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In the current era, the use of corpora in language teaching is mainly explored in English classes as it has become a trend in education. Hence, this research aimed to identify the corpus metadata, frequently used words, and unique words related to the Islamic boarding school context to be used in the English instructional process. This research employed a mixed method combining quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods. Two English Islamic boarding school books, several articles covering the scope of Islamic boarding school, and students' speech texts were selected as the data. Then, they were analyzed using the Voyant tool. The finding showed total words of 49,970: 5,417 specific words, 0.108 vocabulary density, and a 12,980-readability index. The finding will be incorporated into instructional resources for developing Islamic boarding school students' general and/or specialized vocabulary. The words, in particular, will provide a foundation for students in constructing Islamic speech texts, delivering speeches, and using English in an Islamic boarding school environment.

It is imperative to use new technologies in a supportive manner to meet the learners' and teachers' demanding needs as educational environments change in the digital age. The continuous expansion of online learning and distance education opportunities responds to the demands of learners and teachers while pioneering the use of technology in education. One advancement in English language teaching and learning in online environments, which assists teachers in reducing their workload and providing students with instant digital feedback, is the automated writing evaluation (AWE) tools. To gain a deeper understanding of the potential and limitations of these digital tools, this study aims to investigate the effectiveness of AWE feedback in error reduction in writing in English and the explore views of students regarding the utility of AWE tools. For this purpose, a total of 38 students at a university in Turkiye participated in the study, and three of their essays were evaluated. Within a concurrent triangulation mixed-method design, the changes in errors of the experimental group (n=18) receiving AWE feedback, and the control group (n=20) receiving teacher feedback were analyzed quantitatively, and the written reflection reports and semi-structured interviews conducted with the students were analyzed qualitatively. The results indicated that teacher feedback and AWE feedback were both effective in reducing errors in 11 categories. AWE feedback appeared to minimize errors in mechanics and usage more efficiently and teacher feedback was required more in content and organization issues. As a result, AWE was found as a complementary and effective tool supporting the improvement of target language writing skills saving time and energy for teachers. Furthermore, students expressed positive views regarding the use of AWE despite minor limitations. The findings of this study in general sheds light on using online digital tools of ubiquitous nature such as AWE to assist language improvement outside the class.

The use of linguistic features in school assessments, as well as the impact of these factors on the outcome of assessments have received limited attention in the literature. With this study I aimed to analyse linguistic features of accounting examinations. A quantitative technique, using tests for correlation, was employed to analyse the Grade 12 National Senior Certificate accounting examinations from 2011 until 2021. Advanced textual analysis software was used to identify connections between specific linguistic features and the marks obtained in these examinations. The findings of this study suggest that increasing the levels of linguistic features associated with analytical thinking, emotional tone and big words, which may be assumed to promote comprehension, may in reality be counterproductive, consequently potentially resulting in poorer marks attained in assessments in the future. The findings of this study are important for the creators of assessment to consider when developing accounting assessment. Given the effect of linguistic features on assessment results as identified in this study, it contributes to the debate on the use of certain linguistic features in assessment.

This paper presents the findings from a research project to analyse 30 years of the "Research in Learning Technology" journal (1993 to 2022). The analysis explores the content of the articles in terms of key topics and their relationship with sector events and policies, discussing key terms such as virtual learning environment, massive open online courses (MOOCs) and virtual reality (VR). It also considers how the terminology used to describe the field has changed over time, starting with a focus on the computer and expanding to include a range of common terms such as e-learning, technology enhanced learning (TEL) and digital. Between 1993 and 2015, issues of the journal were accompanied by editorials. This analysis considers how the role of the editorials helped to shape and establish the journal and influence the field of learning technology to take a more research and theory-based approach. Finally, an analysis of the locations of the authors who have published in the journal has demonstrated a shift from a predominantly UK-based journal to one with more international reach.

Studies relating to the vocabulary items within EFL textbooks have revealed a divergence from well-researched wordlists such as the New General Service List (NGSL) (Browne et al., 2013), and the BNC/COCA wordlist (Nakayama, 2022; Sun and Dang, 2020). In Japan, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) recently updated its course of study in 2019 to increase the target vocabulary for junior high school students from 1,200 words to a range between 1,600 and 1,800 words, in addition to the 600 to 700 words taught in elementary school. To analyze the content of the increased vocabulary for Japanese junior high school students, this study examined a corpus of six EFL textbooks from the "New Horizon" series: three elementary texts and three junior high school texts, (published between 2020 and 2021) using the new JACET8000 wordlist (2016), generating data pertaining to lexical coverage, in-corpus frequency, and in-corpus dispersion. It was found that 42.9% of the first 3,000 words from the JACET list were not found in the corpus, and 50.4% of the high-frequency words studied by junior high school students occurred less than two times within the corpus. Additionally, 35% of analyzed words were found to have a dispersion value of zero, indicating that several items were isolated into single units of study. Lastly, factors contributing to lexical difficulty of the textbooks were also examined.

This article introduces researchers in the science concerned with developing and studying research methods, measurement, and evaluation (RMME) to the educational data mining (EDM) community. It assumes that the audience is familiar with traditional priorities of statistical analyses, such as accurately estimating model parameters and inferences from those models. Instead, this article focuses on data mining's adoption of statistics and machine learning to produce cutting-edge methods in educational contexts. It answers three questions: (1) What are the primary interests of EDM and RMME researchers?; (2) What is their discipline-specific vocabulary?; and (3) What are the similarities and differences in how the EDM and RMME communities analyze similar types of data?

The Khotons, in the west of Mongolia, were originally Turkic people who spoke the Khoton language, until the 19th century, which is currently considered extinct. This study aimed to prove that the Khoton language belonged to the Turkic languages; and to standardize the Swadesh inventory in relation to the Khoton words. The Swadesh inventory of words was the primary source of this research, which was sampled to examine the basic characteristics like semantic (meaning) acoustic (sound-based), pronunciation and spellings. This study adopted a comparative-historical research design with a qualitative approach, which involved an in-depth content analysis of the data. A data classification process was used to analyze the data by dividing them into categories (3-tiers) to enable retrieving, sorting and storing information. The Swadesh list of words also acted as the instrument of the study as this list was used to target the Khoton vocabulary and determine their equivalence. Such a data classification also helped to manipulate, track and analyze individual specimens in data. The findings of the study reveal that a majority of the linguistic combinations (lexemes) sampled for this study were found in the Khoton language, fully corresponding to the meaning of the English words in the Swadesh list. It was also evident that the basic vocabulary of the Khoton language had the elements of a Turkic language; and that there was an opportunity to reproduce the Khoton language. It is recommended that future studies should examine other versions of Swadesh inventory and compare them with the words in Turkic languages.

This study aims to investigate Vietnamese pain terms and pain descriptors with a focus on how the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) words are utilised by the Vietnamese patients. Semi-structured interviews were employed to collect data from twenty-six Vietnamese female cancer patients. The data were analysed using both quantitative and qualitative content analysis. The findings indicated that dau (hurt), nh?c (ache), and dau-nh?c (hurt and ache) are three basic pain terms in Vietnamese, with dau being a super-ordinate pain term. In addition, Vietnamese pain descriptors can be systematically classified into MPQ-VN descriptors and Non-MPQ-VN descriptors, with the latter being used far more frequently than the former. The study also found that MPQ descriptors could not reflect the patients' pain experience comprehensively in the Vietnamese context although the Vietnamese employed the equivalents of MPQ descriptors of different categories. That the limitations of Melzack's (1975) inventory of MPQ descriptors have been validated in Vietnamese has contributed to Vietnamese healthcare professionals' understanding of how the patients communicate about their pain experience using language. The study has also shed lights on applied linguists' research directions which can be extended to areas beyond language education, such as health, therapy, and counselling.

This study explores the challenges of assessment feedback in a business school in the UK. Like many business schools, it operates at volume with large class sizes and an internationally diverse student cohort. To operate effectively, it has adopted a bureaucratic administrative approach to assessment in order to address concerns over timeliness, consistency, and quality of feedback. Drawing on socio-constructivist and sociocultural perspectives, this study explores the role of dialogue and reciprocity in the assessment feedback process with a focus on grade descriptors and their role in fostering student success in their learning. Through an action research approach with a cohort of students on a three-year module, the study examines how grade descriptors are experienced by students and student perceptions of their purpose and function within the higher educational organisational context and the positioning of tutor and student in the assessment process. The findings suggest a desire amongst students for a more collaborative learning approach and the benefits for students of doing so. The paper concludes with discussion of the implications of adopting a more dialogic approach to assessment feedback for students, tutors, and universities.

This study aimed to examine the effects of reverse items created with different strategies on psychometric properties and respondents' scale scores. To this end, three versions of a 10-item scale in the research were developed: 10 positive items were integrated in the first form (Form-P) and five positive and five reverse items in the other two forms. The reverse items in the second and third forms were crafted using antonyms (Form-RA) and negations (Form-RN), respectively. Based on the research results, Form-P was unidimensional, while other forms were two-dimensional. Moreover, although reliability coefficients of all forms were obtained as above 0.80, the lowest one was acquired for Form-RN. There were strong-positive relationships between students' scores in the three scale forms. However, the lowest one was estimated between Form-P and Form-RN. Finally, there was a significant difference between the students' mean scores obtained from Form-RN and other two versions, but the effect size of the said difference was small. In conclusion, all these results indicate that different types of reverse items influence psychometric properties and respondents' scale scores differently.

As post-secondary institutions assume more responsibility for the language abilities of their graduates, more attention is being paid to post-admission language support to enhance student success. Previous research has indicated that a post-admission language diagnostic assessment procedure, when coupled with language support services, can be an effective model in helping students meet language expectations in post-secondary settings. This paper outlines the development and validation of a screening-diagnostic assessment procedure to recommend students to language support services in college diploma programs. Our key findings suggest that students who receive a recommendation through the procedure and subsequently attend language support (LS) classes have higher communication grades than those who do not attend, and that testing vocabulary can be an effective measure for screening language abilities. These results offer validity evidence for using this procedure while ongoing research is being conducted to validate its testing measures.

This study aimed to investigate the lexical competence of English-major EFL students. The learner corpus comprised 552 pieces of writing by sophomore English majors during five academic years between 2017 and 2021, containing 190,506words in total. The results from Vocab Profile program showed that these students used words contained in the academic wordlist (AWL) at lower rates than what has been suggested by experts. This is probably because they were in their second year studying their first writing course. With less exposure to higher level English, they might not have developed an advanced vocabulary repertoire. However, when considering the AWL words used in each type of paragraph, it was found that the students used AWL words to a higher degree in comparison contrast, cause-effect, and problem-solution paragraphs, suggesting that the type of paragraphs can affect the lexical level of the students. When considering the British National Corpus/Corpus of Contemporary American English(BNC/COCA) lexical level, the words used were mostly in Base List 1, Base List 2, and Base List 3, respectively. The results from Vocab Profile program indicated that they used vocabulary at a very typical level compared to non-English majors, suggesting that they needed more input to stimulate them to use higher vocabulary levels in other advanced writing courses to attain an effective vocabulary level upon completion of the program of studies

Fluency development is one of the prominent components of a well-balanced language course. In particular, speaking fluency interests second language (L2) researchers who have continuously tried to look for the finest approach for helping L2 learners attain a certain level of fluency to achieve effective communication. To this end, the primary purpose of this research is to explore what factors affect English-speaking fluency and what strategies can effectively boost its development among a cohort of Vietnamese university students. The participants were 142 English majors who filled out a questionnaire measuring their perceived self-efficacy concerning English-speaking fluency. Four teachers and six students joined the semi-structured interviews. Quantitative and qualitative data revealed that the most influential factors were linguistic elements, followed by performance, and affective factors. The most effective strategy for enhancing fluency was task repetition. Notably, the findings revealed a mismatch between teachers' and students' understandings of speaking fluency, which may negatively impact the achievement of fluent speech. Based on these results, pedagogical implications are discussed for English teachers and students regarding fluency development.

In linguistics, onomastics is the science that studies the history and origin of toponyms, along with their structural aspects. This study aimed to determine the origin of toponyms by comparing their linguistic and ethnocultural, as well as mythical, information. A qualitative research design guided this study. A few toponyms were identified through random sampling method including Yrgyz (Irgiz), Burkanbulak, Esik (Yssyk), Auliesu, Zhaiyk (Ural) and Zher-Su, which were collected from etymological, explanatory and mythological dictionaries and collections of mythical texts. The etymological and component analysis methods were applied to study these names. The criteria to select these toponyms were that all should be names of rivers or hydronyms, since river-water was a mythological symbol (the source of life, death and disorder); and that they should occur not only in one language, but in several related languages. The findings revealed that the archetype of each word conformed to phonetic changes. There were also structural connections between these words. Besides, each word had symbolic connotations. This study would provide useful insights about ethnocultural and mythical information of these words and help in broader understanding of the cultural characteristics.

The scientific advancement and globalization have influenced the way fields like anthropolinguistics, cognitive linguistics, and ethnolinguistics should be studied to research intercultural communication. This study examined the national dishes that make up the Kazakh gluttonous discourse, its components, customs, and rituals, and how serving a dish to a guest can cause both positive and negative cultural consciousness in cultures. The data collected in the form of lexical and semiotic units, forming a gluttonous discourse at individual and institutional levels, was subjected to a conceptual analysis. It was felt that gluttonyms as lexical units played an important role in preventing negative cultural consciousness and forming empathy for national dishes. National dishes such as 'bas tartu', 'tabak tartu' in the Kazakh gluttonous discourse and cognitive conceptual basis of some customs in the preparation process and serving a dish to the guest were studied. It was found that the Kazakh gluttonous discourse was one of the sources of the national conceptual image of the world. This allowed us to determine that some of the institutional functions of the Kazakh gluttonous discourse were based on the national conceptual image of the world.

This study aimed at investigating the impact of story-based extracurricular tasks on enhancing the speaking skills of EFL learners. The parameters of grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, and fluency were examined. A pre-test/post-test one shot case study design was adopted. A sample of 20 students, enrolled in the common first year program at Jouf University, Saudi Arabia, participated in the study. The results showed that learners' speaking skills improved due to the use of the story-based extracurricular tasks. Findings also showed that the highest improvement in students' speaking skills was in pronunciation, followed by vocabulary, and then, grammar. Fluency was the least improved skill. The study recommends the incorporation of story-based extracurricular tasks in EFL programs for enhancing speaking skills. Educators should choose culturally relevant stories that correspond to the learners' proficiency level. They should involve students in conversations and arguments about the stories, prompting them to examine the themes and implicit messages. This study also recommends to use other resources such as language games, quizzes, and dramatization for enhancing speaking skills of EFL learners.

Following the emergence of chatbots, especially ChatGPT, researchers have begun to examine their capabilities, credibility, and reliability in educational context. In this study, ChatGPT and Google Gemini are used as technological tools to create 7th-grade lesson plans for mathematics, science, literature, and social studies classes. Using prompts, these chatbots were asked to create lesson plans for the desired course, subject, and level. The data source of this study is the content produced by these chatbots. We analyzed 18 lesson plans to identify patterns and variations within the context of learning theories and models by using the Taguette qualitative analysis program. The results show that the lesson plans created by both chatbots are strongly resemblance to human-written educational content such as sentence structures, lesson activities, and assessments. Although the activities in all lesson plans defined teachers as facilitators and offered partially constructive lesson plans, it was found that the technology-integrated activities were very limited. The findings of this study provide a practical implication of chatbots for teachers and highlights educational considerations when integrating these tools into lessons.

Teachers play a key role in communicating with parents to support student learning. One of the more challenging aspects of this role for teachers is having a difficult conversation with a parent about their child. Difficult conversations, when needed, are best accomplished face-to-face incorporating effective communication skills to promote a positive and productive interaction. This article reviews a number of key practical communication skills that teachers can use when communicating with parents including use of clear vocabulary, active listening, I-messages, questioning strategies, paraphrasing and summarizing, leveled information, as well as attention to nonverbal messages. Strategies to support both planned and unplanned difficult conversations are discussed. Barriers to having difficult conversations between teachers and parents are outlined as well as new directions for research. Effective communication skills are integral for teachers to hold difficult, yet productive, conversations with parents to promote partnerships and to support student success.

This study scrutinized the effects of words' superiority, regularity, frequency and length on the intermediate and advanced EFL learner's visual word recognition. Moreover, it attempted to check whether each of these parameters could be statistically a significant predictor on recognition tasks. Accordingly, 118 intermediate and 127 advanced adult EFL learners were selected randomly from English Language Institutes based on their performance on the McMillan Placement Test (MPT). The needed data was collected through a developed Visual Word Recognition Test (WORT) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT). The findings indicated that all the mentioned factors significantly affected both the intermediate and the advanced EFL learners' overall word recognition by varying degrees (words' frequency, length, superiority and regularity, respectively), however, the advanced learners' recognition was generally faster on both recognition tests. Moreover, words' regularity was found to play a more effective role for the intermediates than the advanced learners on recognition tasks. Furthermore, words' frequency, regularity and length were found to be proper predictors on comprehension tasks.

This study aims to analyze the factors influencing the typology of Turkic words to examine the specifics of the way students learn Turkic languages in higher education institutions. A hypotheticdeductive, survey, and comparative method was used for the study. Results showed that the learners have trouble constructing oral discourse and do not achieve coherence and cohesion in the field of communication they produce, as they do not integrate the parts into the whole under a structured system. Results also suggest that the systematization of Turkic words and expressions forms the trunk of the numerous Eastern Mediterranean and Asia languages, where most of them are very similar. It is concluded that categorizing words and expressions systematically by teachers through linguistic and pedagogical activities can contribute to one's learning and teaching of Turkic languages.

Nowadays, we face a profound fragmentation of knowledge, which is addressed in distinctive ways, conforming to the specifics of each field of knowledge and having a specific lexicon and ways to interpret reality. To better understand and communicate the complexity of the reality of motor and sports sciences in Italy, it is necessary to study its ontology based on a holistic and comprehensive approach such as System Thinking (ST). So, this preliminary review aimed to verify the coherence of terminology used by Italian academics (who study methodologies related to teaching) and practical communities (who live the reality of daily teaching) in motor and sports sciences, specifically regarding the didactic of physical and sports education. For this purpose, according to Design Based Research (DBR), a first investigation of the interpretative semantics of the discipline's specific terms was accomplished with the support of multiple sources of information such as documents, databases, and brainstorming performed by experts (representing the guiding team and stakeholders from all considered communities). Moreover, the frequency of some terms and keywords considered in European (ERC) and Italian (CUN) legislation was assessed to contextualize better the impact of common practice community keywords on the scientific and regulatory community. Successively, the studies that analyzed the terms from 2000 to 2020 in the leading scientific search engines (SCOPUS and Web of Science) were also investigated. Results indicate that in the CUN and ERC areas, there is a total absence of the most relevant lemma to the community of practice. Furthermore, significant terms such as play, sports education, psychomotricity, and gymnastics are less considered or unconsidered in the specific scientific and didactic fields. Possible solutions for a specific semantic model to reduce the gap are finally hypothesized and presented.

Student translators at the College of Language Sciences take a Media and Political Translation course in which they translate the latest news stories, media and political texts and terminology. This study proposes a model for integrating Gaza-Israeli war terminology and texts in translation instruction to familiarize the students with terminology such as names of weapons (grenades, mortar, drones, missiles, Merkava, Cornet anti-armor, mortar shells), toponyms(Khan Younis, Maghazi, Sderot, Ashkelon), crossings (Rafah, Erez), Jihadist groups and brigades (Islamic Jihad, Golani), military actions (incursion, bombing, shelling, genocide, displacement) war metaphors (target bank, carpet bombing, scorched earth, fire belt, Philadelphia Axis, Hannibal's plan), (UNRWA, Gaza hospitals, starvation, humanitarian aid) and others. English and Arabic texts can be collected from mainstream media as RT, BBC, CNN, Al-Jazeera and Al-Ghad. A class blog can be created for posting translations, corrections, discussions, and feedback. The students can practice full, summary, and conceptual translation and avoid word-for-word translation. They can watch news stories about the Gaza-Israel war, write a summary translation of it and receive comments and feedback. Beginners can translate short news excerpts (few lines). Students make sure their translations are cohesive, make sense and are easy to read. Students should use Google Translate and artificial intelligence (AI) with caution and should read the same news story in both English and Arabic to get used to the terminology and their equivalents. The instructor serves as a facilitator. Further instructional guidelines and recommendations are given.

The pandemic has affected many aspects of our lives including education and that has caused the Government to provide alternative teaching methods and make recommendations for online learning. Since smartphones and laptops using the internet are the only tools for learning, students are increasingly playing online games and being exposed to English vocabulary. This research aimed at identifying and analyzing whether students' participation in online games and vocabulary mastery simultaneously correlate with their learning motivation. This research is a quantitative research with a correlation design. The research was conducted at SMPN I Koba, Central Bangka, Bangka Belitung, with 93 students as respondents. The data collection technique used a questionnaire with a Likert scale on the online games questionnaire and learning motivation and the Guttman scale on the vocabulary mastery questionnaire. The prerequisite test uses the normality test, homogeneity test, and linearity test. Analysis using correlation analysis of r-Product moment and multiple regression analysis. The research results have shown that there is a correlation between students' participation in online games and vocabulary mastery simultaneously with learning motivation.

Background: This research explored how classroom plays could serve as pedagogical tools to introduce children to Sesotho and isiZulu vocabulary of artificial intelligence (AI). The article captures how student teachers learned to write plays that they could produce when they become professional teachers. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to explore how student teachers engaged in a playwriting process, creating drama texts for early grades primary school learners about AI. Method: The qualitative study employed, a participatory action research design. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with the student teachers, coupled with a dual analysis of their drama texts. An inductive thematic analysis approach was applied for the data from interviews with the students. A deductive approach was implemented to analyse the drama texts according to criteria for playwriting with a pedagogical purpose. Results: The findings revealed that playwriting as a tool for pedagogy can be useful in developing student teachers' vocabulary of AI in Sesotho or isiZulu and to develop their playwriting skills. Conclusion: The findings contribute to the corpus of pedagogies for the teaching of vocabulary in African languages, which includes writing the texts and aiming to use these for reading experience and for dramatic activity in early grades classrooms. Contribution: The contribution of this study is how playwriting can serve as a pedagogical tool for the teaching of reading and vocabulary in the primary school.

The purpose of this research is to describe the challenges and factors causing difficulties of deaf students in mastering writing skills at inclusive universities in Indonesia. This research is focused in Central Java province because of the more universities are considered as inclusive universities. This research was conducted in September-December 2022. The subjects in this research were selected using the purposive sampling method. Based on these limits, 35 Deaf students from six inclusive universities were obtained as respondents. The data collection techniques used questionnaires, observations, interviews, and concentrated discussions. Furthermore, the data analysis steps undertaken consisted of: (a) data analysis, (b) data revision, and (c) data verification. The results of this research concluded that the challenges experienced by students were broadly related to: (a) difficulty in mastering vocabulary, (b) understanding punctuation, and (c) difficulty if mastering complex sentences. As for more specifically related to academic text writing skills, the obstacles experienced by students including: (a) composing effective sentences, (b) developing paragraphs, (c) paraphrasing techniques, (d) writing academic texts in accordance with linguistic rules, and (e) writing bibliography. Furthermore, factors causing the occurrence of the obstacles in the mastery of academic text writing skills including: (a) unaccessible learning resources, (b) less effectively interwoven communication during lectures, and (c) different sentence structure in Sign Language with Indonesian sentence structure.

The article focuses on identification of students' performance to write paragraphs and the topics needed by students to be developed post global English textbooks exposure. This study aimed to investigate description of current students' performance to write paragraphs after studying a paragraph writing using Global English Textbooks and to find out the topics needed by students to be developed as teaching English textbook materials for Paragraph Writing Course. The research employed a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative analysis of students' paragraph writing performance with qualitative interpretation into their perceptions to the use of global English textbooks as writing paragraph teaching materials. The total samples were 44 students of English Study Program, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Muslim Indonesia. To obtain information from the informants, the researchers employed questionnaires of Paragraph Writing distributed to the students through the Learning Management System (LMS) Google form. The results showed that students exhibited a wide range of proficiency levels in paragraph writing, from advanced to fundamental deficiencies, necessitating targeted support across all skill levels. Moreover, a significant proportion of students lacked confidence in their writing abilities, emphasizing the importance of tailored instruction to address uncertainties effectively. Challenges with global English textbooks, including language complexity and cultural references, exacerbated these issues. Despite the inherent benefits of paragraph writing, such as language development and critical thinking skills, some students questioned its relevance in non-native English education settings. Additionally, doubts about fundamental language aspects like vocabulary and grammar underscored the need for focused instruction in these areas. Overall, addressing these challenges required comprehensive supports and resources to enhance students' paragraph writing skills and confidence levels effectively. Meanwhile, the exploration of sixty topics provided valuable insights into students' interests and knowledge. Among them, sixteen topics emerged as notably popular, indicating a strong resonance with students. These topics ranged from personal narratives to societal issues, reflecting students' diverse values and concerns. Furthermore, themes related to self improvement and academic success garnered considerable interest, underscoring students' aspirations for growth. Even less chosen topics still demonstrated students' engagement with various aspects of interpersonal relationships and cultural identity. Moreover, the inclusion of less common topics reflected students' recognition of broader educational and patriotic ideals, albeit with less enthusiasm.

This longitudinal case study from a Complex Dynamic Systems Theory (CDST) perspective touches upon an under-researched issue: L1 development over the lifespan. Levinson (1978) predicts three stages in adulthood: early, mid and late, with a decline in late adulthood. We examine Diane Larsen-Freeman's publications over a period of 50 years (from age 27 to 77) and trace seven complexity measures--three lexical (density, sophistication and diversity) and four syntactic (mean length of sentence, finite verb ratio, dependent clause per T-unit and complex nominals per clause)--to investigate whether early, middle, and late stages in adulthood occur as predicted. After employing common CDST methods to find out if there are significant peaks or interactions among the variables over time, we used a Hidden Markov time-series analysis to locate moments of self-organization, suggesting a new stage of development. The HMM shows a clear phase shift between middle and late adulthood when the writer was 63. Her vocabulary became more diversified, but her sentences were shorter, but not less complex. Therefore, we argue that this shift should not be seen as a decline in complexity but a shift in style as more precise words may lessen the need for more words.

This research aims to analyze language patterns in hate speech found in comments on YouTube about Rohingya refugees in Thailand and Syrian refugees in Europe. Data were collected from 4,113 comments in Thai and 13,960 comments in English and appeared on a video-sharing website specifically from news clips about Rohingya refugees in Thailand during the year 2015- 2019 and news on Syrian refugees in Europe during 2013-2019. After applying critical discourse analysis theory on the data, three types of hate speech were found: 1) name calling; 2) verb phrases; and 3) modifiers. The hate speech addresses race, religion, gender, body shape, taste, potential, ability, and individual or group identity. There were five types of name-calling, namely regarding race, religion, threats, animals/evil, and being unwanted; three types of verbs, namely danger/threats, behaviors/actions, and eviction/expulsion; and two types of modifiers, namely degrading quality and degree intensity. The three sets of vocabulary equally form hate speech in Thai and in English. In both languages, refugees are portrayed as villains, devalued as unwanted, dangerous, and offensive. Modifiers are used to magnify the degree of intensity driven by the underlying emotional implications.

The era of globalization and information and knowledge in which we find ourselves requires Higher Education to develop English-speaking proficiency in its students to adequately respond to academic and occupational challenges, taking advantage of the virtues of the variety of resources offered by technology. YouGlish is an online oral dictionary whose features can be leveraged for the development of Englishspeaking proficiency. This study aims to determine the impact of using YouGlish on English speaking proficiency in its subskills of fluency, grammatical appropriateness, pronunciation, communicative interaction, and vocabulary. The research was of quasi-experimental design and was carried out with a sample of 38 students, 19 students in the Control Group and 19 students in the Experimental Group, from a national university in Peru. For data collection, a pre-test and a post-test were applied concerning English-speaking proficiency, and a perception questionnaire on the use of YouGlish was also used. The arithmetic mean indicates that there was an improvement of 45.26 points using YouGlish when comparing the input and output tests. Thus, concluding with an increase in English-speaking proficiency among university students.

Morphological knowledge refers to an individual's understanding of the structure and meaning of words based on their familiarity with morphemes (i.e., word parts, including prefixes, suffixes, and bases). This knowledge is crucial to developing various aspects of language and literacy to successfully function in 21st century education and workplace settings, including vocabulary, spelling, phonological awareness, word reading, and reading comprehension. This research digest provides a brief review on why morphological knowledge is important to literacy for adult education leaners. Next, we briefly describe the literature on adult morphological and etymological instruction and provide examples for how to integrate them in the classroom with adult education learners. We conclude with future directions and resources for research and educational practice.

The study aimed to identify the primary obstacles encountered by junior high school students when learning English. Conducted as a cross-sectional survey, data were gathered from 102 9th-grade students in three public schools in Parongpong using a Likert questionnaire and analyzed through mean scores. Findings revealed that the key barriers included students' tendency to use their native language, grammar errors, limited speaking opportunities outside school, fear of making mistakes, and restricted vocabulary. Additionally, challenges arose from listening materials' speed and complexity, unfamiliar topics and words, as well as nervousness. Furthermore, hurdles in reading practice, complex text structures, idea generation, spelling, paragraph organization, grammar, teacher's limited use of learning media, and cognitive attitudes were observed. These findings are expected to aid teaching efforts, particularly in addressing barriers for EFL learners.

Societies cannot destroy the old system of faith while accepting a new religion. Human begins to transform the new belief system within the old belief system. One of the things they have to convert is the terminology of religion, which they accept. The change process of this new religious terminology can give concrete findings about the learning, adaptation, and transformation of a society to the new religion that it accepts. It takes a long time for the terminology of religion, which comes with the new religion, which is not entirely from its own language, to settle in the language of society, learning and the transformation takes place in certain stages. Determining the location of the language of the old texts in these stages will allow the dating of unspecified works and the identification of the author of the work. "Dede Korkut Stories" are important works of Turkish Language Literature. In this study, the religious terms in the Dresden and Vatican copies of "Dede Korkut Stories," which are thought to have been written after the 15th century, and the Turkistan/Turkmen Sahara copy found in 2019, were determined. I examined the determined religious linguistic terms comparatively in terms of their integration into the community language and also specify the stage at which the change and transformation of religious terminology took place.

Flashcard is viewed as one of the interesting and effective teaching media to teach English in general and vocabulary in particular. To enrich students' vocabulary, flashcards can be used as a personal dictionary for students or as an instrument to play a game applied as a strategy that facilitates active and fun learning. This study aims to solve problems students often face in learning English vocabulary and proves the effectiveness of using flashcards in increasing students' vocabulary mastery. This study employed an action research design, in which a flashcard was employed as the media of team game tournament activities applied as the learning strategy of cooperative learning. This research involved 28 fifth graders at SDN 23 Pangkalpinang. The results show that flashcard use increased students' vocabulary mastery. The mean score obtained by the students in the pre-test is 53.2. It increased to 79.1 in the post-test of the first cycle and to 85.7 in the post-test of the second cycle.

Background: Although the reading of science texts has been reported for high school learners, there is not much research on how younger learners engage with expository texts and how they develop academic language skills. In the instance of this study, the topic came from the curriculum content about animal reproduction. Aim: The study from which this article emanated aimed to explore how a sample of learners engaged with a short text, which required cohesive reading and some background knowledge and vocabulary. Setting: This study was conducted in a suburban school where the learners use English as a second language. Methods: A sample (n = 25) was randomly selected from five Grade 4 classes. Their reading comprehension of a custom-designed test was assessed, along with their writing competence in their responses to content questions as well as their drawings. The data were analysed in a typical content analysis modality. Results: This study showed that the learners do not apply inferencing skills and do not read cohesively across sentences and paragraphs and that their vocabulary and prior knowledge of animal reproduction is limited. Conclusion: The urgent need for the development of academic language skills in the early grades is foregrounded in this article, arguing that it can be infused in subjects across the curriculum of the early grades. Contribution: The task can be used by teachers and by researchers who may wish to replicate the study.

The study aims to assess the role of linguistic and non-linguistic barriers on the English-speaking abilities of Saudi EFL learners. A cross-sectional design was adopted and convenience sampling was employed to recruit the EFL learners in Saudi Universities. An online survey was conducted. Descriptive statistics, ttests, and factor analysis were performed. The results of the study showed that non-linguistic barriers, affecting English-speaking capabilities included fear of making mistakes, shyness, anxiety, confidence, and a lack of interest. Where the most significant factor was confidence in to impact of English speaking. Moreover, among linguistic barriers i.e., grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation, vocabulary was the most significant factor to influence the English-speaking ability of the Saudi EFL students. However, no gender-wise discrepancies were found in experiencing these barriers. The study concluded that there was no significant difference between male and female learners. Both genders faced linguistic and nonlinguistic barriers. However, pronunciation errors, a lack of vocabulary, and poor knowledge about grammatical structure were the linguistic barriers, faced by the students.

We analyze here how pre-service teachers explicate their views about the wave-particle duality of photons and what role it plays in their arguments supporting the quantum nature of light. The data for the analysis is provided by 12 written reports about the double-slit experiment with feeble light. The analysis is based on constructing semantic networks corresponding to pre-service teachers' written texts. Contingency-like associative correlation between word-pairs is used to differentiate between word-pairs, where associations of two terms or words is systematic. Such associations indicate connections, which are significant for key term vocabularies in construction of inferences and arguments. Based on that information of the key vocabulary we then construct the structure of pre-service teachers' argument for the nature of the photon and its wave-particle duality, in the form of directed argument graphs (DAGs). The results show that argument structures in four to six out of 12 cases meet the goals set for pre-service teacher education. In these cases, experimental aspects and wave-particle duality play an important role in the pre-service teachers' argument and its structure.

This study examines language demands in undergraduate university mathematics classes with a view to better preparing and supporting international and other culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students in the United States universities. We observed and analyzed the language demands of 13 entry-level mathematics classes across two large universities. Findings showed that mathematics instruction required extensive and varied listening skills requiring students to listen to long and uninterrupted stretches of sometimes fast paced speech. Technical vocabulary contributed to the language demands, but instructors used both academic and colloquial varieties of language in instruction, interweaving mathematical nouns with phrasal verbs to explain mathematical processes. We suggest a greater focus on development of academic listening skills in English language classes as well as potential collaboration with mathematics campus resources and faculty for additional student support for preparing CLD students for potential future discourse practices.

There is a long-standing argument about whether words or character morphemes are the functional units in reading Chinese. We propose a Character-Word Dual Function (CWDF) model of reading Chinese in which both characters and words are functional units that contribute differentially to orthographic and meaning processes in reading Chinese. Two masked constituent priming experiments examined one of the model's predictions by testing orthographic and meaning priming effects in reading Chinese compounds. The meaning transparency of the prime (a constituent character) and the target (a compound word) was manipulated to distinguish meaning effects from orthographic effects. In transparent pairs, the prime and target were orthographically and semantically related (e.g., [characters omitted] [home-family]); in opaque pairs, the prime and target shared orthography only (e.g., [characters omitted] [home-guy]). Exposure durations of the prime were varied (50ms and 216ms) to allow orthographic and meaning priming, respectively. We manipulated word frequency to reflect the accessibility of word-level representations. The results are as follows: (1) Sharing character level orthography facilitated word reading for both high- and low-frequency words, supporting the assumption of an important role for the character level in orthographic processes. (2) The meaning priming effect was found with the longer exposure duration and only for low-frequency words. High-frequency words produced rapid access, which was not enhanced by the meaning priming of its constituent characters, suggesting that the word functions as the primary meaning provider in reading. These findings are congruent with the CWDF model, which posits that characters are the fundamental orthographic units of written Chinese and that words are primary meaning providers.

Using context to derive a word's meaning is typically conceptualized as part of the reading comprehension process. However, context sensitivity develops early--before children start to learn to read. This study took a developmental perspective, attempting to capture children's context sensitivity through spoken discourse and assess its value in predicting L2 reading comprehension alongside other reading-related variables. Context sensitivity is conceptualized as a construct consisting of two facets: exploiting directive and disregarding misdirective information in context. Fourth-grade children (N = 113) learning English as a foreign language (L2) heard a three-utterance discourse and selected a picture best representing a discourse-final word which was congruent or not with the previous context. The task was re-administered at Grade 5, together with a reading comprehension test. Results showed that the two facets of context sensitivity were not correlated at either grade. While children showed rapid growth in using directive context from Grade 4 to Grade 5, sensitivity to misdirective information just began to emerge at Grade 5. Despite being separate entities, the two facets of sensitivity, alone and in combination, contributed to predicting L2 reading comprehension concurrently and longitudinally after controlling L2 proficiency (vocabulary and decoding) and linguistic awareness (phonology, morphology, and syntax). Overall, the results support the conceptualization of context sensitivity as a two-faceted construct, to exploit and to disregard context information, with both facets uniquely predicting L2 reading comprehension.

Background: Upper elementary grade students encounter increasingly complex texts with abundant morphologically complex words. Despite the positive effects of morphology-based vocabulary instruction, emergent bilinguals with limited word reading skills may need additional support. Methods: This study investigated the effects of morphological analysis and morphophonemic analysis instruction on the orthographic and semantic learning of morphologically complex academic words. Fourth- and fifth-grade Spanish-English bilingual students (N = 30) in the United States participated in two learning tasks. In learning task one, participants learned two sets of carefully matched derivational words under morphological and whole-word learning conditions. In learning task two, the same participants learned two other sets of words under morphophonemic and whole-word learning conditions. Each learning task included two learning sessions interweaved by meaning recall and spelling production assessments. Cross-classified multilevel regression was used to assess the effects of intervention conditions, child and item predictors, as well as cross-level interactions. Results: Findings showed no significant difference in meaning recall and spelling measures between morphological and whole-word conditions. Students performed significantly better in the morphophonemic condition than in the whole-word condition for both meaning and affix spelling outcomes. The effect of morphophonemic intervention over whole word condition was stronger for younger students and words of lower base frequencies. Student meaning and spelling performance was significantly predicted by their word reading skills. Conclusions: Morphophonemic analysis instruction enhances word meaning recall and spelling of complex derivative words.

Background: Although most prevalent in childhood, the acquisition of new words in oral vocabulary takes place right across the lifespan. Of the many factors that influence oral vocabulary learning, one extrinsic factor is the listening environment. The current study aimed to examine whether the presence of noise impacts oral vocabulary learning in adult native speakers of English and, if so, whether this can be alleviated by the incidental presence of orthography when introducing new words. Methods: Sixty 18-35-year-old native speakers of English were divided into two groups: orthography present and orthography absent and were taught novel picture-word pairs either in quiet or in noise. Word learning was assessed using picture naming and picture-word-matching tasks. Results: The results revealed that the presence of orthography during training reduced the negative impact of noise and supported word learning and retention in adults. Conclusion: These results are promising for vocabulary instruction practices in less-than-ideal listening environments where structural modifications are not a feasible option.

Background: Spelling acquisition requires the assimilation of the regularities of the writing system, but these regularities may differ between the native and a foreign language. English spelling acquisition is a challenge for Spanish-speaking children due to differences in the orthographic systems. The aim of this study was to examine to what extent Spanish-speaking children use sub-lexical and lexical information when spelling in English as a foreign language (EFL), and whether this varies across grades. Methods: To achieve this, we administered a spelling-to-dictation task of monosyllabic words to children 9 to 11 years old. Spelling accuracy, written latencies, and writing durations were analysed as a function of phonology-to-orthography consistency, lexical frequency, word length, and the semantic knowledge that the children have of the words. Results: Results showed differences between grades, with word length only influencing younger children. Lexical frequency, consistency, and semantic knowledge facilitated performance in older children. The cumulative exposure to English may lead to an improvement in spelling due to vocabulary growth and increased sensitivity to new spelling patterns and regularities. Such development occurs despite differences between the orthographies of the native and foreign language and even in the absence of explicit instruction in EFL spelling. Conclusions: Semantic information about words helps spelling retrieval during writing in EFL. Spanish-speaking children develop sensitivity to English orthography and spelling patterns, evident in the older group of children.

This article evaluates the predictions of an algorithmic-level distributed associative memory model as it introduces, propagates, and resolves ambiguity, and compares it to the predictions of computational-level parallel parsing models in which ambiguous analyses are accounted separately in discrete distributions. By superposing activation patterns that serve as cues to other activation patterns, the model is able to maintain multiple syntactically complex analyses superposed in a finite working memory, propagate this ambiguity through multiple intervening words, then resolve this ambiguity in a way that produces a measurable predictor that is proportional to the log conditional probability of the disambiguating word given its context, marginalizing over all remaining analyses. The results are indeed consistent in cases of complex structural ambiguity with computational-level parallel parsing models producing this same probability as a predictor, which have been shown reliably to predict human reading times.

While the effect of reading strategies on L2 test performance has been extensively researched, the effect of test-taking strategies remains underexplored, with mixed results due to varying contextual factors. This study, therefore, investigated the latent structure of test-taking strategies and the relationships among test-taking strategies, lexico-grammatical ability, and test performance in a test of local-level reading comprehension questions (LRCQs) by 217 Chinese EFL learners. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed test-taking strategies could be composed of test-management and test-wiseness strategies. Structural equation modeling provided further empirical evidence for this conceptual distinction, as only test-management strategies were significantly affected by lexico-grammatical ability. However, while lexico-grammatical ability had a large effect on test performance, neither test-management nor test-wiseness strategies had a significant impact on test performance. This study helps researchers and teachers better understand the test-taking strategies at play in LRCQs and their impact on test performance and carries implications for L2 reading pedagogy.

The relationship between emotion and language in children is an emerging field of research. To carry out this type of study, researchers need to precisely manipulate the emotional parameters of the words in their experimental material. However, the number of affective norms for words in this population is still limited. To fill this gap, the present report presents a set of 7 norms that measure the emotional parameters (valence, arousal) of words rated by children in French, English, German, Spanish, and Chinese. The high correlations between the valence values and the moderate correlations between arousal values of these norms allow us to determine a cross-language homogeneity of emotional representations in children. Thus, this report introduces a significant metanorm with 508 words characterized by valence and by arousal. This tool is a worthwhile resource for researchers interested in the links between emotion and language, as well as for those interested in cross-language comparisons. The complete database can be downloaded at the following address: https://osf.io/stnbk/

Bodily engagement with the material and sociocultural world is ubiquitous in doing and learning science. However, science education researchers have often tended to emphasize the disembodied and nonmaterial aspects of science learning, thereby overlooking the crucial role of the body in meaning-making processes. While in recent years we have seen a turn towards embracing embodied perspectives, there persist considerable theoretical and methodological differences within research on embodiment in science education that hamper productive discourse. What is needed is a careful examination of how different traditions and disciplines, among them philosophy, social semiotics, and cognitive science, bear on embodiment in science education research. This paper aims to explore and articulate the differences and convergences of embodied perspectives in science education research in the form of a dialogue between three fictitious personas that stand for the cognitive, social-interactionist, and phenomenological research traditions. By bringing these traditions into dialogue, we aim to better position the role of the body in the science education research landscape. In doing so, we take essential steps towards unifying terminology across different research traditions and further exploring the implications of embodiment for science education research.

The purpose of this study was to (a) examine the underlying assessment structure of the Derivational Morphology Task (DMORPH) and (b) investigate the relation of the DMORPH to vocabulary and reading comprehension outcomes with a sample of struggling adult readers. Specifically, participants included 218 struggling adult readers enrolled in adult literacy classes. We used item-level analyses to evaluate the underlying structure of the DMORPH. Items with phonological (e.g., "music" to "musician") and non-phonological transformations ("teach" to "teacher") were examined in relation to adult literacy students' vocabulary and reading comprehension skills. A bifactor model was the best fit to the data, suggesting that the DMORPH measured a single factor of derivational morphological awareness with some variation due to phonological and non-phonological change items. Follow-up analyses revealed that the DMORPH can essentially be considered unidimensional, which justified the use of a single scoring system for the DMORPH with adult literacy students. However, after controlling for word reading and phonological awareness, the phonological change items uniquely predicted vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, whereas the non-phonological change items were not significant. The results support the structural validity of the DMORPH and the need to use both phonological and non-phonological change items with adult literacy students. The present findings also provide insight into potential intervention targets for instructors in adult literacy programs who are interested in improving students' vocabulary and reading comprehension skills.

Researchers' investment in reader engagement includes the construction of an appealing abstract. While numerous studies have been conducted on abstracts' rhetorical features, scant empirical attention has been paid to negation use in academic writing. The current study seeks to narrow the research gap from a general and diachronic perspective by adopting an interpersonal model of negation. We found that while "not, no," and "little" tend to be the commonly used negative markers in "Science" abstracts, "little" increased diachronically but decreased for "not" and "no." Functionally, writers prefer to use "interactive negations" and employ relatively more negative markers that function as "consequence" (interactive dimension) and "hedging" (interactional dimension) in their abstracts. Finally, we discuss the possible reasons for such results as well as their pedagogical implications.

During a classroom-based study that featured wordless and almost wordless picturebooks, instruction and adult mediation communicated to Kindergarten children that elements of visual art, design, and layout are fundamental to meaning-making when transacting with this format of literature. The illustration techniques described by Ray (2010) were used as an analytical lens to analyze the transcripts from the small group interactive sessions of an almost wordless picturebook featured during the research. The descriptive analyses of the transcripts reveal the rich viewing and talking opportunities that can be afforded during children's transactions with almost wordless picturebooks when these selections of literature are situated as aesthetic objects, and when children and adult mediators understand and appreciate how meaning is individually and synergistically represented by elements of visual art, design and layout. The findings are discussed in relation to the literature reviewed, and the theoretical frameworks of social semiotics and sociocultural theory.