This study investigated the discourse effects on intermediate English as foreign language (EFL) learners’ production of dative constructions including prepositional dative (PD), I gave a book to John, and double-object dative (DOD), I gave John a book. The author argues that the alternation between these two constructions is determined by the order of given and new (GN) information that is foll...

This study investigated whether technical university EFL learners’ reading proficiency affected their lexical inference performance and their responses to the contextual instruction. A total of 145 Taiwanese first-year technical university students participated in this study. The instruments in this study involved a GEPT test, a lexical inference task, and a vocabulary strategy questionnaire. P...

The present study has been conducted with two main questions: Does using mobile phones by intermediate EFL learners have a significant effect on the learners' vocabulary retention? And is there a significant difference between male and female intermediate EFL learners in vocabulary retention while using mobile phones? This study was a true experimental research and to do the research 111 studen...

Metacognitive knowledge is knowledge about learning. Recent research suggests that metacognitive knowledge plays an important function in cognitive activities concerning language use and acquisition. This paper aims to investigate the role of metacognitive knowledge in the English writing of Chinese EFL learners. The present study involves 120 non-English major freshmen in China as participants...

In this study the author draws on Jane Willis’ TBL framework and examines its effects on the improvement of EFL learners’ writing competence when such a framework is applied to college writing classrooms in Chinese EFL settings, and thus tentatively explores the feasibility of the task-based approach to the teaching of EFL writing. Results of this study are derived from discussion concerned wit...

Collaborative learning methods which emphasize peer interaction have been widely applied to increase the intensity and effectiveness of EFL reading programs. However, simply grouping students heterogeneously and assigning them group goals does not guarantee that effective collaborative learning will ensue. The present research includes two studies. In Study One, the weaknesses of collaborative ...

Research regarding the teaching of reading for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) is still ongoing. This study focused on metacognitive reading strategies for these learners, first revisiting the concept of metacognition as proposed by Flavell, and then going on to explain reading strategies that require metacognitive skills within three knowledge dimensi...

The purpose of the present study is to examine a) how lower-intermediate and upperintermediate level Turkish learners of English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) realize refusals in English, b) the differences between native and non-native speakers of English in the use of refusals, and c) if L2 proficiency affects possible pragmatic transfer or not. The participants in the study included 18 native ...

This study investigated whether Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL learners hereafter) could use prosodic cues to resolve syntactically ambiguous sentences in English. 8 sentences with 3 types of syntactic ambiguity were adopted. They were far/near PP attachment, left/right word attachment and wide/narrow scope. In the production experiment, 15 Chinese college students who p...

Article History The paper received on: 07/07/2014 Accepted after peer-review on: 24/08/2014 Published on: 01/09/2014 Of the four major language skills, speaking is regarded as the most crucial and central one as it enables the learner to establish successful communication in that language, which is often the main aim of learning any foreign language. That is why it forms the focus of att...