Abstract: Over the last few decades, several aspects of pragmatic knowledge and its effects on teaching  and  learning  a  second  language  (L2)  have  been  explored  in  many  studies.  However, among  various  studies,  the  area  of  interlanguage  pragmatic  (ILP)  assessment  is  quite  novel issue and many features of it have remained unnoticed. As ILP assessment has received more atten...

PURPOSE Two studies were conducted to investigate the effects of classroom noise on attention and speech perception in native Spanish-speaking second graders learning English as their second language (L2) as compared to English-only-speaking (EO) peers. METHOD Study 1 measured children's on-task behavior during instructional activities with and without soundfield amplification. Study 2 measur...

In the United States, the immigrant population explosion has been calling for increasing attention to English instruction for immigrant learners. In comparison with prolific literature on immigrant English language learners (ELLs) in K–12 educational settings, literature on English instruction for adult immigrant learners at non-profit organizations, especially through microanalysis of classroo...

This research tends to ascertain several traditional and socio-cultural barriers to English language learning in Saudi Arabia and to explore more ways than before for making teaching and learning more effective. The findings of four quantitative and qualitative surveys conducted in this regard reveal a unique traditional and socio-cultural milieu, which turns the Saudi EFL learners lackadaisica...

We motivate and present a corpus of scripted and spontaneous speech in both the native and the non-native language of talkers from various language backgrounds. Using corpus recordings from 11 native English and 11 late Mandarin-English bilinguals we compared speech timing across native English, native Mandarin, and Mandarin-accented English. Findings showed similarities across native Mandarin ...

Researchers have extensively compared different L2 learning contexts, such as EFL versus study-abroad, for their impacts on oral production; however, scant attention, if any, has been paid to comparing EFL settings in terms of input factors such as textbooks, amount of contacts in L2, and teachers. Accordingly, the effects of these factors on the oral production skills were investigated in this...

This paper presents and evaluates approaches to automatically score the content correctness of spoken responses in a new language test for teachers of English as a foreign language who are non-native speakers of English. Most existing tests of English spoken proficiency elicit responses that are either very constrained (e.g., reading a passage aloud) or are of a predominantly spontaneous nature...

Abstract Although the teaching of English to primary school children has been rapidly growing in many English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) countries around world, a shortage specialist teachers remains persistent challenge. Consequently, non-specialists, such as homeroom initially trained generalists, are more often required teach English. The present study, focusing on 304 non-specialist servin...

This article examines the effects of the leadership style of the principal, “transformational leadership and transactional leadership”, along with teachers’ job satisfaction on schools’ organizational health. Specifically speaking, it investigates to what extent the variations in school health can be related to the principal’s leadership style and teachers’ job satisfaction. To this end, a Like...