt appropriate strategies to maintain the ecological balance in pragmatic communication.

This paper reviews the literature on English for Specific Purposes (ESP) research in 15 CSSCI foreign language journals in China's CNKI database over the last two decades. The data have been quantified and visualized with Citespace. This paper analyzes research advances and themes, and then puts forward suggestions based on the current situation of college English teaching in China. The findings reveal that: 1) ESP publications have shown a rising trend during the past 20 years; 2) The study of ESP in academic dissertations is mainly at the MA level; 3) ESP research focuses on such issues as relationships between ESP and college English, academic English, corpus and teaching modes; 4) The dominant method of ESP research in China is non-empirical while more and more empirical studies have emerged since 2011. This study also critically analyzes the research limitations and recommendations of the ESP study.

People frequently struggle with comprehending the text they read and require more intensive support to develop proficiency in reading comprehension. Some find it perplexing observing all the elements and constituents of the paragraph theory. Good readers, however, can understand what a paragraph is by studying the conjunction relationships between sentences and group of sentences in the paragraph and can also understand the organization of the text by analyzing the conjunction relationships in a paragraph or a text when they deal with a written text. Such analysis of the conjunction relationships in a paragraph or a text can be used as a basis for understanding how the author organizes and presents materials. The inspiration of structuralist view of education is that students need to learn and discover the structure of knowledge. The research methods of the paper are ones of knowledge, experience, observation, logical reasoning and keen analysis of English examples or materials. This paper provides guidance for the skills of logical relationship comprehension, text structure determination and main idea dentification, and introduces some practices of using the skills. These skills have brought us some findings: We can use the conjunction relationships between the sentences in a paragraph to determine the structure of the paragraph, whether they are signaled or unsignaled, including finding the main idea; The contextual clues can be adverbs, pronouns, nouns, verbs, and preposition groups besides conjunctions; Items in one type of relationships are of equal weight and one sentence in another type of relationships is given more importance than the others; There is a relationship between the type of conjunction relationship involved and the location of the topic sentence; The role of the main idea or topic sentence is not in whether it always provides important information, but in its organizational function. These findings guide readers to apply the knowledge of paragraph organization system to help them deal with English texts.

This paper considers the opportunities and challenges posed to formal second language education given the penetration of digital technologies in young people's daily lives. This paper broadly discusses the issues of information technology (IT) infrastructure, classroom management and IT use restrictions in relations to language learning. The paper concludes by making suggestions for policy makers and language educators in terms of supporting technology-enhanced formal language education with more advanced IT educational programs and the development of virtual learning environment (VLE) system at school.

Peer response has gradually gained popularity in teaching English writing to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in recently years. A number of researches have proved its advantages while Chinese English teachers are still doubting its validity and possibility. This paper aims to prove that incorporating peer response and teacher feedback is advantageous to EFL learners' English writing. It would start with the explanation of some key terms and then first examine the benefits of peer response to verify the necessity of introducing it to an English writing class for EFL learners. Then drawbacks of teacher feedback would be argued with the certification that it is corresponding to some advantages of peer response. Finally, the contribution of using peer response and teacher feedback together would be discussed to further attest the argument mentioned above. At the end of the paper, a conclusion will be made to generally summarize what has been discussed and how this relates to being a language professional. Hopefully, it could be informative and constructive for Chinese English teachers to take a closer step into the theoretical base of this teaching strategy which has been established by former researchers and seek for the possibility of its implementation in the real-setting classroom in EFL context.

Most people want to be able to read their reading materials quicker and remember them effectively. Covering a large quantity of reading materials at a normal speed requires much more time than is usually available. Good readers, however, can cover a lot of materials by identifying key elements of a sentence for key idea with the help of connectives when skimming. Constructivism theory emphasizes that students need to actively construct the meaning of their knowledge they have learned, and actively explore and discover knowledge. Syntax is the core of the whole language system with syntactic structure occupying a macroscopic and important position in improving students' language ability and language level in a real sense. This paper introduces and analyzes how to identify key elements of a sentence for key idea with the help of connectives under constructivism so as to find a practical and feasible reading strategy when skimming. It is advised that readers glance at secondary sentences by reading the connectives as they are helpful in getting possible additional information while successfully identifying key elements of a sentence for key idea. The method fundamentally helps students improve their reading speed and develop their skimming understanding ability. The research methods of this paper are the ones of experience, literature review, theoretical basis, the main language order and keen analysis. This paper concludes by understanding the method of identifying key elements of a sentence for key idea with the help of connectives in skimming practice when reading under constructivism theory and its role is to guide readers to apply the knowledge of subject-predicate-object grammatical rule as the main language order in the skimming practice to help readers to get the general meaning of a sentence, paragraph, passage and a text.

This paper reviews a total of 20 empirical research studies concerning parents' behavior under the context of high-stakes language assessment, aiming to reveal the impact of the assessment on parents' behavior. The results show that (1) parents are typically involved in high-stakes language assessment process; (2) their involvement practice includes general (such as hiring tutors for children) and extreme involvement behavior (such as participating in movement against high-stakes testing); (3) no unanimous conclusion is reached concerning the effectiveness of parents' involvement in high-stakes language assessment; (4) multiple factors that affect parents' involvement in high-stakes language assessment are identified, including parents' perceptions of tests, their educational background, and the time they spend with their children. This study concludes that tests might influence the ways parents are involved in children's education. However, not all parents might be influenced by testing, and testing might have a positive impact on some parents but a negative impact on others. This synthesis has several practical implications. Firstly, it indicates that parents' involvement behavior in the context of high-stakes language assessment deserves to be further investigated. Secondly, it points that various intervention programs should be provided for parents to help them better support their children's learning and test preparation. The paper also offers several suggestions for future research.

The aim of this paper is to expose the potential difficulties encountered by students learning Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) with a focus on sounds production. The research design was descriptive-analytic. The data was obtained using direct recording and interviews. The sample included 27 AFL students at the Arabic Institutes at IMSIU and KSU. The work on this research is twofold: first, the paper reports on teachers' and learners' views on the general difficulties encountered by students learning Arabic, focusing on those in post-secondary school getting ready for tertiary education. Secondly, the paper analyzes their speech for pronunciation errors found in sounds production. The results show that learners generally had no problem expressing themselves, but they had some pronunciation issues with some specific Arabic sounds. The results also show that the students attempt different methods to overcome pronunciation difficulties. Teachers were aware of these difficulties, and they had their own methods to help improve students' pronunciation of unfamiliar sounds. The findings show that traditional ways of teaching Arabic sounds are not enough, and difficulties could still exist, as shown by the phonological analysis of sounds environments. The study suggests that implementing an eclectic approach, leveraging the use of technology, could help AFLs to improve their pronunciation.

This paper reports reactions by candidates to the use of online proctoring (OLP), 'invigilation', in the delivery of high-stakes English language examinations. The paper first sets the scene in terms of the move from face-to-face to online modes of delivery. It explores the challenges and benefits that both modes offer, in terms of accessibility, fairness, security and cheating. Evidence is then presented from a survey exploring the reactions to and perceptions of OLP by candidates who had taken an English language examination via OLP. A strong endorsement of OLP was generally recorded. Feedback revealed that respondents perceived OLP to be a more personal as well as a more efficient way of taking a test. Some pertinent negative comments from a smaller number of respondents could be construed as constructive and are also discussed. The results are indicative of a broad acceptance of OLP, pointing to strong future uptake of the OLP mode of test delivery.

While debate continues as to the efficacy of Native English-speaking teachers (NESTs) and non-native English-speaking teachers (NNESTs), little research has been conducted to analyze how these teachers impact communicative competence in an EFL context. Research on NNESTs' self-perceptions has been done in many different contexts (for examples, America, Europe, East Asia), but rarely in Thailand. This paper reports on a mixed data collection study which examines the self-perceptions of undergraduate TESOL students in a Thai university. Data were collected through an online questionnaire responded to by 39 undergraduate TESOL students studying in a B.Ed. English program. Seven of these students were selected for semi-structured individual interviews. Findings show that the undergraduate TESOL students were aware of differences between NESTs and NNESTs and perceived both NESTs and NNESTs to have unique linguistic, cultural, and teaching strengths and weaknesses. The finding also shows that the undergraduate TESOL students had positive perceptions towards their non-native status and perceived themselves to be qualified and successful English teachers after graduation. This paper has implications for language teaching expertise and suggestions for developing TESOL degree curriculum and teacher preparation.

Language assessment is a vital part of the process of learning and teaching a foreign language. Language learners need to be provided with the best methods to measure how much they are acquiring the target language and to select the most authentic tasks of testing for them. As it has been recommended to use multiple assessment instead of traditional summative one where nothing is concerned except measurement of decontextualized tasks without interactive feedback, dynamic assessment has been used as a means to reinforce learning and to motivate students as well as enhance language teaching. Dynamic assessment, can be rooted on Socio-cultural theory (SCT) and Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) by Vygotsky, as it allows for learning through interaction and mediation which indicates how beneficial it could be to utilize this method of assessment particularly through social media which is embedded nowadays with all of our daily tasks. Thus, this paper demonstrates the nature and effects of dynamic assessment as an influential method of assessing and maintaining the progress of language learners. Additionally, a comparison between dynamic assessment and static one is manifested. Besides, the theoretical background that supports this method is displayed. Moreover, how technology has been used effectively in language assessment and testing is illustrated. Furthermore, this paper presents implications and recommendations for further research regarding using social media to implement dynamic assessment in language learning which is considered the major goal of reviewing this literature.

This research paper endeavors to evaluate, assess and assert the expediency and efficacy of employing content and language integrated learning (CLIL) in teaching Reading skills to EFL students. It is a qualitative paper which examines and underscores the usefulness of developing EFL reading comprehension skills by using the CLIL teaching. The outcome of this teaching and learning methodology is predicted and determined by presenting and evaluating considerable researches carried out in this field by eminent language researchers. These studies unequivocally demonstrate that the application of CLIL in classrooms with regard to the acquisition and retention of EFL reading and vocabulary skills among college students has proved to be very helpful and palpable. It must be understood that CLIL does not help in making the teaching content simple or revising what learners already know. CLIL courses actually blend language and content together so as to enhance the language as well as the thinking abilities of the learners. The significant amount of research interest in this subject and its growing demand as a foreign language teaching approach necessitate intensive research and analysis as to its efficacy in other parts of the world. In this context, this paper examines and validates its efficacy for the Saudi EFL learners, in view of its ostensible advantages related to language awareness and content knowledge. This paper aims to address the problems and concerns of Saudi learners and teachers of EFL, and lays down the plans to implement CLIL courses in Saudi universities for the benefit of the students in this part of the world. The research concludes by encapsulating and analyzing the researches undertaken in this field and explaining the lessons learnt by employing CLIL courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels in Saudi universities.

As far as the main purpose of teaching and learning of the Grammar of a language is concerned, it should tell the teachers and learners the principles and parameters of sentence construction in the given language, i.e. English Language in the context of the discussion in this paper. Incidentally, the grammatical device of tense becomes more important and relevant at the level of discourse and communication. However, a predominantly common approach to teaching and learning of the system of tense in English language has been to understand it in synonymous terms with the notion of three timelines of present, past and future, which poses situations of systemic difficulties and makes it confusing and misleading to comprehend and communicate sentences and utterances in terms of communicative clarity within the parametric confines of the linguistic system of the English Language. Focusing on this issue, this paper demonstrates the ways to unfold the dichotomies involved in the traditional ways of teaching and learning of the grammar of tense, times and aspects of verbal action in English Language and suggests an instructional framework to resolve the related pedagogical issues of concern.

In recent years, the rapid growth and unprecedented dominance of the English language has transformed the world's linguistic ecology and promoted anxiety and debates about its future. The language has developed into a leading international lingua franca used by millions of speakers in different linguistic and cultural contexts worldwide. This paper examines an applied linguistic conceptual interest concerning the future of English and its varieties in light of its current status, the challenges it experiences, and the conspicuous threats to half of the world's languages. The paper draws on the significance of broadening the study of the English language history by examining the linguistic consequences associated with its changes and the users' experience, expectations and attitudes. The study also calls for a better understanding of the features of lesser-known English varieties and the less researched domains of its use.

This paper investigates the prospects in the use of mother tongue as a medium of instruction in Nigeria's primary level of education. With the multilingual nature of Nigeria, many scholars have continued to clamour for the use of indigenous languages as a medium of instruction in Nigeria's primary schools. This paper also seeks to justify the reasons why mother tongue education may not be feasible in the nearest future especially with the numerous roles that the English language plays in Nigeria, and the myriads of difficulties which constitute stumbling blocks to its realization. In doing this, two research questions were generated, and data collected from 150 primary school teachers, from both private and public primary schools in Gwagwalada Area Council of Federal Capital Territory (FCT) through purposive sampling technique. The instrument for data collection is a well-structured questionnaire. The questionnaire is made up of two sections, sections A and B. Section A sought for demographic data of respondents, while section B sought for information on the factors militating against mother tongue as a medium of instruction in primary schools in Nigeria. The data collected were analyzed using Crombatch Alpha, mean and standard deviation. The result of the analysis revealed that the multilingual nature of Nigeria, and lack of names of instructional materials and science equipment in the indigenous languages are impediments to the use of mother tongue as a medium of instruction in Nigerian primary level of education.

Based on peer feedback, this paper further explores the application of peer feedback training to English writing teaching in China. From the theoretical perspective, compared with teacher feedback, peer feedback is beneficial to motivate students to take the initiative in learning, practice the student-centered concept, and promote cooperative learning among students. Peer feedback training, namely peer feedback under teacher intervention in this paper, combines the advantages of teacher feedback and peer feedback, which can not only be accepted by learners but also achieve significant pragmatic effects. From a practical point of view, peer feedback training can be applied to teach large groups of students, thus reducing the pressure and burden of teachers and improving the quality of peer feedback. The results also show that peer feedback training mainly works during the training stage rather than the modification stage. It is crucial to pay attention to the mechanism of peer feedback training and apply it to practice to promote the quality of English writing teaching.

This paper examines the linguistic barriers that impede English language communicative proficiency of the students of English language in the college of sciences and humanity studies, Thadiq, Shaqra University, Saudi Arabia. The paper gives the specific linguistic problems that detain attaining a perfect English language communicative competence. The paper also examines the teaching strategies that help students reach competency in oral skill. It concludes with some suggestions that help students to achieve a higher proficiency in English language communication.

This paper evaluates a textbook called "Traveller 4" that is used in the second grade of secondary schools in Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia, considering its general appearance and design, objectives, content, social and cultural contexts, tasks and activities, and usefulness for developing language skills. The paper also reviews the literature concerning textbook evaluation, referring to various theoretical and empirical studies that have contributed to the field of educational material evaluation. The research used a descriptive research model to assess data regarding the assessment of the English textbook and employed a questionnaire to investigate teachers' perspectives on a range of related items. The questionnaire targeted high school English teachers in Riyadh city and consisted of 40 items, which were divided into six categories. The instrument used in this study to evaluate "Traveller 4" was the ESL Textbook Evaluation Checklist. The findings of this research study revealed important points relating to the characteristics of a good textbook and identified strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities to modify the book. This paper concludes with recommendations for improving the textbook.

Writing in a second language is considered extremely challenging for several reasons. Concerns that perplex second-language learners include cognitive complications, the composing process, building arguments, and constructing an identity as a writer. Cultural issues related to writing also pose problems for second-language writers This paper focuses exclusively on how international students, female Saudi ESL students, construct their writing identity in the ESL milieu and navigate critical issues in cross-cultural writing. This paper explores how two ESL Saudi Arabian female students in an English program in the United States negotiate and construct their identities while writing in English. The study will also investigate challenges faced by those students in acquiring English writing skills and how those challenges inform their thinking and shape or reshape their identities as writers. The study involves two female Saudi students who are studying the English language at a mid-size diverse Southwest public university in the United States. The researcher collected the data through semi-structured interviews with the participants and then performed a textual analysis of their responses. The researcher transcribed and analyzed the data and describes the results thematically herein. The findings of this study augment our understanding in how female Saudi ESL students construct their identities as writers. The analysis covers some sociocultural factors that shape their writing. The paper concludes with pedagogical implications for ESL teachers and suggestions for future study.

With the plethoric number of students in Cameroonian classrooms today, there is a common cry from teachers about the impracticability of creating interactional language lessons in the English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom. The implication of this is that, if interactional lessons have been identified as cardinal in the process of language learning, our learners are not or are less likely to be learning English as a foreign language. This paper holds that no teacher will be able to create interactive lessons if they do not fully understand what it is and how it works. The paper therefore investigates student teachers' perception of interaction on a less theoretical stance to posit that their readiness to teach is governed by their perception of the concept of interaction and an understanding of how it works. Data were collected from two batches of 30 pre-students students from the Department of English at ENS Yaounde in 2018 and 2019. Upon completion of three semesters that qualify them to do practicum, they were asked to submit language lessons meant for interactive classrooms. The lessons were coded identifying trends related to interactive activities and later classified. Evidence from the data demonstrates significant recourse to previous learning culture of top-bottom lessons and high incidences of question--and-answer as a dominant pattern of interaction. In keeping with this, the paper questions the training approaches and argues that the inability of pre-service teachers to demonstrate practical understanding of classroom interaction is counterproductive to what potentially holds as language learning and that modules of training which allow teachers to seek patterns would be more productive than those which train them on classroom interaction.

English is the most common foreign language given as a class in Turkey. Although English language education has been given for many years, it is seen that there is not a desired result yet. There are many factors that affect this situation such as language, program, method, language education policies, teacher, and student. One of the factors affecting language education is the physical classroom setting. Within this context, it is searched for ideal classroom setting in language education at high schools. 22 English language teachers from 9 different high schools participated in the study. Views of teachers were reported to Word and analyzed through content analysis. In the context of the current research, it is stated that there are some technological problems, the areas where foreign language materials are exhibited in the classroom environment are limited, and the classrooms do not allow different seating arrangements. According to English language teachers, it was stated that there should be technological equipment and hardware in an ideal language learning setting, there should be sufficient areas for displaying visual materials, furniture should be flexible and classroom population should be at an ideal level. [This study was presented as a paper at the 2nd Conference of Language, Culture and Education held in Istanbul in June, 2019 at Medipol University.]

This paper attempts to examine in a descriptive way the pioneering model of "World Englishes" proposed by Kachru in the mid-1980s that allocates the presence of English into three concentric circles: The "Inner" Circle, the "Outer" Circle, and the "Expanding" Circle. The Inner Circle presents the countries where English is used as a native language and as a first language among people. These countries include the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The Outer Circle includes countries that have old historical British colonial relations and where English is commonly used in social life or the government sectors. Most of the countries that belong to this circle are former colonies of the British Empire, such as India, Malaysia, Singapore, Ghana, Kenya, and others. The usage of English in these countries is similar to what is known as English as a second language. The third circle, The Expanding Circle, includes countries that introduce English as a foreign language in schools and universities, mostly for communicating in English with the Inner and Outer Circles. Such countries include Turkey, Saudi Arabia, The Emirates, Japan, China, Korea, and others. Since its first introduction in 1985, Kachru's Three Concentric Circles Model of English Language has occasioned a great debate. Many linguists considered it one of the most influential models for understanding the use of English in different countries. Some, on the other hand, including Kachru himself, criticized the model for its oversimplification and the unclear membership to the circles. In addition to an overview of criticism on Kachru's model based on different studies, this paper tries to locate the place of ELT in Kuwait among the three circles.

This paper employs narrative discourse analysis to analyze Edger Allen Poe's short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" by using two narrative analysis frameworks that focus on the macrostructure (Stein, 1982) and microstructure (Halliday & Hasan, 1976) aspects of the story. The analysis covers the story's purpose, generic structure, and lexicogrammatical cohesion. Findings show that the writer follows a series of structural moves and uses a variety of narrative strategies (e.g. high level of involvement and a wide range of lexical and grammatical cohesive ties) which contribute to the creation of a well-formed text that has effectively achieved its purpose and made its intended effect. This paper argues that there are many ways in which this macro- and microstructure analysis of the story may be exploited in the English language classroom. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the analysis and offers some suggestions and engaging activities for language teaching purposes.

This paper first explains the concept of creativity, then reviews the domestic and foreign researches on creativity, and then discusses the importance and basic principles of cultivating creativity of middle school students. Finally, the paper puts forward the ways to cultivate the creativity of middle school students. The purpose of this paper is to promote the development of the teaching theory and the renewal of the teaching concept so as to develop the creative teaching and research learning and further improve the quality education level.

Translating religious expressions from Arabic into English seems problematic where the cultural backgrounds must be known for the translator to choose the appropriate equivalence and to help bridging the cultural gap between two cultures. As a result, this paper investigates to what extent have Venuti's strategies (domestication and foreignization) been successfully implemented in rendering the religious expressions in "Taha Hussein's The Days" ("al' ayam") by "E. H. Paxton" in the translating process. It also asserts the challenges involved in translating the Islamic religious expressions in this novel. Consequently, this paper has randomly chosen, discussed, and compared 10 Islamic expressions of Hussein's novel with their English equivalents. In addition, two Arabic raters were consulted. Venuti's (2004) domestication and foreignization method was used to analyse these examples. The study concludes that the translator uses the two methods in rendering the religious expressions. The foreignization strategy was used more than domestication. Six examples have been foreignized; whereas, four of them were domesticated. The study also reveals that the use of both strategies supplements and supports the translation accuracy. Finally, the different cultural backgrounds, religions, expressions, costumes, traditions have to be the ultimate concerns of the translators in translating the Arabic religious expressions into English language.

Translation competence has been a heated topic in recent years. Yet, business English majors (BEMs), as non-translation bilingual majors, also need training in translation competence. The paper intends to construct translation competence for BEMs through four modules: schema based on business knowledge; information types; cognitive thinking and post-editing based on machine translation. By integrating these four modules, the translation competence can be improved in a relatively short teaching time for BEMs. [The paper is one of the achievements of Innovative Projects of Colleges and Universities under the Department of Education of Guangdong Province in 2019 "On the modularized construction of Translation competence for Business English Majors Driven by Machine Translation" (Project number: 2019WTSCX024).]

In recent years, along with the development of Chinese economy, the Chinese government pays more attention to English education in ethnic minority areas. Chinese ethnic minority EFL learners' passion has reached an unprecedented level. Nevertheless, a series of complicated factors affect Chinese ethnic minority EFL learners' English pronunciation learning. The paper adopts an in-depth interview method among Yi ethnic minority EFL learners in Leshan Normal University, and analyzes the main factors that affect learners' English pronunciation learning. Finally, the paper draws a conclusion to trigger the further study.

Recent studies on language acquisition and motivation have targeted Japanese language learners in a formal educational context, with less attention paid to learners who study Japanese informally. The current study aims to investigate the impact of Japanese animations in the context of informal third language acquisition. It targets the native speakers of Arabic who are interested in learning Japanese as a third language (L3), and investigates the motivations of Arab teenagers and young adults to learn Japanese. Further, the paper also focuses on examining aspects of Japanese language proficiency among teenagers and young adults, including vocabulary enhancement and grammar competence. The methodology used in the current study is twofold: an online survey questionnaire adopted from Armour and Iida (2016), followed by an engaging experiment in which participants were divided into two groups (reality anime group vs. action anime group) in order to examine the effectiveness of anime selection in boosting proficiency level. The findings of the online survey indicate that Arabic native speakers are highly motivated to learn Japanese, while the experiment results confirm that the type of anime and consistency of exposure do support the acquisition process. Further, the study concluded that consumption of anime series contributes to the learning process and facilitates learners' proficiency in general and vocabulary learning in particular. However, it remains unknown whether or not Arabic native speakers' motivations lead to their enrollment into formal Japanese foreign language education. Avenues for future research and implications are also presented toward the end of the paper.

This paper concerns language learning with online technologies, with a particular focus on the influence of the social web on language learning. In particular, this paper considers the discourses of web-assisted language learning in detail, and argues the necessity of investigating its 'new' affordances from a perspective that is more learner-centered, contextualized and language learning focused. This paper reviewed the relatively long history of using pre- 'Web 2.0' technologies and identified the ways in which these applications have been perceived to enhance language learning. This paper enables us to think more clearly about the 'novelties' that are associated with online technologies in language learning contexts.

Encouraged by previous studies which recommended incorporating insights from Conversation Analysis (CA) into English conversation teaching to improve EFL students' oral proficiency, this paper reports on the findings from Phase I of a longitudinal study designed to investigate the impact of employing a CA-informed teaching (CA-T) model to improve Thai students' oral English proficiency. The aim of Phase I of this study was to engage local teachers in co-developing and piloting the CA-T model. In this phase, 16 purposively sampled primary and secondary English teachers from Thailand's southern provinces participated in an intensive 6-day workshop designed to (1) familiarize them with the instructional value of CA insights and key features of the CA-T model and (2) assist these teachers in creating CA-T lesson plans. Following the workshop, teachers piloted the lesson plans, provided feedback on the implementation process, reported on the perceived effects of the lessons, and offered recommendations for improving the CA-T model. This paper describes the content of the workshop, shares teachers' feedback about the CA-T lessons and implementation process, and presents preliminary findings as to the potential challenges and benefits of employing the CA-T model in Thai primary and secondary classrooms.

This paper sets out to explore English language materials development since the emergence of communicative language learning (CLT). Many pedagogical approaches have been innovated to reach the goal of CLT. It will discuss the most common approach of English language materials development used nowadays. This paper specifically introduces a new approach of English language materials development that aims to match second language acquisition principles which will optimize the language learning process. This new approach is called the Text-driven approach which aims to develop activities around an engaging text, in appose to many approaches that aims to find a text meeting their activities purpose. A full 60 minutes lesson based on this framework is presented and discussed in depth to clarify how it can facilitate language acquisition. Further research ideas are then proposed to enrich this field of study.

Online language learning had already been an increasingly popular and useful method of language acquisition prior to spike in demand for alternative learning methods brought upon by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a tool that allows learning to continue without undue risk of exposure to the virus, it has increasingly become a new normal for students around the world, and Thai EFL learners specifically. As online learning has become more widely used in response to this worldwide plight, it has become accepted as an important tool and approach that can overcome the inherent dangers and limitations present in on-campus learning. This has become accepted in educational institutions around the world and is no less true for the Thai educational system. Educational technology (EdTech) has made significant progress in recent years, moving far beyond the simple ability of communication with your professor allowed by email and more recent systems of online assignment submissions. As the sophistication of EdTech advancements grows, it's applications can be used to expand the reach and approachability of lessons beyond a formal classroom environment; thereby, increasing both the motivation and effectiveness of the learner. Modern teaching philosophy, across all subjects, actively encourages the incorporation of technology to aid in the facilitation of optimum teaching delivery. This is especially important for those teaching a new language (for our purposes, English to Thai learners), as these technological tools can facilitate greater understanding in an environment where the language barrier is otherwise an impediment. This paper looks to further analyze the effectiveness of online learning methods and tools, for both the instructors and the language learners. Furthermore, this paper will propose and review methods to integrate and use this technology in the classroom or other learning environment available. As distance learning is becoming a more prevalent methodology due to the untenable nature of holding class in enclosed, densely packed, spaces (i.e., your standard classroom), knowing more of both the technologies and their effectiveness in a language learning environment is of paramount importance. In this paper, the terms online instruction and integration are widely used and their use in the context of language learning is provided. This paper also explores the EdTech and devices relevant to the discussion and provides explanations of their use. To provide a proper foundation, we will also be discussing prior literature and findings pertaining to the use of technology in the context of English language learning. This paper will also provide and discuss the reaction and results obtained from online language learners using the proposed medium. These results were gathered from a combination of recorded online observations and measured learning outcome objectives. From the combination of material provided, studied, and analyzed, this paper concludes with a presentation of potential methods that may help instructors improve the English language acquisition of their students.

Strong claims are made regarding the significant role that multiword sequences play in the comprehension and production of speech and writing. Although the literature is replete with research-informed, evidence-based guidelines on how to maximize the learning of such sequences, such guidelines need to be synthesized, analyzed and evaluated for learning purposes. This paper attempts to fill this gap, addressing the numerous instructional options that ESL/EFL practitioners, curriculum designers and materials authors have at their disposal while dealing with lexically bundled sequences in several learning contexts. Another purpose of this paper, is to explain the problems that may arise as a result of teaching these sequences and the ways to solve them. The bulk of discussion will be centered on the tasks, activities and techniques suggested by researchers for deepening learners' understanding of these patterns across a wide range of contexts.

After thirty years of development, the teaching of interpreting in China has achieved a moderate scale giving the credit to the growing demand for interpreting talents, as well as the spread of interpreting teaching among universities. This study reviewed the papers on interpreting teaching research published for the past decade in China covered by Chinese Social Sciences Citation Index (CSSCI) of foreign languages and education studies, explored the quantity of publications, source journals, authors, institutions and research hotspots by CiteSpace, depicted the mapping knowledge domain and analyzed the problems of the current research. Through bibliometric analysis, it is found that (1) High-level interpreting teaching research papers are produced in limited quantities; (2) Interpreting teaching research in China has not yet formed an independent research field; (3) The traits of interpreting discipline are not obvious enough; (4) The cross-sectional research and the longitudinal study have not been widely concerned; (5) The research on the backwash effect of interpreting tests are few; (6) The research on interpreting teaching at universities of applied sciences are limited. Based on the research findings, reference for further study of interpreting teaching would be provided.

This paper, taking linguistic theory of adaptation as its theoretical foundation, examines how courtroom questioning on the part of the judge is adapted to various contextual factors in legal setting. To account for the judge's adaptation to the legal procedures in courtroom questioning, three types of questions are found as specific choices at different stages of courtroom trial. By choosing key-word questions, confirmation questions and consultative questions in accordance with the different legal procedures, the judge can decide a case confidently, therefore the institutional goal of solemnity, impartiality and effectiveness are achieved satisfactorily. This paper provides a new understanding of courtroom questioning in Chinese context, which will be a contribution to the general research on forensic linguistics and a pragmatic approach to the rhetoric of questioning in general.

This paper analyzes the phenomenon that reducing hours of EFL instruction to non-English majors in Chinese universities gets no response. It first depicts the phenomenon, pointing out that this phenomenon differs greatly from people's response to similar events that happened in the past. It then analyzes the complicated underlying factors from perspectives of main stakeholders including university authorities, school deans and teachers, and those from the perspective of students, revealing their diversified thoughts and feelings towards the reduction of EFL instruction hours. Based on the analysis, this paper thinks that it's not a thoroughly rational policy. In hope of minimizing the possible negative impact of the widely implemented policy, this paper proposes three suggestions for EFL instruction practice: Stratified instruction based on university-designed proficiency tests, communication oriented small-class instruction and teacher-guided autonomous learning.

This study explored the sub-strategies Saudi English majors use most when consulting the dictionary. In particular, it looked at the aspects of the dictionary use strategy relevant to the dictionary itself rather than the lookup words (mainly purposes for consulting the dictionary, means of dictionary ownership and type of dictionary consulted). The participants were 90 English major students enrolled in an English undergraduate program at the Department of European Languages at King Abdulaziz University, Saudi Arabia. A survey questionnaire adapted from the literature was used to collect data for the study. The results showed that the learners' strategic preferences were largely affected by the features they liked (e.g. free dictionaries, the ease of use and search as well as portability of tech-based digital dictionaries) or disliked (e.g. the difficulty of search and use in paper dictionaries as well as their heavy weight and high thickness) most about dictionaries. Thus, they preferred to either download dictionary apps to their phones from application stores or go online whenever they needed to consult a dictionary for a word. Moreover, in terms of dictionary types, learners favored the bilingual English-Arabic dictionary (language-wise), dictionary apps and online dictionaries (medium-wise) and the ordinary dictionary (content-wise). Also, they consulted the dictionary no more than five times a day and tended to look up more words when consulting tech-based (digital) dictionaries than when using paper dictionaries. Finally, they used their dictionaries mainly to understand new words while reading.

A very important element of formative assessment is giving and receiving feedback. However, most teachers face difficulty in giving students feedback due to various reasons, such as the large number of students in class that makes it time consuming for them to do so. Fortunately, students themselves can be excellent sources of feedback through self-assessment, through which the students would reflect on the quality of their work, judge the degree to which their work reflects explicitly stated goals or criteria, and revise their work if necessary. Under the right conditions, student self-assessment can provide accurate, useful information to promote learning. Self-assessment can also be effective in English language learning, such as: motivating students to learn and reflect on their own English learning; promote critical thinking and reflective practices in learning English; scaffold knowledge of English learning from different English language skills; develop a sense of autonomy in their own learning English; and foster commitment in learning English among many others. This conceptual paper thus seeks to explore the potentials of using self-assessment in English language learning. In this paper, the concept and underlying principles of self-assessment will be introduced. Next, the review of past studies on self-assessment in the context of teaching and learning English as a second or English as a foreign language (ESL/EFL) will be explained. Later, the advantages and disadvantages of using self-assessment in the classroom will be discussed. In the final section, recommendations will be given for the implementation of self-assessment in learning English as a second language (ESL) classrooms.