Earticle

In pursuit of the precise mechanism by which working memory (WM) functions in second language (L2) reading comprehension (RC), the current study examined whether strategy use or task difficulty influences the role of WM in L2 RC. Eighty Korean adult EFL learners participated, and their WM capacity, RC performance, and strategy use were measured. The variable of task difficulty was operationalized by the relative difficulty of texts on which RC items were based. The results showed that difference in strategy use brought about significant difference in RC performance when the readers with insufficient WM capacity had to comprehend difficult texts, whereas no such difference was found with easier texts or among L2 readers with more WM capacity. These findings not only illustrate intricate interrelationships among WM and other variables in L2 RC, but also provide a noteworthy implication for L2 reading instruction that L2 learners with deficient WM capacity could benefit from active strategy use when faced with a difficult L2 reading task. The compensatory role of strategy and the necessity of remedial strategy training for the learners with limited WM is further implicated for L2 reading classrooms.

The English tense and aspect system has long posed great difficulty to second language (L2) learners due to their underlying complex concepts. This difficulty is compounded by oversimplified grammatical descriptions found in many ELT textbooks. Cognitive Grammar (CG) offers comprehensive accounts of tenses that could be useful for learners. This paper reports a quasiexperimental study investigating the differential effects of CG-informed form-focused instruction and formalist-traditional form-focused instruction on the acquisition of two English tenses, namely the simple past and the past perfect. Secondary school EFL learners (final pool: N = 36) were assigned to two groups (CG and Traditional). Learners in the CG group were exposed to CG-grounded grammatical descriptions of the tenses while learners in the traditional group received traditional accounts. Both groups performed awareness-raising tasks to enhance learning. Data were gathered from the learners’ performance in a cloze narrative task. Results from an immediate post-test revealed that CG-based descriptions helped learners improve significantly and outperform learners in the traditional group. These findings indicate the superiority of a CG approach to a formalist approach to teaching the tenses and lend support to the applicability and efficacy of CG-grounded form-focused instruction in the classroom.

Vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) play a crucial role in L2 vocabulary education. Although it is assumed that metacognitive VLS are effective, few studies have empirically investigated this assumption. This paper, therefore, conducted a study in order to establish a comprehensive taxonomy of metacognitive VLS and explored the relationship between the use of metacognitive VLS and vocabulary knowledge. A vocabulary size test and a VLS questionnaire were administered to 132 Japanese junior high school students. The data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis. The results showed a total of 20 metacognitive VLS and categorized them into six. Among the six metacognitive VLS, input seeking was a positive predictor of test scores at any frequency level, while spaced learning, guessing with confidence, and note making varied in effectiveness depending on word frequency. These results suggest it is important to encourage students to learn vocabulary outside the classroom, teach basic affix knowledge, and facilitate students in making vocabulary notebooks.

Although extensive task-based research has focused on how the manipulation of task complexity affects L2 performance, less attention has been paid to its combined effects with those of L2 proficiency. In this study, 41 Korean learners of English carried out a written task with two levels of task complexity, operationalized as number of elements. Participants were divided into three groups, based on their level of L2 proficiency. Performance was assessed by syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, and accuracy measures. Significant interaction effects between L2 proficiency and task complexity were found on lexical diversity and accuracy measures, especially in the high-proficiency group. Findings are discussed in relation to Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis and attentional resources available for task performance.

This study examined the effects of input- and output-based planning on Korean college students’ communication strategy use and speaking anxiety. Two groups of 84 Korean female college students (n=168) have participated in the study, with one group performing reading activities, and the other performing writing activities prior to speaking tasks. The findings of the study indicate that the two groups did not show any meaningful differences in their overall communication strategy use. However, significant differences were found between the groups in light of social-affective strategies and meaning negotiation strategies. Particularly notable is that these strategies were utilized to a greater extent by the writing group, compared to its counterpart, i.e., the reading group. In contrast, the effects of different types of planning were found to be nonsignificant for speaking anxiety. In other words, both groups showed similar levels of speaking anxiety, regardless of planning conditions, although their anxiety decreased over time as a result of strategic planning. These findings bear meaningful implications for the role of strategy training for language learners and for the importance of creating optimal conditions to maximize effectiveness of learning.

Teacher self-efficacy beliefs (TSE) are recognised as a key component of successful learning and teaching. However, this construct seems to be under-investigated in the field of language teaching. This systematic review aims to examine the state of English as a foreign language (EFL) TSE research published from 2002 to 2017. Twenty seven studies were included and reviewed in terms of (i) contexts, (ii) participants, (iii) focus, (iv) methodology, and (v) main findings. Results show that a quantitative approach was dominant among the reviewed studies, the majority of which took practicing teachers as their participants. Most of the studies were carried out in Middle Eastern countries, and there was a paucity of TSE research in other EFL contexts. TSE research in the area mainly focused on the influence of different factors on TSE, and correlations between TSE and teacher behaviours and emotion. However, there was a lack of evidence for the impact of EFL teacher self-efficacy on learner outcomes. The review also shows the dearth of TSE scales or research that examines EFL specific teaching tasks. Finally, the review provides some outline of directions for future EFL teacher self-efficacy research.

A concern with identity has become remarkably widespread since the 1990s. An immense amount of research has been carried out to investigate the construct of identity, but few studies have been done to explore the construct of identity boundary, even less on the discursive construction of identity boundary. To fill this gap, this study explored how Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers construct identity boundaries between themselves and learners discursively. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 58 Iranian EFL teachers (31 male and 27 female) to identify how they demarcate the boundaries between themselves and learners. Five significant themes emerged from the data analysis: teachers' knowledge and power as indicators of their identity, setting boundaries by drawing up classroom rules, creating boundaries and not walls, demarcating boundaries both discursively and non-discursively, and establishing boundaries more implicitly than explicitly. The findings indicate that four categories could be conceivable with regard to teachers’ identity boundary setting: discursive, explicit; discursive, implicit; non-discursive, explicit; and non-discursive, implicit. As the majority of the teachers in this study reported that they tended to demarcate their identity boundaries more implicitly and non-discursively, the implication might be that Iranian EFL teachers prefer to create the identity boundaries more indirectly so as not to cause any negative affective influences on their students.

This study explored the reflection process of secondary in-service English teachers during a graduate course. In particular, the study aimed to examine the type of reflection the teachers are engaged in as they strive toward experiencing core reflection. In addition, the restricting and contributing factors during the process of reflection were also looked into. A total of 17 in-service secondary English teachers participated in this study. The data were collected from class observations, group discussions, reflective presentations, and interviews. The results of the study showed that they struggled at first due to many restricting factors such as lack of training to conduct structured reflections and ongoing administrative concerns. As they progressed and focused on a particular question that triggered further reflection, they were able to collaboratively reflect on a shared theme. This enabled them to confront their long-term difficulties and finally move forward. The implication of the study points out the importance of proper training to conduct effective reflection on a regular basis and the efforts to provide programs that focus on helping teachers to redefine imported theories and methods so that they can appropriately apply them in their classrooms.

This study investigated the validity of instructionally relevant classroom assessments embedded within a secondary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum. The study was conducted at a high school in Korea, including 148 12th graders learning EFL. For the validity analysis, two sets of achievement tests were chosen (i.e., multiple-choice listening tests for the midterm and final exams). The test items were qualitatively analyzed in relation to the national curriculum and instructional materials, and student test performance was also statistically analyzed. Results revealed that the two achievement tests were found to tap all curricular learning goals, albeit in an imbalanced manner due to the varied degree of coverage of the learning goals (cognitive validity). While the tests covered the target instructional contents, the degree of coverage and representativeness was again limited and inconsistent with the instructions (instructional validity). A statistical analysis of the test performance provided evidence of test validity but found a lack of consistency between the students’ listening ability and item difficulty levels (inferential validity). These findings suggest the types and forms of evidence required for

This study aimed to explore variations within native-English-speaking-teachers (NESTs) when evaluating English learners’ speaking in terms of their teaching period in one institute (new and experienced) and to compare the results with their writing evaluation behaviors. Using the same methodology to the writing study, the speaking materials were carefully prepared and the speaking delivery performance like pronunciation were excluded to be compatible with the writing evaluation. While the experienced NESTs evaluated Korean English learners’ essays more severely than the new NESTs in contrast to the previous studies, there was no difference in speaking. When evaluating the learners’ English writing, the experienced group demonstrated similarities to non-native-Englishspeaking- teachers (NNESTs) in contrast to the new NESTs. When evaluating speaking, the new ones were more consistent in regarding content more substantially while the experienced ones showed a different rating behavior from writing. Lastly, unlike the previous studies, but like the writing study in comparison, the NESTs' perceived-difficulty played a more important role in grading than their perceived-importance regarding grammar, content, and vocabulary. The details of the results were elaborated and the discussions with implications were provided. This study also suggests a new approach to examine rater biases in relation to English learners’ expressive skills.

Fairness and justice are key aspects in the evaluation of language assessments. In this paper, I argue that fairness and justice are subjective perceptions of test takers. Consistent with Kunnan (2018), fairness was conceived as a test quality, while justice was a quality of the social entity administering the test; which in this study was the language program. Test fairness was conceptualized as a multidimensional construct—distributive fairness (how fairly learners perceive their score relative to their effort) procedural fairness (equality of procedures administered during the assessment), interactional fairness (respectful interpersonal treatment of the students by the test administrator), and informational fairness (how fairly information about the assessment and its procedures were provided). In total, 83 university L2 learners in Taiwan completed an online questionnaire gauging perceptions of a single test administration. Regression analysis revealed that procedural and interactional fairness were predictive of justice perceptions of the language program. Distributive fairness shared a relationship with justice perceptions but was not predictive. These findings suggest that participants made justice judgments of their language programs based on how fairly the procedures used to administer a single test were carried out and how respectfully the instructor administering the test treated them.

The present study investigated the possible contribution of plays as a medium of instruction for pragmatic development through explicit and implicit instruction. To this end, 80 English-major university students formed four intact experimental groups: two literary and two nonliterary groups. One of the literary groups (Implicit Play) received typographically enhanced plays containing the speech acts of apology, request, and refusal, and the other (Explicit Play) received the same plus metapragmatic instruction on the speech acts. The medium of instruction for the nonliterary groups were dialogs containing the given functions; they were also given either enhanced input (Implicit Dialog) or input plus metapragmatic information (Explicit Dialog). All the groups took a written discourse completion test (WDCT) and a multiple-choice discourse completion test (MDCT) before and after instruction. Analysis of the groups’ performance on the WDCT pretest and posttest did not show an advantage for the literary medium, that is, there was no significant difference between literary and nonliterary groups. It was rather the mode of instruction that mattered most; explicit groups outperformed their implicit counterparts. As for the groups’ performance on the MDCT pre and posttest, analyses revealed that the groups had improved, but there was no significant difference among the groups as a result of the four teaching conditions, suggesting that pragmatic instruction regardless of the medium and mode of teaching can improve learners’ knowledge of speech acts.

This paper aims to examine the perceptions of teachers and students at a gifted high school in Central Vietnam about teaching science subjects such as Maths, Chemistry, Physics, and Biology through English. Using questionnaires, in-depth interviews, and class observations as research instruments, this study also explores the challenges the administrators, teachers, and students are facing in adopting English as a medium of instruction (EMI). The findings revealed that leaders, teachers, and students appreciate the project and show interest in EMI, but that its implementation experiences a lot of dilemmas and tensions partly owing to English competence, pedagogical methods, materials, and management. From these findings, the study suggests some implications to help make EMI implementation more applicable and effective at the high school level.