In this global era, critical thinking has become crucial for educators and learners. The purpose of this research was to explore how modifying a dialogical strategy in asynchronous online discussion forums impacted Chinese learners’ critical thinking. Due to the Chinese cultural impact of social harmony, the majority of learners tend to maintain silent and avoid critical discussions in instruct...

This study investigates how beginning and advanced Dutch learners of Mandarin process Mandarin tonal information. An ABX matching to sample task is adopted to investigate the discrimination of tonal pairs, the redistribution of attention between segmental and suprasegmental information, and the integrality of segmental and suprasegmental dimensions. Results show a clear developmental path in to...

To construct their first lexicon, infants must determine the relationship between native phonological variation and the meanings of words. This process is arguably more complex for bilingual learners who are often confronted with phonological conflict: phonological variation that is lexically relevant in one language may be lexically irrelevant in the other. In a series of four experiments, the...

Previous studies have demonstrated that the second language (L2) learners’ linguistic backgrounds and L2 proficiency have an effect on their perception of L2 sounds. This paper attempts to investigate the assimilation patterns of Mandarin and Tibetan tones, and the influences of first language (L1) backgrounds and Mandarin proficiency on the perception of Mandarin tones. A total of 46 Tibetan p...

Reading exercises are critical for developing strong reading comprehension. However, due to resource constraints and a lack of accurate evaluation methods, English instructors can hardly assess student reading ability effectively. In past decades, learning by reading is known to be challenging for both teachers and students involved, especially for students learning English as a Foreign Languag...

There is a general belief among researchers and speakers at conferences and symposia that Arab EFL Learners are primarily responsible for their weak writing performance. Educational policies usually evade criticism. This study is an attempt to show that educational policies can have their role in the learner’s writing problems. Viz. it posits that for the most part writing problems can be cause...

the present study was conducted to investigate how efl learners with distinct levels of emotional intelligence might benefit from critical thinking-based instruction and use different language learning strategies. a further concern of this study was to investigate the relationship among critical thinking, language learning strategy, and emotional intelligence of efl learners. to this end, 88 ef...

Recent language testing research investigates factors other than language proficiency that may be responsible for systematic variance in language test performance. One such factor is the test takers' cognitive styles. The present study was carried out with the aim of finding the probable effects of Iranian EFL learners' cognitive styles on their performance on communicative tests. For purposes ...