Speaking has been considered one of the most important skills in second language teaching and assessment. However, to date there has not been a clear definition of speaking ability. The present study attempts to examine what it means to be able to speak a second language using a newly designed computer-delivered speaking test. The test was created based on a theoretical definition of speaking a...

Reticence is a common problem faced by ESL/EFL teachers in classrooms, especially in those with mainly Asian students. The willingness to communicate model of MacIntyre, Clement, Dörnyei, and Noels (1998. ‘Conceptualizing willingness to communicate in a L2: a situational model of L2 confidence and affiliation’. The Modern Language Journal 82/4: 545–62.) postulates that willingness to speak is d...

It is, thus, not surprising that English education has gained more attention than ever and there also has been a growing amount of interest in learning English online. Although there are a good number of ESL/EFL E-learning websites available, many of them are poorly designed technologically and/or pedagogically. It is true that technology, such as human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer-m...

This study considers the ongoing “grammar correction debate” in second language writing by examining how a focus on formal accuracy would affect the revising processes of ESL writers and the students’ written products. A case study approach was used to find out how two ESL students would respond in the two different rewriting situations: (a) when there is no explicit expectation for them to pro...

Learning new sounds in a second language requires the acquisition of new motor routines and new sensorimotor planning systems needed to ensure coordination. Auditory feedback is an important part of the planning and control system required for fluent speech production. ESL vowel production was studied using a real-time formant perturbation technique to modify auditory feedback. Three groups of ...

There are many efforts to utilize the mobile phone as a computing platform in developing regions of the world. One effective approach is to build educational games for children in these regions. Existing games in this space are typically single-player affairs, devoid of the possibly beneficial element of collaboration between multiple learners. We seek to explore the feasibility of creating mul...