The present paper sought to examine the effectiveness of less experienced teachers' participationin experienced teachers' classes on students' achievements in terms of their proficiency levels inboth Elementary and Pre-intermediate levels. This quasi-experimental design study was conductedin three Language institutes in Tehran, Iran. Twenty-one EFL teachers were selected asexperienced and less ...

The latency of the brain response to semantic anomalies (N400 effect) has been found to be longer in a bilingual's second language (L2) than in their first language (L1) and/or to that seen in monolinguals. This has been explained in terms of late exposure to L2, although age of exposure and language proficiency are often highly correlated. We thus examined the relative contributions of these f...

This pilot study investigated whether there is a correlation between English reading proficiency of Japanese EFL learners and their ability to read aloud properly. The former was measured through a reading comprehension test under the format of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), whereas the latter was evaluated in terms of (1) the use of correct breath/sense groups, (2) rate of ...

All three properties are not instantiated in Bulgarian. Only the first two properties are explicitly taught in English classrooms in Bulgaria, while the third is not. A Truth Value Judgement Task, a guided composition task and a proficiency test were administered to 112 Bulgarian learners of English and 24 native speaker controls. Results indicate that L2 learners at all proficiency levels are ...

This paper addresses the effect of English proficiency on economic growth empirically with Barro-type cross-sectional growth regression. The empirical results provide evidence of positive correlation between initial English proficiency and economic growth only for the countries in the Asia and Europe. Therefore, countries with higher levels of English proficiency among the fraction of its popul...

This study aimed at developing the Silpakorn Test of English Proficiency (STEP), in alignment with Common European Framework Reference for Languages (CEFR), and accordance theoretical framework established by Alderson et al. (2006). Four major steps were involved test construction. First, language lecturers who served as content specialists asked to design can-do statements presented CEFR. Then...

This study examined whether language structure or language proficiency might influence students’ use of evaluative language in written reports, and whether instruction might improve students’ use of evaluative language. Reports in Japanese and in English written by second year Japanese university students, who had received instruction in academic discourse pertaining to critical evaluation, wer...