Pragmatic competence is one essential component of communicative competence; however, it has been quite neglected until recent years. Among all, the knowledge and ability to use discourse markers (DMs) cannot be overemphasized because they often facilitate cross-cultural communications. Due to the culture-bound nature, DMs (e.g., “well”, “y’know”) are often used quite differently across culture...

The study investigated English as a foreign language learners’ metacognitive awareness of reading strategy use. The participants were 12 Taiwanese college students who were required to read aloud and think aloud the eight designated texts. The collected data came from the pre-and postquestionnaires and an interview on metacognition in EFL reading as well as participants’ thinkaloud protocols. T...

This paper presents findings of a study of recognition vocabulary knowledge as a predictor of written Academic English Proficiency (AEP) and overall Academic Achievement in an English medium higher education program in an English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) context. Vocabulary knowledge was measured using a Timed YES/NO (TYN) test. AEP was assessed using an academic writing test based on IELTS....

Foreign language teaching in many Asian-Pacific countries in recent decades has shifted toward communicative-focused instruction. However, researchers have reported a gap between policy and practice. To incorporate teachers’ voices in adopting the communicative approach in the curriculum, this study explores factors that promote or hinder EFL teachers’ implementation of Communicative Language T...

This study examines the reliability of automatic speech recognition (ASR) software used to teach English pronunciation, focusing on one particular piece of software, FluSpeak, as a typical example. Thirty-six Korean English as a Foreign Language (EFL) college students participated in an experiment in which they listened to 15 sentences that appeared in FluSpeak and recorded their voices, repeat...

Individual learners’ affective factors are very important for foreign language learning. In China foreign language learning mainly happens in classroom. Foreign language teachers are the organizers and carriers of language classes, and thus they inevitably influence the students’ affection. This study explores how EFL teachers influence students’ affect, what the teachers should do to develop a...

This article introduces the activity of student-written reading logs as a practical application of reader-response theory in EFL literature teaching. Since reader-response theory stresses the synthesis between reader and text, so it is proposed that practical applications should be based on this interaction. Students make notes in their reading logs as they read a novel, setting down their thou...

Studies have mainly focused on strategies to motivate teachers or the student-teacher motivation relationships rather than teacher demotivation in the English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching process, whereas no data have been found on the factors that cause teacher demotivation in the Turkish EFL teaching contexts at the elementary education level. Thus, this study aims to investigate the ...

The purpose of this research was to examine how Korean and Japanese EFL learners’ speech act of compliment is transferred from their native cultures when they are interacting in English, and to investigate if the two cultural groups display different or similar strategies in giving and responding compliment. The subjects were 20 intermediate-level Korean and Japanese university students, who pa...