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Even though the field of applied linguistics has witnessed a growth of research in the areas of comprehension (listening and reading) subskills, there is currently no universally accepted taxonomy for categorizing them. Using a dataset of 192 publications, a document co-citation analysis was conducted. Eighteen discrete research clusters were identified, comprising 73 empirically investigated comprehension subskills, of which 55 were related to first language (L1) comprehension and 18 were associated with second language (L2) comprehension. Fifteen research clusters (83.33%) were focused on lower-order L1 processing abilities in reading such as orthographic processing and speeded word reading. The remaining three clusters were relatively small, and focused on L2 comprehension subskills. The list of subskills was visualized in the form of a codex that serves as the first integrative framework for empirically investigated comprehension subskills and processing abilities. The need for conducting experimental investigations to improve the understanding of L2 comprehension subskills was highlighted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Students highly favor a blend of online anonymous and face-to-face peer review modes. • In a blended peer review, students benefit from both objectivity and interactivity. • The blended peer review mode optimises the efficiency of peer review practices. • The blended peer review mode effectively accommodates different learning needs. • The findings provide critical pedagogical insights to inform peer review instructions. The importance of peer review practice in writing courses has been strongly supported by pedagogical research. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, this study investigated three peer review modes in an undergraduate academic writing course through the lens of students' writing performances and perceptions. The three modes are (i) face-to-face peer review (F2F), (ii) anonymous computer-mediated peer review (CMPR), and (iii) blended peer review (a blend of F2F and anonymous CMPR). Three classes enrolled in an academic writing course participated in this study. Students' assignments were collected to analyze their writing performances. Focus group discussions (FGDs) were administered to investigate students' perceptions of the peer review modes, including their perceived usefulness of the feedback and the review processes. The findings show that the students' writing performances significantly improved after the peer review session in all three peer review modes, with the anonymous CMPR and the blended mode showing stronger effectiveness as compared to the F2F mode. The participants generally preferred the blended mode, which addresses the limitations of both F2F and anonymous CMPR by leveraging the merits of both. We propose the use of the blended peer review mode to accommodate different learning needs and maximize the effectiveness of peer review practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Developmental disabilities have been largely studied in the past years. Their etiological mechanisms have been underpinned to the interactions between genetic and environmental factors. These factors show variability across the world. Thus, it is important to understand where the set of knowledge obtained on developmental disabilities originates from and whether it is generalizable to low- and middle-income countries.Aims: This study aims to understand the origins of the available literature on developmental disabilities, keeping a focus on parenting, and identify the main trend of research.Methods and Procedure: A sample of 11,315 publications from 1936 to 2020 were collected from Scopus and a graphical country analysis was conducted. Furthermore, a qualitative approach enabled the clustering of references by keywords into four main areas: "Expression of the disorder", "Physiological Factors", "How it is studied" and "Environmental factors". For each area, a document co-citation analysis (DCA) on CiteSpace software was performed.Outcomes and Results: Results highlight the leading role of North America in the study of developmental disabilities. Trends in the literature and the documents' scientific relevance are discussed in details.Conclusions and Implications: Results demand for investigation in different socio-economical settings to generalize our knowledge. What this paper adds? The current paper tries to provide insight into the origins of the literature on developmental disabilities with a focus on parenting, together with an analysis of the trends of research in the field. The paper consisted of a multi-disciplinary and multi-method review. In fact, the review tried to integrate the analysis of the relation between developmental disabilities with a closer look at the scientific contributions to the field across the world. Specifically, the paper integrates a total of 11,315 papers published on almost a century of research (from 1936 to 2020). An initial qualitative analysis on keywords was combined to a subsequent quantitative approach in order to maximize the comprehension of the impact of almost a century of scientific contributions. Specifically, documents were studied with temporal and structural metrics on a scientometric approach. This allowed the exploration of patterns within the literature available on Scopus in a quantitative way. This method not only assessed the importance of single documents within the network. As a matter of fact, the document co-citation analysis used on CiteSpace software provided insight into the relations existing between multiple documents in the field of research. As a result, the leading role of North America in the literature of developmental disabilities and parenting emerged. This was accompanied by the review of the main trends of research within the existing literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on providing feedback on public speaking has investigated the effectiveness of feedback sources, namely teacher feedback, peer feedback, and self-feedback, in enhancing public speaking competence, predominantly individually. However, how these sources of feedback can be collectively harnessed to optimize learner engagement and public speaking performance still warrants further investigation. Adopting a pre- and post-test quasi-experimental design, this study randomly assigned four classes to four feedback conditions: Group 1 received teacher feedback, Group 2 self-feedback and teacher feedback, Group 3 peer and teacher feedback, and Group 4 feedback from all three sources. Both student engagement, measured using the Public Speaking Feedback Engagement Scale (PSFES), and their public speaking performance ratings, assessed using the Public Speaking Competency Instrument (PSCI), were validated using Rasch analysis. The inferential statistics revealed that Group 3 showed significant improvements across nearly all three dimensions of engagement, whereas Group 2 experienced significant declines in all dimensions of engagement except behavioral engagement. Group 3 demonstrated significantly greater engagement gain compared to Groups 2 and 4, indicating the synergistic effect of peer and teacher feedback in contrast to the limited impact of self-feedback. Additionally, all groups demonstrated significant improvements except for Group 2, which showed significantly lower improvement compared to Group 4. The following correlation analysis identified a significant correlation between the gain of students' behavioral engagement and the gain of public speaking performance, whereas such association was absent between cognitive or emotional engagement and public speaking competence. This study suggests that peer feedback should be preceded by group discussion and supplemented with teacher feedback in classes for enhancing the teacher-student dialog, while self-feedback should be conducted after class to improve student engagement and public speaking performance.

To investigate the reliability of L2 listening tests and explore potential factors affecting the reliability, a reliability generalization (RG) meta-analysis was conducted in the present study. A total number of 122 alpha coefficients of L2 listening tests from 92 published articles were collected and submitted to a linear mixed effects RG analysis. The papers were coded based on a coding scheme consisting of 16 variables classified into three categories: study features, test features, and statistical results. The results showed an average reliability of 0.818 (95% CI: 0.803 to 0.833), with 40% of reliability estimates falling below the lower bound of CI. The presence of publication bias and heterogeneity was found in the reliability of L2 listening tests, indicating that low reliability coefficients were likely omitted from some published studies. In addition, two factors predicting the reliability of L2 listening tests were the number of items and test type (standardized and researcher- or teacher-designed tests). The study also found that reliability is not a moderator of the relationship between L2 listening scores and theoretically relevant constructs. Reliability induction was identified in reporting the reliability of L2 listening tests, too. Implications for researchers and teachers are discussed.

This quasi-experimental study aimed to determine the relationship between (i) oral language ability and emotions represented by facial emotions, and (ii) modality of assessment (audios versus videos) and sentiments embedded in each modality. Sixty university students watched and/or listened to four selected audio-visual stimuli and orally answered follow-up comprehension questions. One stimulus was designed to evoke happiness while the other, sadness. Participants' facial emotions during the answering were measured using the FaceReader technology. In addition, four trained raters assessed the responses of the participants. An analysis of the FaceReader data showed that there were significant main and interaction effects of sentiment and modality on participants' facial emotional expression. Notably, there was a significant difference in the amount of facial emotions evoked by (i) the happy vs. sad sentiment videos and (ii) video vs. audio modalities. In contrast, sentiments embedded in the stimuli and modalities had no significant effect on the measured speaking performance of the participants. Nevertheless, we found a number of significant correlations between the participants' test scores and some of their facial emotions evoked by the stimuli. Implications of these findings for the assessment of oral communication are discussed., Competing Interests: Conflict of InterestNone., (© This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply 2022.)