We present an experiment in which we explored the extent to which visual speech information affects learners' ability to segment words from a fluent speech stream. Learners were presented with a set of sentences consisting of novel words, in which the only cues to the location of word boundaries were the transitional probabilities between syllables. They were exposed to this language through th...

Given the cost and effort involved in investigating different methods or protocols for human collaborative learning, this paper proposes the use of software learning agents to simulate and test various protocols. The best performing protocols would then be tested on human subjects. The paper presents a new form of cooperative learning, called coactive learning. After arguing that humans could b...

Much Second Language Acquisition research focuses on young learners in the conventional classroom. Instructed adult learners, and in particular those who are learning at a distance, have attracted less attention. This group is substantial and growing: the Open University, the largest higher education language provider in the UK, alone recruits some 8,000 language students a year. The present la...

Learning management systems (LMS) are very successful in e-education but provide only little adaptivity. Adapting courses to the needs of individual learners such as to their learning styles improves the learning progress of learners. However, a requirement for providing adaptivity is to know the needs of learners. In this paper, we describe an approach that enables LMS to identify the learning...

A number of interaction researchers have claimed that recasts might be ambiguous to learners; that is, instead of perceiving recasts as containing corrective feedback, learners might see them simply as literal or semantic repetitions without any corrective element (Long, in press; Lyster & Ranta, 1997). This study investigates learners’ interpretations of recasts in interaction. Videotapes of t...

the present study was conducted to investigate how efl learners with distinct levels of emotional intelligence might benefit from critical thinking-based instruction and use different language learning strategies. a further concern of this study was to investigate the relationship among critical thinking, language learning strategy, and emotional intelligence of efl learners. to this end, 88 ef...

Being able to read well is crucially important for language learners. Successful performance at elementary and high school level, as on higher levels of academic education, partly dependent the ability read. It believed that good learners are those who proficient in reading. However, building such a connection between reader written information complex both English second (ESL) foreign (EFL) st...

The successful use of memory requires us to be sensitive to the cues that will be present during retrieval. In many situations, we have some control over the external cues that we will encounter. For instance, learners create shopping lists at home to help remember what items to later buy at the grocery store, and they generate computer file names to help remember the contents of those files. G...