Earticle

Research has shown that providing glosses facilitates L2 reading comprehension and vocabulary learning. This study, however, examines the effect of L1 and L2 glosses on L2 vocabulary learning in the context of computer-assisted language learning in an EFL setting. Forty-four Iranian pre-university students were assigned to three groups and the homogeneity of participating groups was checked by administering a pretest. The first group used L1 glosses, the second group consulted L2 glosses, and the third group acted as a control group and received no glosses. Using scaffoglossing software, participants of the experimental groups read the reading sections of 3 units of their textbook for 6 sessions. At the end of the 7th session, all participating individuals took the immediate posttest including a Persian equivalent test, a multiple-choice test, and a sentence completion test. Twenty-five days later, participants took the same package of tests as the delayed posttest. Repeated measures ANOVAs run on the obtained data revealed that the glosses groups (L1 and L2) outperformed the control group. Further analyses run indicated that the L1 glosses outscored the L2 glosses in the immediate and delayed posttests, though the difference was not statistically significant. The findings of this study suggest that the participants’ L1 can be as effective as L2 glosses for vocabulary learning.

This article discusses the key lessons that can be learned from a longitudinal study of the undergraduate experience of English-medium university education in Hong Kong. Data were derived from 137 semistructured interviews with 28 participants from different societal, educational and disciplinary backgrounds over three years. Each of the six rounds of interviews focused on a particular aspect of university life and study. The interviews revealed that the participants experienced an array of challenges when studying in English, including comprehending specialist vocabulary, understanding unfamiliar accents, grasping the purpose and structure of lectures, processing visual aids and planning major assignments. The article proposes a number of strategies to negate or mitigate these problems. The findings indicate that the major factor influencing student adjustment to higher education is their secondaryschool teaching medium: unlike their counterparts from Englishmedium backgrounds, students from Chinese-medium schools found the transition to university extremely taxing. The findings also suggest that content-area professors take little or no account of English skills when assessing students’ assignments, which raises doubts as to whether university English courses serve any useful purpose at all.

Understanding the ways in which L2 learners differ from one another is one of the primary concerns of those involved in second language acquisition (SLA) research. Although studies conducted so far offer various insights into effective L2 teaching, they also have several drawbacks, such as (1) they have focused on each learner variable individually, thus lacking a holistic perspective; (2) they have employed cross-sectional designs, thus lacking a developmental perspective; and (3) they have dealt with each learner variable on a general level, and have not related these variables to specific language skills or tasks. On the basis of the above, the objective of this study is to identify, in a holistic and developmental way, the relationships among L2 learners’ reading motivation, reading strategy use, learner beliefs, and L2 reading achievement, and consequently reveal the profiles of successful and unsuccessful L2 readers. The results showed that: (1) participants could be divided into four groups with various learner characteristics; and (2) each group followed unique developmental paths for (un)successful learning. This suggested that more than one route exists to success or failure in learning an L2, indicating that teachers should adjust their teaching strategies according to the profiles of L2 learners.

The last several decades have seen a continual growth of research on written corrective feedback (WCF) addressing the debate over whether and to what extent the learners’ improvement triggered by WCF can indicate second language acquisition (SLA). Also at issues are such pedagogical concerns as what types of WCF should be provided and what language errors WCF can effectively treat. To contribute to the current understanding of WCF, the present small-scale exploratory study investigates (a) whether direct and indirect WCF differently affect learners’ use of simple past tense in a picture-strip narrative writing; and (b) whether learners’ gains (or losses) can be transferred to an autobiographical writing exercise where WCF was not provided. Twelve low-intermediate EFL learners were randomly divided into a direct WCF group, an indirect WCF group, and a control group, to complete three test occasions, each of which consisted of an in-class and an out-of -class writing assignment. The results indicated that while direct WCF can effectively improve learners’ use of simple past tense in the same task, the gains are more likely to be transferred to a different writing text in the long run when learners receive indirect WCF.

This article critically examines a number of aspects of using English as a medium of instruction (EMI) at higher education institutions (HEIs) in Vietnam. It draws from a wide range of literature in different contexts. In the light of document analysis, the article aims to address such issues as whether EMI at HEIs ensures students’ acquisition of language skills and subject content, whether EMI benefits a majority of people in the country, and whether it marginalizes disadvantaged students from an equal chance to accredited HEIs. It is concluded that although EMI proposed at HEIs in Vietnam is considered a timely and wise response to globalization and regionalization and as a solution meeting socio-economic and political requirements in the new era, its implementation is a long way off. For this project to be successful, its feasibility and other interfering factors at macro and micro levels are to be carefully considered or else foreseeable failures will inflict long-lasting detrimental effects on the stability and development of the country politically, socio-linguistically and economically.

Situated Learning has become a ubiquitous concept in a variety of fields across academia. Commonly understood in terms of the pedagogical utility of contextualizing content knowledge, the generally accepted meaning of situated learning within applied linguistics has remained static. However, critical, post-structural, and postmodern approaches to education and applied linguistics have conflated conceptions of situated learning to include broader interpretations of the concept of situating that include the contextualization of content knowledge into multiple contexts, forms of praxis and theorizing, and a form of inquiry in itself. The purpose of this paper is to unpack how the basic theory of situated learning is related to a wide array of theories that use the basic concept of situating knowledge as a central tenet. In doing so, the author suggests that a more inclusive theory of situated learning is warranted.