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Managing communications have effectively been a key leadership and management skills of a teacher. Many problems, in and out of the educational institutions, can be directly traced to whether the information was communicated, how it was communicated, and who communicated it. This paper reviews and discusses effective communication in educational settings and its necessity intended for professional and institutional growth and development. Theory adaptation method was used for conceptualizing this paper. For this various theories viewed and adapted and make improvements, and by revising the existing ones as on the author's viewpoint. In the education system teachers has to perform multiple roles. Communicative efficiency acts as a basic factor for performing all these roles. Though, teaching, educational leadership or management and communication are inseparable. One's ability to energize, inspire, and arouse pupil to ever higher levels of performance is directly related to their capability to communicate. These competent human resources are the asset for institutional growth and development.

The research study intends to determine the effectiveness of authentic digital storytelling as an alternative strategy to improve speaking in EFL classes at the university level. The research follows a quantitative paradigm, and a survey was first administered to capture participants' perceptions of the everyday speaking activities employed in classes. Most of the participants acknowledged the importance of authentic communicative strategies to improve oral skills; however, in practice, both teachers and students believed that the strategies used in class are not authentic and communicative at all. Based on the survey results, authentic digital storytelling was introduced to determine if it improves students' oral skills, specifically speaking. A pretest and posttest activity was applied using a rubric that assessed the student's sense of organization, quality of language used, mode of delivery, supporting material used, and the central message's quality to determine the effectiveness of using digital storytelling as a communicative strategy. The significant findings show that authentic digital storytelling significantly improved students' speaking skills; however, its implementation required teachers' willingness to apply novel communicative strategies inside and outside the classroom.

This study, it was aimed to reveal the views of parents and teachers about the usage of social media tools in school-family communication. In this study, which was carried out with the phenomenological method, which is one of the qualitative research methods, the data were collected using a semi-structured interview form. As a result of the content analysis conducted on the data obtained, it was concluded that social media tools, especially WhatsApp, are widely used in school-family communication. It has been found that the advantages of these tools are free, fast, and easy to use, and they prevent waste of time and workload by sending mass messages. The disadvantages were determined to be used out of purpose and timeless, causing misunderstanding and violation of privacy. Participants suggested that while using these tools, they should not deviate from their purpose, some restrictions in terms of time and content should be introduced and their use should be expanded. The results obtained are expected to contribute significantly to the studies to be done to increase family participation in education and the practices to be developed in this sense.

Enrolling in publicly funded early childhood education involves searching for programs, applying, verifying eligibility, and registering with the program. Many families do not complete this process, despite demonstrated interest. In this study, we assessed support for families as they verify eligibility as a means for increasing enrollment completion rates. Working with district administrators, we randomly assigned families to receive either (a) the district's usual, modest communications; (b) the usual communications plus weekly text message reminders with a formal tone; or (c) the usual communications plus weekly personalized, friendly text message reminders. Text message reminders increased verification rates by seven percentage points (regardless of tone), and personalized messages increased enrollment rates for some groups. Exchanges between parents and administrators revealed the obstacles parents confronted.

Enrolling in publicly funded early childhood education involves searching for programs, applying, verifying eligibility, and registering with the program. Many families do not complete this process, despite demonstrated interest. In this study, we assessed support for families as they verify eligibility as a means for increasing enrollment completion rates. Working with district administrators, we randomly assigned families to receive either (a) the district's usual, modest communications; (b) the usual communications plus weekly text message reminders with a formal tone; or (c) the usual communications plus weekly personalized, friendly text message reminders. Text message reminders increased verification rates by seven percentage points (regardless of tone), and personalized messages increased enrollment rates for some groups. Exchanges between parents and administrators revealed the obstacles parents confronted. [This article was published in "Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis" (EJ1262521).]

This study aimed at the analysis of syntactic errors in translation done by both bilingual and monolingual EFL learners. Research on the subject of the study implied that there might be differences between monolinguals and bilingual learners of foreign languages. The gaps of studies on differences between monolinguals and bilingual's translations from Persian into English language presumed as research question of the study. Through a quantitative and experimental analysis, the researcher collected data from two universities of IAU of South Tehran (monolingual) and Jihad University of Kermanshah (bilingual) using students majoring in translation studies. The OPT test was applied to specify eligible students for the study and then a Persian literary text was offered to students to measure their syntactic errors as introduced by Keshavarz's (1996) model of error analysis. From 100 participants 36 monolinguals and 24 bilinguals were eligible for the study whose translations were scored by the two raters. The results of the study indicated that there is a significant difference between the scores of monolingual and bilingual translators. In addition, the rate of literal errors and approximation was more than other errors that were reported as the result of language learning strategies and communicative strategies. However, new studies are suggested to investigate the types of errors made by monolinguals and bilinguals and graduate students with advanced level of language learning.

Science communication aims to equip the public to become critical consumers of, advocates for, and sometimes producers of science. However, many studies suggest that audiences participating in such programs already benefit from strong cultural messages and social resources that encourage their engagement with science. The field is thus seeking to develop new models of science communication that can engage those who do not already seek out science engagement opportunities. In this article, we share findings from a study of an emerging sector of science communication that stages events in non-science settings, such as nightclubs or music festivals. In particular, we examine a science communication program that leverages the genre of immersive storyworlds to engage non-science-seeking audiences at an annual country fair. Leveraging Bakhtin's conceptualization of carnival as a theoretical lens, we ask the questions: How do immersive storyworlds operate to attract and engage non-science seeking public audiences in science conversations? In what ways do immersive storyworlds afford opportunities for participants to see science in relationship to themselves? We find that the storyworld creates an aesthetically and emotionally saturated context, with improvisational roles and routines that accommodate diverse perspectives and position participants' prior experiences and interests as the means for productive participation. Jointly producing the storyworld affords opportunities for belonging, which in turn appear to support sustained science conversations among participants and science communicators. The study contributes to the nascent evidence base for how such approaches might serve as an inclusive form of science communication, in particular by proposing new ways to think about "belonging" in science.

The internationalization of Anglophone universities could allow English-dominant students to benefit from experience with English speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds, but US students have often complained of difficulty communicating with such instructors, especially International Teaching Assistants (ITAs). Research has largely focused on helping ITAs assimilate linguistically and culturally, although many applied linguists suggest that ITAs' students would also benefit from training in skills for communication across linguistic difference, through attention to their language attitudes, familiarity with diverse Englishes, and communication strategies. We report on an intervention designed to address all three, here focusing on students' willingness to engage in collaborative communication strategies. The intervention, conducted in a computer science department and reaching over 300 first-year students from varied linguistic backgrounds, included an online and an in-class component, each lasting about an hour. This brief intervention resulted in small but significant gains in domestic undergraduates' (n = 174) stated intention to engage in collaborative behavior with their ITAs, although our detailed examination of qualitative responses suggests important areas for continued improvement of the intervention. We discuss the potential for such interventions to facilitate institutional and cultural change, encouraging the recognition of the shared responsibility for successful communication.

To expand the field component of our secondary education program, we added service-learning field experiences to three courses. This qualitative study (n = 99) was designed to determine what our students learned from participating in these experiences and to examine whether the experiences supported our programmatic goals. The findings demonstrate that students developed an increased awareness of diversity in the local schools and community, they acquired knowledge of strategies for engaging and communicating with parents, they developed a more nuanced understanding of learners, and they improved their foundation of effective pedagogy for English language learners.

Objectives: The incidence of type 2 diabetes in UK Black African and Caribbean communities is up to three times higher than in the general population, and engagement with self-management advice is poorer. This study explores the perspective of those living with diabetes to understand how the cultural salience of advice could be improved. Design: Participants were recruited via community venues, faith institutions and primary care. Eight focus groups were conducted with 41 individuals (Black African n = 23, Black Caribbean n = 18). Grounded theory methods were used for analysis. Results: Although motivated to manage the condition, individuals experienced a misalignment between elements of the care provision and cultural norms. Explanatory models of diabetes differed from the biomedical model reducing trust in treatment protocols. A lack of cultural salience reduced the accessibility of advice. Furthermore, elements of self-management advice were seen to conflict directly with some cultural traditions and practices. Individuals had to reconcile the two perspectives in order to proceed with self-management, often prioritising cultural norms and advice from informal sources over healthcare advice. Building personal relationships with the healthcare team improved trust and engagement. Conclusion: Findings suggest the needs in these communities were not being fully met. The healthcare interaction was pivotal in improving trust and engagement and reducing misinformation. However, appropriately informed community support also offers the potential to mitigate misalignment and to improve equity of access.

Schools and school districts are key to U.S. vaccination policies: They communicate immunization enrollment requirements and enforce them during registration. This article presents a mixed-methods study of how Michigan's 537 districts communicate about vaccine mandates through public-facing websites. It reports the results of a qualitative analysis (n = 50) of websites from Southeast Michigan and a quantitative analysis of all (n = 537) Michigan's district websites. School district websites engage in diverse health promotion practices surrounding immunization, from encouraging vaccination to neutral messaging and to encouraging exemptions. Most provide scant immunization information and few promote the importance of immunization for individual and community health. We recommend that school nurses, district staff, and health authorities collaborate to ensure that school district communication promotes immunization and does not promote nonmedical exemptions. This can lead schools to embrace immunization as an essential activity for their own functioning rather than as an unwelcome requirement imposed by outside agents.

Virtual humans are virtual characters within multimedia learning environments designed to aid the learning process. While there is a large variety of research examining how to design the physical appearance of the character or the teaching strategies it should embody, there is comparatively little work around the design of the narrative the virtual human uses to communicate with the learner. In this study, we examine the use of four different types of text structures to structure the character's narrative in an instructional video: expository, refutation text, deep reasoning questions, and refutation text and deep reasoning questions; and their effects on learning, perceptions, attitudes, and emotions about genetically modified foods. Our results largely indicated no significant differences between the different communication strategies. We hypothesize that the length, dosage, and pacing of the intervention could explain why we did not see benefits from the different narrative structures that have been found in other contexts.

Design thinking, broadly understood as an organizational and entrepreneurial process aimed at innovative problem solving, has been productively incorporated by scholar-teachers in rhetoric, writing studies, and technical communication. Business communication offers similar opportunities. After briefly explaining design thinking and reviewing related scholarship and pedagogy, the article traces the process of creating an innovative course in business communication through each phase or mode of this recursive method: empathizing with users, defining the problem, ideating and prototyping solutions, and testing and evaluating the prototypes. The article positions course design as a project grounded in radical collaboration, with diverse colleagues as well as students.

The study aims to examine how higher education institutions (HEIs) in three countries responded to the challenges of COVID-19 over a six-month period at the outbreak of the global pandemic. Employing document analysis, we examined 732 publicly available communications from 27 HEIs in Canada, China, and the USA. Through theoretical frameworks of crisis management and Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), we explore how HEIs respond to the pandemic and protect campus stakeholders. The study revealed common patterns in communication strategies during different stages of the pandemic that include accepting responsibility, emotional reassurance, and compensating victims. It also revealed key differences across social contexts and environments and distinct leadership styles. Findings offer insight into how HEIs communicated at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic and inform the application of SCCT and crisis management theory to institutional behavior in the context of prolonged and intersecting disasters.

This mixed-methods study analyzed how elementary-school children translated while reading Spanish-English dual-language books (DLBs). Specifically, it investigated the types of strategies students used to translate words in DLBs, strategies' success, and differences in strategy use based on grade, home language(s), and oral reading accuracy. Sixty-three Spanish-English biliterate third and fifth graders participated in the study. Verbal protocols/think-alouds explaining their translation strategies were analyzed qualitatively using discourse analysis and quantitatively to establish trends. Findings suggest that strategies used most frequently by third graders and/or students with lower oral reading accuracies focused on textual features, whereas strategies used most frequently by fifth graders and/or students with higher accuracies were informed by linguistic knowledge. Results discuss how strategies reflect developing metalinguistic knowledge, linguistic assumptions, and ways that participants drew upon their linguistic repertoires to translate and engage in translanguaging. Also discussed are instructional implications for supporting biliteracy development and for dual-language programs.

Organizational silos have long existed within juvenile justice, presenting a barrier to the provision of effective services and support for the youth in these settings. The present article documents the formation of a Juvenile Justice Community of Practice to address the division and the subsequent dissemination of a survey to better understand how individuals from different silos and in different positions perceive the problems and solutions facing the field. Using organizational theory and constant comparative method, our analysis indicates that survey participants from different silos agreed on broad issues but diverged in their perception of discrete and specific problems. This discord across silos interfered with creating a shared understanding of problems, leaving them unaddressed. Recommendations call for better collaboration, including more shared responsibility and alignment on goals, as well as strategies to achieve shared goals.

A new study reveals four responses school leaders typically take toward conflict among students--but one rises above the rest for success. Research shows that community-driven responses to acts of intolerance can reenforce a school culture of inclusivity. Researchers John Rogers and Joseph Kahne present case studies from schools across the country that offer various views on what this strategy looks like in practice.

This paper argues that applied ethics can itself be morally problematic. As illustrated by the case of Peter Singer's criticism of social practice, morally loaded communication by applied ethicists can lead to protests, backlashes, and aggression. By reviewing the psychological literature on self-image, collective identity, and motivated reasoning three categories of morally problematic consequences of ethical criticism by applied ethicists are identified: serious psychological discomfort, moral backfiring, and hostile conflict. The most worrisome is moral backfiring: psychological research suggests that ethical criticism of people's central moral convictions can reinforce exactly those attitudes. Therefore, applied ethicists unintentionally can contribute to a consolidation of precisely those social circumstances that they condemn to be unethical. Furthermore, I argue that the normative concerns raised in this paper are not dependent on the commitment to one specific paradigm in moral philosophy. Utilitarianism, Aristotelian virtue ethics, and Rawlsian contractarianism all provide sound reasons to take morally problematic consequences of ethical criticism seriously. Only the case of deontological ethics is less clear-cut. Finally, I point out that the issues raised in this paper provide an excellent opportunity for further interdisciplinary collaboration between applied ethics and social sciences. I also propose strategies for communicating ethics effectively.

Election campaigns are constantly regarded as a persuasive campaign to convince the nation to vote for the leader of a country. Being said such, this study investigates the discourse of twitter of two political premiers in Asia: Former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Tun Razak (henceforth, Najib) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi (henceforth, Modi), in the aspects of discursive strategies and speech acts during election campaigns. The discourse of Najib and Modi are selected due to their active participation on Twitter throughout election campaigns. The data were collected over 3 months throughout the national elections of both the countries, which were from February to April 2013 in Malaysia and January to March 2014 in India. This qualitative study employs Wodak's discursive strategies to analyze the lexical choices utilized in the election tweets and Searle's speech act taxonomy to analyze the speech acts used. The presence of two major speech acts was highlighted during the elections: commissives and directives. These two speech acts collaborated under the hood of discursive strategies of predication and perspectivation that empowered Najib and Modi to establish a strong contact with citizens while creating a sense of integrity and oneness. This study is significant as it creates political and language awareness to citizens by denoting how political figures establish power through mutual consent with citizens using Twitter. Furthermore, this study enlightens citizens on how the 140-character tool can influence the political decision-making of a community.

Numerous studies have attested to the consensus-orientation and cooperative nature of English as a lingua franca (ELF) interactions. However, limited attention has been given to moments of disagreements in ELF communication, with most of the little existing work focusing on disagreements in ELF academic or informal contexts. Consequently, little is known about how ELF users display disagreement in real-life business contexts. For this reason, this study examined disagreement expressions in five ELF business meetings drawn from the VOICE corpus to understand the nature of disagreement in ELF interactions. Following the identification of disagreement instances, the study used Stalpers's (1995) framework to investigate whether the disagreement was accompanied by a mitigation strategy that reduces its impact. It was found that the examined ELF business speakers express their disagreement in both mitigated and unmitigated forms with a marked preference for using mitigated expressions, indicating that the appropriate linguistic choice for expressing disagreements in a between-company business meeting is a mitigated disagreement form. Another main finding is the frequent use of disagreement utterances, suggesting that ELF speakers do not merely seek consensus, but they also raise objections and state their different opinions. One implication of these findings is that ELF encounters might not be as consensus-seeking and mutually supportive as suggested in previous works. Taken together, the findings of the present study extended the existing body of work on ELF disagreement and, in general, added further to our understanding of ELF interaction.

Code-switching is related to the shift between the first and second languages done by the speakers in conversational contexts. Based on the theories of code-switching, second language learners frequently apply their first language when communicating with others to deliver the messages clearly, maintain group solidarity, and avoid unintended misunderstandings. This paper investigated some factors influencing the use of code-switching in foreign/second language learning processes. Data were collected through a classroom survey and interviews with 12 English Education Master's Program students of Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta. Qualitative content analysis was applied to obtain clearer interpretations. The results showed the lecturers and students utilized code-switching more sensibly in the second language classroom context. Further, code-switching will be better to be implemented in informal social interactions rather than foreign/second language classroom settings since it will hamper EFL learners' success in attaining more fruitful target language competencies.

The purpose of this study was to develop teacher-parent communication competence scale in order to measure the communication competences utilized by teachers while communicating with the parents of their students. In the development phase of the scale, an item pool was generated and draft form was designed which were later subjected to expert opinion for content and face validity. The finalized scale was administered to 196 teachers teaching fourth and fifth grade students, and explanatory factor analysis was performed. As a result of these procedures, 4 factors including 33 items in total were generated in the "teacher-parent communication competence scale". Apart from these, the reliability coefficients (Cronbach's [alpha]) of all scales and their sub-dimensions, factor-based differentiation operations, matter-remaining and matter-total correlations were calculated. After all these validity and reliability processes, it was concluded that the scale is valid in determining teacher-parent communication competences.

Today, organizations have to give a positive image to their internal and external stakeholders. There is a need for a positive image for employees to strive for the benefit of the organization. The aim of this study is to determine the relationship between the perception of organizational image and organizational citizenship behavior of academicians. In order to address this objective the organizational image questionnaire which was developed by Uluçay (2012), and organizational citizenship questionnaire which was developed for higher education institutions by Tasçi and Koç (2007) were used. The questionnaire was applied to 340 academicians. The results show that organizational image perception of the academicians differs significantly according to gender and type of university. According to the findings, organizational image perceptions of female academicians are higher than male academicians, and it is found that organizational image of foundation universities is higher compared to state universities. Also, there is a significant relationship between academicians' organizational citizenship behavior and certain variables such as age, vocational seniority and working year in university. As academicians' age, professional seniority and working year in university increase, so does their performance of organizational citizenship behavior. The results show that there is a positive relationship between organizational citizenship behavior and organizational image.

While the bond between teachers and students continues to remain at the center of any quality education, of late technology has played an expanding role in reshaping instruction, daily operations, facilities management, as well as communication within and outside of schools. As it would happen, much of the innovation education increasingly relies upon is actually driven by designers and distributors largely responding to market forces more so than educational pedagogy, research or policy. This research-based policy-centered article concerns itself with how well educational leaders have kept up with technological innovation, including how communication has or has not been addressed from a school governance standpoint. Specifically, it presents direct findings from a newly completed study in Arizona that focused on parent perceptions and the implications of digitally-based communication efforts between schools and home. This original research was limited to Arizona, though it revealed multiple areas where policy may easily overlook important elements of the bond between educators and parents in addition to legal requirements tied to federal funds. Ultimately this article advances important policy and practice considerations aimed at helping to ensure a quality working relationship with parents and guardians.

Since its inception, pragmatic competence has been studied vastly; the majority of these studies, however, have examined pragmatic production, and pragmatic comprehension is chiefly under-researched. This lack of adequate research also stands true for the underlying pragmatic comprehension processes and strategies. Therefore, the present investigation aimed to find out L2 pragmatic comprehension strategies used by 40 (F=20, M=20) Iranian EFL learners and to discover whether there would be any differences between interlanguage pragmatic comprehension strategies used by male and female learners. Participants, selected based on stratified random sampling, were chosen on the basis of their performance on a paper-based TOEFL out of the initial sample of 90 students. Three data collection instruments were employed: a validated pragmatic test (Tajeddin & Ahmadi Safa, 2010), concurrent verbal think-aloud protocols, and retrospective verbal think-aloud protocols. Data analysis revealed three classes of pragmatic comprehension strategies. First, socio-pragmatic strategies that included politeness, formality, indirectness, and distance/power influences. Second, lexico-pragmatic strategies which were more frequent than grammatical strategies in the second category. Third, the cognitive strategies that comprised both top-down and bottom-up processing strategies in L2 pragmatic comprehension. Furthermore, it was found that gender did not play any significant role in the use of pragmatic comprehension strategies. Study findings suggest that explicit teaching of pragmatic comprehension strategies helps learners promote their L2 pragmatic comprehension.

This study examined the preferences of high school seniors (N = 2901) for receiving college and career information, an area not well-studied previously. Key findings are: Parents and peers are rated to be very helpful sources of college and career information; school counselors are a helpful source of information for first-generation and low-income students; and the internet is a helpful source of information, but email and one-on-one are more preferred sources of information. The findings of this study are useful for K-12 education, college access, and higher education professionals to consider when developing policies and programs to provide college and career information to students.

The hospitality industry is one of Thailand's most important sectors that contributes to the national economy. Human capital has become so vital that a strong foundation and development of undergraduate students in this discipline are needed. Their internship experience is part of the process of learning and integrating their knowledge into practice, especially concerning intercultural communicative encounters. There are, however, few studies related to this particular issue. This research aims to study Thai undergraduate hotel interns' intercultural communication challenges and strategies while undertaking their internship at an in-house hotel training center located on a university campus. Drawing upon a mixed-method approach based on questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, the results based on calculated mean scores suggest that the interns ranked five intercultural communicative strategies from highest to lowest as follows: (i) critical cultural awareness ([x-bar] = 3.94), (ii) attitudes ([x-bar]= 3.81), (iii) knowledge ([x-bar]= 3.71), (iv) skills to interpret and relate (x¯ = 3.63), and (v) skills to discover and interact ([x-bar] = 3.62). This study suggests that academic programs should equip Thai undergraduate hotel interns with proficiency in foreign languages and cultures, problem-solving skills, and cross-cultural and interpersonal understanding. This study contributes to awareness and the need to incorporate intercultural communicative competence into the hospitality programs that can produce graduates who are well-equipped and prepared for multilingual and multicultural working environments.

The present study aims to identify the factors that can potentially affect code switching in a college classroom in Malaysia. The participants were twenty bilingual international students enrolled in an English course in Malaysia. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews with the participating students. The findings of the study indicated that the main factor behind code switching among the students was incompetence in the second language. Other factors that could account for code switching were maintaining privacy, the ease of speaking in the first language compared to speaking in English, avoiding misunderstanding, and unfamiliarity with similar words in English. Therefore, code switching was found to be an effective strategy used by the students to make their intended meaning explicit and to transmit some knowledge to other students in classroom interactions. This study provides some implications for English teaching community including language learners, teachers, and curriculum developers.

This teacher reflection includes tips on family communication during a crisis. The reflection includes notes from the field on the transition to digital learning due to COVID and how to increase family communication when students are not able to be physically present in school.

This paper details an experiential influencer marketing project in which students acted as micro-influencers to develop and promote their personal brands using social media accounts and blogs. Students reflected on their strategic decisions and performance in six weekly Slack posts. The pre-launch preparation, along with students' successes, challenges, and overall feedback are presented. Considerations for professors teaching Generation Z students social media marketing are described. The project empowered students to experiment with social media marketing strategies and tactics in a real, hands-on environment. They considered the assignment a powerful, valuable, relevant, and applicable learning experience.

Growing interest in online learning has instructors looking for new ways to engage learners in asynchronous discussions. Building on experiences with hashtag use to connect on social media platforms, the purpose of this study is to investigate the contexts of hashtag use and its associated impact on learner engagement in asynchronous online discussions. In more detail, this mixed-methods case study will answer the following questions: 1) How and in what context do students use hashtags in online discussions? and 2) In what ways, if any, does the use of hashtags promote engagement in an online community? Findings suggest that while classifying and organizing course information was a strong motivator for tagging posts, hashtags were also used to connect to others in the learning community, express opinions, and encourage knowledge building. The results from our study contribute to a better understanding of engagement with and through hashtag use.

Global student mobility is growing in importance as students increasingly turn their interest worldwide. International student spouses and their personal experiences is an emerging problem of practice in higher education due to their connection to international student retention rates. In particular, what support systems are provided to this demographic is especially important. Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to examine international student spouses' perception of support services at an urban private institution of higher education in the United States. A qualitative approach addressed the following research question: What role do international student spouses perceive institutions of higher education have in terms of offering support services? This study focused on five international student spouses who came to the United States on F2 dependent visa status.

The ubiquity of smartphones and the growing popularity of smart speakers have given rise to cloud-based, intelligent personal assistants (IPAs), such as Siri and Google Assistant. However, little is known about the use of IPAs for Autonomous Second Language Learning (ASLL). Thus, the aims of this study were twofold: to assess Japanese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' perceptions towards IPAs, also known as virtual assistants, for ASLL, and to better understand learner behavior of these technologies. A total of 14 Japanese university students were given smart speakers and interacted with a companion IPA, Amazon Alexa, over a two-month period in their homes. Moreover, the participants completed a survey consisting of Likert-scale items and open-ended questions to obtain their views of the IPA for ASLL. While the results indicated that the students had mostly favorable views of Alexa for L2 learning, many of them did not actively engage with the virtual assistant during the data collection period. Furthermore, students tended to give up when faced with communication difficulties with the IPA. These findings highlight the potential of IPAs for ASLL and underscore the gap between what students say, and what they actually do, with language learning technology.

With the booming of Chinese internet corporations, various wrongdoings have been frequently exposed to the public, which damages their corporate image. To face the challenge, these companies usually resort to apologies for image restoration. This study investigates how apology strategies are employed by Chinese internet corporations to restore image in the event of wrongdoings. Based on a self-built corpus and by means of textual analysis, we identified different apology strategies characterized by various linguistic features. The results show that "Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDs)" and "damage repair" are two of the most frequently used move types which are normally marked by such key linguistic features as personal pronouns, modal verbs, performative verbs and intensifiers. It is also found that IFIDs, "giving account" and "admitting mistakes", "offering repair" and "inviting further interaction" are often incorporated together to show the company's sincere apologetic stance which contributes to the ultimate goal -- rebuilding corporate image and regaining the public's trust. However, direct expressions of "asking for forgiveness" are seldom found in apologies crafted by Chinese internet corporations. This study on apologies in the domain of internet corporations is believed to shed light on research on corporate apology in particular and corporate image restoration in general.

Social media has become an important platform where users share, comment, discuss, communicate, interact, and play games. Aside from using social media for personal, social, and business purposes, the use of social media has gained attention, particularly for collaborative learning in the educational sector. This paper examines the role of social media in computing education based on the use of WhatsApp social media group. Additionally, the study explores how social media usage by students influences their perceived learning outcomes. Given these aims, the study formulated four research hypotheses and tested using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling. With the participants of three hundred and thirteen (n=313) students, the study found a positive relationship between social media usage for computing education and perceived learning outcomes. In addition, the study found a linear relationship between communication in- group and perceived learning outcomes. Finally, the study revealed that social media positively relates to tie strength, and that tie strength influences in-group communication.

Student mobility across national borders has been increasing at an extraordinary pace. Correspondingly, much research has been conducted into issues concerning learners that move internationally to pursue learning in a culturally different country. To a great extent, vigorous debate and research did promote cross-cultural diversity, understanding and communication. However, few studies have looked into international Chinese students' use of laughter in much detail, given that laughter plays a significant part in shaping or molding meaning. This article demonstrates with examples of a group of ICSs on how their use of laughter alters the meaning of utterance in speech. The findings offer insights that aim at promoting cross-cultural understanding and communication so that a much smoother and a more inclusive and successful adjustment of these learners can be facilitated.

Laughter is a common feature found in daily conversations as an element showing amusement. However, laughter can also appear in serious talk such as business meetings (Murata, 2007; Markaki, et al., 2010). This paper scrutinizes laughter use between Thai and Burmese participants in a business meeting held in Yangon, Myanmar, and examines laughter functions and factors stimulating laughter to occur. The business meeting data was collected using the ethnographic method - a participant observation, extensive field notes, interviews and audio recordings. The data were analyzed based on the framework of laughter adapted from Hayakawa (2003) and Murata & Hori (2007); the findings reveal that laughter was used as a communication strategy and occurred in the meeting both in a relaxed atmosphere and in a serious discussion with different intentions - to have fun, to make fun of work, to ease the tension and to threaten other interlocutors.