Despite consensus in focus on form (FOF) instruction over the facilitative role of noticing, controversy has not quelled over ways of directing EFL learners’ attention towards formal features via implicit techniques like input-enhancement or explicit metacognitive feedback and interactive peer-editing on the output they produce. This quasi-experimental study investigated the impact of input enh...

This study investigated the effects of planned focus-on-form instruction (pFFI) on developing oral grammatical accuracy in Iranian English EFL learners. To this end, 60 lower-intermediate EFL learners studying English in a private English language institute in Tehran, Iran, were randomly assigned to two classes. Both classes received a task-based instruction on grammatical points elicited in or...

Purpose: Investigations of health and wellness in later life tend to be through a lens of dependency with the primary focus on deficits, loss and decline. Much less attention has been focused on the creative, adaptive and proactive aspects of aging and health within the context of residential relocation. This study explores the extent to which older adults employ proactive strategies to enhance...

The almost infinite potential educational uses of information and communication technology (ICT) will only be realized when most teachers have sufficient knowledge and skills to truly integrate ICT into their curricula, utilizing it to make teaching and learning more effective and efficient. For this to be accomplished teachers must experience the integration of ICT into their own pre-service l...

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Gender in Physics.] This study examined the perceptions of 6th grade middle school students regarding physics and physics-related careers. The overarching goal of this work was to understand similarities and differences between girls’ and boys’ perceptions surrounding physics and physics-related careers as part of a long-term effort to increase f...

In the realm of second language acquisition (SLA), task-based language teaching (TBLT) and input enhancement (IE) have been the focus of a great number of studies. However, the idea of investigating the effects of focus on form instruction through input-enhanced tasks along with pre-task planning time as one of the features of task-based language teaching has been rarely explored in the field o...

Traditional approaches to designing agent interactions focus on defining agent interaction in terms of legal sequences of messages. These messagecentric approaches are not a good match with autonomous proactive agents since they unnecessarily limit the agents’ autonomy and flexibility. The Hermes methodology proposes an approach for designing agent interactions in terms of interaction goals. In...

The importance of older adults’ social networks in providing practical, emotional and informational support is well documented. In this paper, we reflect on the personal social networks of older adults, and the shortcomings of existing online Social Networking Sites (SNSs) in supporting their needs. We report findings from ethnographic interviews, focus groups and hands-on demonstrations with o...

Article history: Received 7 June 2013 Received in revised form 18 June 2013 Accepted 19 June 2013 Available online 25 July 2013 In spite of the documented importance of intelligence, surprisingly few colleges and universities offer courses on the topic. Three reasons are given; lack of personal experience with the range of variation of intelligence in the society (cognitive segregation), associ...