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While the benefits of portfolio assessment are well documented in second language (L2) writing literature, educators still face challenges as they seek to incorporate it in their classrooms. This study explored English as a Foreign Language (EFL) college writers' perceived benefits and challenges of e-portfolio creation and evaluation by following two classes of sophomore students for two academic years. Through the analyses of a questionnaire, students' reflections, and interviews, five themes emerged regarding the perceived benefits: (1) allowing students to review and reflect, (2) developing ownership and authorship, (3) seeing improvement and feeling empowered for writing, (4) cultivating digital literacies skills, and (5) enhancing scaffolded learning. Moreover, three challenges were found regarding students' utilization of e-portfolios: technical difficulties, time taken to edit their posts, and learner issues. Overall, most students valued the practices of creating and evaluating their own "Wix"-based e-portfolios which displayed their development and growth as writers and learners over time. Although some students reported challenges to constructing the "Wix"-based e-portfolios, they considered the e-portfolio approach innovative, integrated, and reflective. This study concludes with implications for educators who wish to integrate the portfolio approach through web-based platforms.

The purpose of the study was to measure graduate students' academic hardiness (GSAH) and academic self-efficacy (GSASE) and to examine the relationships between the two. A total of 202 graduate students across disciplines were recruited to complete two questionnaires (GSAH and GSASE). Results of exploratory factor analyses showed that the GSAH and GSASE were reliable for assessing graduate students' academic hardiness and academic self-efficacy. Comparing master's and doctoral students' scores in the GSAH and GSASE scales, we found that doctoral students outperformed master's students. The findings also revealed that three dimensions of GSAH (commitment, control of affect, and challenge) were strong predictors of graduate students' academic self-efficacy. These results confirm and strengthen the relation between graduate students' academic hardiness and academic self-efficacy. This study calls attention to graduate students' ability to recognize and appraise causes of their failure and to learn how to overcome academic difficulties.

The present study examines the effects of 3 kinds of glosses--first-language (L1) Chinese glosses plus second-language (L2) English example sentences, L1 in-text glosses, and L1 marginal glosses--in comparison with a no-gloss condition in reading an English passage, to explore whether providing glosses can facilitate reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. A total of 135 undergraduate business and engineering students at 4 English proficiency levels studying at a technical university in Taiwan completed 1 vocabulary pretest, 1 reading session, 1 posttest, and 2 delayed vocabulary recall tests. The study found that L1 glosses helped subjects learn new words and review learned words. Learners' retention declined between the immediate and the 1st delayed recall tests. However, between the 1st and 2nd delayed recall tests, a slight increase in retention was observed for all groups. Unexpectedly, reading comprehension did not improve significantly. Additionally, a questionnaire queried learners' experience using glosses during reading. (Contains 1 note, 7 tables, and 1 figure.)

Previous studies have examined the online research behaviors of graduate students in terms of how they seek and retrieve research-related information on the Web across diverse disciplines. However, few have focused on graduate students' searching activities, and particularly for their research tasks. Drawing on Kuiper, Volman, and Terwel's (2008) three aspects of web literacy skills (searching, reading, and evaluating), this qualitative study aims to better understand a group of graduate engineering students' searching, reading, and evaluating processes for research purposes. Through in-depth interviews and the think-aloud protocol, we compared the strategies employed by 22 Taiwanese graduate engineering students. The results showed that the students' online research behaviors included seeking and obtaining, reading and interpreting, and assessing and evaluating sources. The findings suggest that specialized training for preparing novice researchers to critically evaluate relevant information or scholarly work to fulfill their research purposes is needed. Implications for enhancing the information literacy of engineering students are discussed.