Due to the recent increase in trade, travel and political and social co-operation, language competence has become a key skill in modern Europe. Great efforts have been made to improve language training at all education levels. Whereas in the past language teaching was mainly related to cultural themes with an emphasis on literature, communicative aspects in everyday international contact situat...

Institutions of Higher Education are beginning to place a greater emphasis on quality teaching and student learning. However, few faculty receive any type of teacher training prior to entering the academy. As a result, faculty development is one likely solution to teacher quality issues. But faculty development is faced with serious shortcomings that impede its ability to improve teacher qualit...

Abstract In this study, we examined the usefulness of and students’ perceptions a one-to-one online oral EFL course. Based on van Lier’s learning theory ecology, studied positive aspects that encouraged negative required improvement. A total 18 young-adult English learners from different parts China were invited to attend three (teacher–learner) lessons designed by researchers. quasi-experiment...

Formative, content-level feedback on student writing has been shown to have positive impacts on both writing and learning outcomes. However, many teachers struggle to provide this type of feedback to large classrooms of students. This paper takes an initial step towards supporting teacher-facilitated feedback through the use of automated and user-directed topic discovery. 114 student essays wer...

Tools of the Mind is a curriculum that aims to promote cognitive and academic outcomes for kindergarten students by focusing on “executive function” as the central process to the development of students’ academic and social competencies. Tools of the Mind is based on the ideas of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky. Instruction is individualized through teacher scaffolding, and dramatic play is a...

This paper discusses user study outcomes with teachers who used Language Muse SM a webbased teacher professional development (TPD) application designed to enhance teachers’ linguistic awareness, and support teachers in the development of language-based instructional scaffolding (support) for their English language learners (ELL). System development was grounded in literature that supports the n...

Our learning-by-teaching environment has students take on the role and responsibilities of a teacher to a virtual student named Betty. The environment is designed to help students learn and understand science topics for themselves as they teach and monitor their agent. This process is supported by adaptive scaffolding and feedback through interactions with the teachable agent and a mentor agent...