This article describes the anatomy and dynamics of an online professional development activity, the ‘Moodle fishbowl’. The ‘fishbowl’ was designed as an opportunity for experienced EFL educators to witness and make sense of instructional conversation strategies that they might themselves use as they migrate their EFL courses to blended and eventually fully online venues, venues where the roles ...

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...

Using a difference-in-differences framework, we estimate the impact of Ramadan on educational outcomes of Muslim students living in a non-Muslim country. For identification we exploit the fact that the number of Ramadan weeks during the course that we study, varies from year to year, ranging from zero to four. Our main finding is that Ramadan observance has a negative impact on performance; one...

This study examines the relationships among the three essential language-related components -motivation, confidence, and ability -following a series of live videoconference interactions between Taiwanese EFL students and a native speaker. 227 students enrolled in the five advanced conversation classes at a private technical university in central Taiwan participated in this study. Based on quant...

Second language reading comprehension is the most important skill required by students, especially in a foreign language context. One way to help these students improve their reading comprehension is strategy instruction. In the present study, the effect of two strategies, namely, summarizing and students-generated questions have been investigated. The participants in the study were all female ...

This preliminary classroom study aims to examine the impact of trained responders’ feedback on EFL college students’ revisions, both in terms of revision types and quality. After a 4-hour in-class demonstration and a 1-hour after-class reviewer-teacher conference with each student (n = 18), the instructor/researcher collected students’ first drafts and revisions, as well as reviewers’ written f...

Applied linguistics is defined as a discipline that uses a variety of methods to address language-based problems, one of which is that of language teaching and learning. Based on this definition, the article will define and tackle the problem of teaching EFL writing in Vietnam which has, for a long time, been considered a challenge for language teachers. Specifically, this article will explore ...