Teaching ESL to adults means being awed every day as we witness the tenacity and perseverance of immigrants carving out better lives for themselves and their families. —Spelleri, 2002

Intrinsic motivation has been shown in previous research to lead to better learning. In order to increase intrinsic motivation, REAP, a tutoring system for ESL vocabulary was enhanced to prefer practice readings that match personal interests. In a randomized experiment, students receiving personalized readings indicated higher levels of interest in post-reading questionnaires. Additionally, ove...

The concept of autonomy in the context of language education in Europe had focused on the importance of personal autonomy. It was only recently that cultural influences were taken into consideration in interpreting autonomy. Studies on undergraduates learning ESL (English as a Second Language) in public universities in Malaysia revealed that the students were basically teacher-centred and lacke...

Motivated by both classroom needs and learning science questions, we developed two computer-based systems to help students learn the English article system (a, an, the, null). The first system, a menu-based task, mimics cloze activities found in many ESL textbooks. The second, a controlled-editing task, gives students practice with both detecting errors and producing the correct response. Resul...

This study examined English pronunciation by Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to see how the application of IPA can be used in language education. Twenty university students, divided into two groups, one with the IPA training and the other without the training, were asked to read 30 English words (5 controls) that contain challenging sounds (e.g., l...

 to provide an objective phonetic description of vowels and diphthongs of Indian English in acoustic terms and  to provide acoustic evidence of sound change in English in language contact situation.  This of course would have implications in ESL in India, as knowledge about the vowel space and vowel qualities produced by speakers in India can help us in teaching spoken English to the student...

The public comment period for the proposed May, 2015 Odor ESL Position Paper, Approaches to Derive Odor-Based Values, and proposed Odor ESL List ended in July 2015. The American Chemistry Council’s Center for Advancing Risk Assessment Science and Policy (ACC), Texas Chemical Council (TCC), Arkema Inc., and OXEA Corporation submitted comments. The TCEQ appreciates the effort put forth by these c...

This article analyzes the emergence of a new stage of global capitalism, called informationalism, and its consequences for English language teaching, focusing on three critical issues. First, globalization will result in the further spread of English as an international language and a shift of authority to nonnative speakers and dialects. This change will call into question basic notions of lan...

Networked computer technology has become prevalent in higher education but little research has been conducted to attest to its benefits for the ESL student writer. This study compared students in two ESL writing environments; a networked computer-assisted classroom and a traditional oral classroom. Three measures were used to examine attitudes towards writing with computers, writing apprehensio...

As we tentatively proceed into this brave new teaching world of the 21 st century, much debate is centering on the effective teaching of English to young learners. Key to this discussion has been the role of the young learner syllabus. While this article makes reference to the teaching of English to young learners in an ESL context based on documentation developed within the European Union, the...