BACKGROUND Expiratory flow limitation (EFL), determined by the negative expiratory pressure (NEP) technique, can exhibit overlapping patterns in COPD, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and non-OSA obesity. We assessed the ability of a quantitative method to assess EFL to discriminate COPD from obese and OSA patients during NEP (-2 to -3 cm H(2)O) testing. METHODS EFL was quantified by measuring t...

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 ...

Intonation phrasing refers to the system of intonation choices that a speaker has when associating complete intonation patterns with a text. The number of patterns and the boundaries may vary and convey different meanings. This study investigates the intonation phrasing patterns in Chinese EFL learners’ read speech. The recordings of 45 Chinese students and 8 British native speakers were annota...

Motivation is believed to be one very significant construct that imposes positive impact and enhances the learning in any second language learning context. Two types of motivation are known as the instrumental and integrative according to Gardner and Lambert’s original work on attitudes and motivation. Any learner may have a motivation type based on his/her learning goals and the context they a...

Two empirical studies were conducted in which the differences in Japanese EFL learners’ look-up behavior between hand-held electronic dictionaries (EDs) and printed dictionaries (PDs) were investigated. We focus here on the relation between learners’ look-up frequency and degree of reading comprehension of the text. In the first study, a total of 34 college students were divided into two groups...

Near-Synonyms and Similar-Looking (NSSL) words can create confusion for English as Foreign Language Learners as a result of a type of lexical error that often occurs when they confuse similar-looking words that are near synonyms to have the same meaning. Particularly, this may occur if the similar-looking words have the same translated meaning. This study proposes a method to find these NSSL wo...

this article, first, examined the role of efl university students' critical thinking (ct) in their self-efficacy beliefs. second, the role of gender as a moderating factor in the relationship between students' ct and self-efficacy beliefs was investigated. third, the difference between females and males regarding their ct and efficacy beliefs was studied. to attain the goals of the research, 86...

Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Taiwan often use an outdated lecture-memorization methodology resulting in low motivation, confidence, and ability on the part of students. Innovative educators are exploring use of technology, such as videoconferences with native speakers, to enrich the classroom; however few guidelines have been developed for effective videoconference instruc...