This study explores Palestinian university teachers' beliefs regarding the concepts of culture and intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and the impact of their perception on classroom teaching practices. The study argues that in the age of globalization, spread of English as a lingua franca, and growing opportunities of intercultural communication, the focus on linguistic competence or literary competence may not be adequate to enable Palestinian university students to use English communicatively and interculturally. Further, the current objectives of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL), which seem to exclude the cultural/intercultural dimension, can be expanded through integrating ICC into English language classes. Using a case study of one of the leading Palestinian Universities, the study explores the aforementioned assumptions and investigates teachers' beliefs regarding the concepts of culture and ICC in the Palestinian university context. Analyzing data from interviews, observations, and documents, the study reveals that EFL Palestinian participants perceived culture as a way of life that comprises a shared system of values, beliefs, ways of thinking, and behaviors. To them, language and culture are interwoven components, and without culture, language acquisition might be difficult to achieve. Additionally, ICC was perceived as the ability to communicate with people from other cultures through gaining cultural knowledge about English /American culture and promoting personality traits. Data analyses disclose that the linguistic competence had the upper hand in classroom teaching practices, and that the target culture(s) was used as a background to assist language learning. However, ICC was absent in EFL Palestinian university classes, and it was perceived, to some extent, as an equivalent to communicative competence. The study concludes with sets of recommendations to local Palestinian English departments, teachers, international textbooks designers, and future research.

Intensive English Programs (IEPs) play an important role in helping speakers of other languages gain necessary language, cultural, and educational skills to succeed in an English-speaking environment (Hamrick, 2012; Toner, 2017). Previous research has investigated factors that influenced student choice of IEPs located in the southeastern portion of the U.S. (Williams, 1994) and in California (Jones, 2013). This study identified factors that influenced ESL students who chose to further their English language education at IEPs located in the western United States. Particular influences that were probed included program, location, student services, and marketing factors. Moreover, this study examined the previously uninvestigated relationship between factors that influence student choice and the size of the program in which students enroll. A Qualtrics survey was used to gather data and was modeled on the questionnaires of previous studies investigating IEP students' choice of program (Jones, 2013; Williams, 1994). Results indicated that with regard to program factors, participants highly valued IEPs that provided an intense learning experience, were well respected, and had excellent teachers. Location factors of greatest importance were the safety of the school and community, and the good reputation of the city where the program is located. Students perceived that the most important student services that programs offered were academic or personal counseling, immigration services, and out of class activities. The marketing factors that were rated highest in importance were the program's website, referrals from former students, and the ability to communicate online with the school. A surprising finding was that social media appeared to be of minimal to moderate importance in influencing students' decisions, but of the platforms investigated, Facebook was identified as the most influential. Implications of these findings are then discussed for program directors of IEPs seeking to attract new students as well as maintain and grow their respective programs.

This study was an investigation into the aural and written receptive knowledge of the English semantics of English lexis that is loanwords in the Japanese language and the predictive strength of the variables of semantic distance, concreteness/abstractness, polysemy, phonological distance, number of syllables, number of phonemes, number of letters, part of speech (POS), English Frequency, and frequency in Japanese in relation to accurate semantic knowledge. The participants (N = 215) were first- and second-year, non-English majors at a large university in Western Japan. The participants were from 10 intact English classes focused on reading, writing, and communication skills. Data were collected using eight instruments: the Listening Vocabulary Levels Test, Aural Loanword Test, Aural Non-Loanword Test, New Vocabulary Levels Test, Written Loanword Test, Written Non-Loanword Test, and Japanese Loanword Frequency Rating Task. Additionally, data were collected from five Japanese L1 speakers highly proficient at English on the Semantic Distance Rating Task. The data were first analyzed using the Rasch dichotomous model to examine instrument reliability and validity as well as to transform the data into Rasch person ability estimates and Rasch item ability estimates. Pearson correlations were used to determine the strength of the relationship between loanwords and non-loanwords. Repeated-measures ANOVA—with follow up t-tests were used to determine the differences between the four semantic tests: the Aural Loanword Test, the Aural Non-Loanword Test, the Written Loanword Test, and the Written Non-Loanword Test. Four multiple linear regression analyses were conducted using the predictor variables semantic distance, concreteness/abstractness, phonological distance, number of syllables, number of phonemes, number of letters, part of speech, English Frequency, and frequency in Japanese. The results of the Pearson analyses showed strong correlations between the aural and written loanword and non-loanword measures. This finding indicated that the participants’ knowledge of loanwords was relatively equivalent to their knowledge of non-loanwords. The results of the comparison between aural and written loanword knowledge showed that written knowledge of loanwords was greater than aural knowledge of loanwords. Further comparisons between the loanword and non-loanword tests showed that receptive aural non-loanword knowledge was greater than aural loanword knowledge, and that written non-loanword knowledge was greater than written loanword knowledge. These comparisons showed that English semantic knowledge of loanwords was less accurate than that of non-loanwords, which implied that the accurate acquisition of English semantic knowledge of loanwords was impeded by Japanese L1 lexical knowledge. The results of the multiple regressions indicated that the only substantial predictor of lexical acquisition for both loanwords and non-loanwords in both modalities (aural and written) was English Frequency. Although the effect size of English frequency was substantial, it was less so on the aural and written loanword measures. This finding implied that English linguistic gains of repeated exposure were most likely muted by entrenched L1 semantic knowledge. Overall, the results showed that loanwords are generally acquired with greater difficulty than non-loanwords and that they should not always be considered a form of receptive knowledge of English lexis. / Applied Linguistics

ESL writing teachers often deal with a heavy workload of giving feedback to students. Training students to self-assess their work can ease teachers' burdens; one self-assessment method is rubric training (RT), where teachers guide students in reading and grading sample essays. This research explores whether RT leads to positive emotional and regulatory gains. Twenty-one students enrolled in a first-year writing class received incremental exposure to RT. The same set of surveys, Self-efficacy Scale (SES) and Self-regulated Learning Perception Scale (SRLPS), was administered three times to measure the changes in their language self-efficacy (LSE) and self-regulated learning (SRL). The results were compared to the 15 students in the control group, where students also completed the same surveys on the same class days. Results showed that RT had a significant impact on students' LSE, but there was no presence of interaction or main effect for SRL. In post-assessment interviews, most students expressed feeling positive about RT because of the model essays; they learned about essay organization and coherence from the sample writing. However, some did not like the rubric because they thought it was difficult to read and the lexical complexity of the rubric was above students' reading level; it might be what made students feel less capable of completing the task. Still, LSE bridges students' self-assessment and language gains; therefore, RT should be used when teachers want to increase students' LSE.

Second language (L2) writing is a subfield within the field of applied linguistics concerned with applying knowledge and insights from linguistics, psychology, and education to develop teaching approaches for those who need to acquire L2 writing skills for academic or work purposes (Belcher, 2012). Much research on L2 writers over the past five decades has been focused on students in university contexts (Ferris, 2018) in part because universities are often not equipped to meet students’ needs for academic writing support in writing courses (Cimasko & Reichelt, 2011; Kubota & Abels, 2006). One student need pertains to the learning of discourse organization to create coherent text. This issue is of particular concern to EFL undergraduates who often experience difficulty with organizational patterns when writing in English (Tang, 2012).In response to this student need, the current study investigated the effectiveness of the explicit teaching of coherence in EFL undergraduates’ research writing in English with a pre- and post-intervention embedded mixed-methods design of three study groups of Japanese undergraduate students. More specifically, the study involved two experimental groups—a process-genre group and process-writing group—and a comparison group. The teaching program for these three groups differed in the combination of classroom instruction (i.e., coherence-focused process-genre approach or process writing) and written teacher feedback (i.e., coherence-focused or meaning-focused) they received. A total of 36 third-year female undergraduate English majors participated in this study. Writing samples were collected at three points throughout one semester and analyzed based on three measures of writing coherence: reader-based logical development, reader-based cohesion, and text-based coherence. The reader-based measures of an analytic rubric were used by human raters in evaluating reader-based coherence in the writing samples. Rasch measurement was used to assess the rubric’s functioning via a Rasch principal components analysis (Linacre, 2019). In addition, the Rasch model was used to identify raters who were too lenient or too severe and calculate fair average measures of the ratings using Many-Facets Rasch analysis (Linacre, 2014). These ratings were then analyzed and investigated for changes across time and between groups. The text-based coherence measure for each writing sample was obtained via a form of textual analysis called topical structure analysis. Mixed-design ANOVAs were used to analyze the three measures to investigate statistical differences within-group and between-groups differences. In addition, a Pearson’s correlation analysis was conducted to investigate if raters’ assessment of logicality correlates with their assessment of cohesion usage in student samples of research writing. Results from the statistical analyses revealed that the process-genre group was the only group out of all three groups in this study to have made statistically significant improvements on coherence in their research writing during the course of study. To help explain the results of the statistical analyses, qualitative data collected from background questionnaires, rater’s questionnaires, reflective journals, and student interviews were coded and analyzed. The findings indicated that the process-genre group was able to develop coherence at the sentence, paragraph, and discourse levels. Further, a comparison of the results from both the reader-based and text-based perspectives of coherence suggested that coherence development achieved by the process-genre group (i.e., improvement in both logical development and cohesion) was due to the treatment they received as observations from their background questionnaire reflective journal responses and interview data suggested that they appeared to be unaware of the concept of coherence prior to the study. However, as the treatment started, they gradually acquired knowledge and skills for creating coherence, first at the sentence level, then at the paragraph level, and toward the end of the study, at the discourse level. The improvements made by the process-genre group appeared to be related to the changes observed in their perception of coherence throughout the treatment period. The qualitative findings indicated that their perceptions changed from a focus on the relevance of information included in their writing in the beginning of the treatment period to an expanded understanding of coherence as a genre-specific concept that is important in making their writing reader-friendly by using both local and global cohesion and coherence devices. As to the other two groups in this study, the qualitative findings from the background questionnaire responses and interview data suggested that unlike the process-genre group, the process writing group’s coherence development was limited to the sentence and paragraph levels, and that of the comparison group only at the sentence level. The fact that these two groups failed to develop their knowledge and skills in writing coherently at the discourse level might explain the non-significant statistical results for the within-group and between-group analyses conducted with those groups. In sum, the findings showed that the development of coherence in EFL undergraduate research writing is influenced by writing program design. Particularly, the program needs to explicitly teach coherence through a systematically designed curriculum that includes the teaching of both useful genre knowledge and skills for writing coherently. In addition to teaching the textual construction of coherence, because coherence is a reader-based concept, its crucial role in producing research writing that is logical in the eyes of readers also needs to be reinforced in the teacher feedback given to learners. Such a program where both the instruction and the teacher feedback are focused on form (i.e., coherence in research writing) enables learners to improve coherence in their writing as they progress through the drafting cycle of writing and revising in the program. / Teaching & Learning

The outbreak of COVID-19 forced the world population to find new ways to improve their productivity. It also significantly changed the course of education and instruction entirely. Like many students worldwide, adult English as a Second Language (ESL) students have been dramatically impacted by the sudden switch to online courses due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Blended Online Learning (BOL) was considered an innovative transition for adult ESL students due to the fact that it allows the learner to view the classroom as a social learning environment, thereby strengthening their connection to the language. This dissertation aimed to investigate the online learning experiences of a group of ESL students and their instructor through online zoom classes during COVID-19. The study employed a qualitative case study research methodology. This case study utilized purposeful sampling to focus on the experiences of adult ESL students and their course instructor with learning and teaching online during the pandemic. The target population for this study was a group of 8 international adult students and their respective course instructor. Data were collected from ten field observations, nine semi-structured interviews through Zoom, field notes, and document analysis. Findings revealed that participants showed positive experiences with online learning as it had provided students with new communication forms. Breakout rooms, group discussions, and discussion boards were methods the majority of students agreed were helpful for participation while facilitating social interaction. Students preferred to communicate with each other through online platforms as they feel safer and less shy to express their opinions. Conversely, participants showed negative experiences with the lack of reliable internet connectivity, especially in rural areas, which affected the students' ability to access online courses. Based upon the dissertation's findings, there are several practical implications for students, instructors, institutions, and administrators. Recommendations for additional research are needed to provide various observations and solutions to promote online platforms, including offering instructors training to guide students through these platforms expertly and merging synchronous and asynchronous learning to ensure a holistic learning environment for adult ESL learners.

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A positive relationship between physical motion and learning is widely acknowledged. However, few studies have investigated the potential effects of combining physical movement with second language learning. This review examines ten studies that combine physical activity with learning English as a second language (ESL), specifically focusing on vocabulary acquisition and learner motivation. Aspects of combining English with Physical education (PE) in a cross-curricular manner are also explored to investigate its applicability to the Swedish middle school context. Results indicate that classroom-based physical activity positively affects vocabulary learning and motivation among learners across a wide age span, both in Europe and across the world. Moreover, combining ESL with PE seems to improve learners´ motivation and language proficiency, without hindering the attainment of PE-related goals. Nonetheless, some findings provide varying results, indicating that supportive actions - such as pre-teaching vocabulary - may be needed. In conclusion, a physically oriented learning approach seems to work well in the context of curricular requirements in Sweden since cross-curricular tasks, daily physical activity, and efforts to encourage foreign language learning are described as necessary. Despite promising claims, further investigation in the area of physical language learning is still required.

The purpose of this quasi-experimental, mixed-methods study was to address the gap in understanding regarding second language (L2) comprehension of stories by using a taxonomical approach based on Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) revised taxonomy that includes multiple levels of cognitive processing to provide insight into L2 learners’ depth of comprehension. In addition, this study investigated the impact of reading, reading-while-listening, and listening input modalities as it applies to story comprehension. L2 comprehension studies where all three of these input methods are compared are scarce. Finally, the effect of input type on learner affect—task enjoyment and perceived task difficulty—was explored. No previous mixed methods L2 comprehension studies have accounted for all the above variables. The participants (N = 134, 85 male and 49 female students) of the quantitative aspect of this study were Japanese university students who were streamed into the university’s reading and writing or listening and speaking classes. At the time of the study, they were first- and second-year, non-English majors taking English courses as a general university requirement at a private university in western Japan. Participants from six intact classes were tasked with reading two chapters, reading-while-listening to two chapters, and listening to two chapters of a six-chapter graded reader. Using a Latin squares design, each class received a different input method at the beginning, middle, and end of each story. Three 250-headword, CEFR level 1 short stories of similar lengths from the Oxford Dominos series were used for each participant group. The participants received short, bilingual vocabulary lists for vocabulary that fell outside of the first 1,000 BNC/COCA high-frequency words of English prior to receiving each story. After finishing two chapters using one of the above three input modalities, the texts were returned to me and the participants answered bilingual remember questions of the factual recall subtype, understand questions of the inferencing subtype, and evaluate questions of the judging or critique subtypes based on Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) revised taxonomy. They then rated task difficulty and task enjoyment. Both the remember and understand questions were four-option multiple-choice questions, while the evaluate questions required written responses in Japanese. To ensure task time equivalency, the participants received two repeated listenings at approximately 138–157 words per minute (WPM) for the reading-while-listening and listening tasks. The participants were given approximately 18 minutes to complete each of the three chapters and 10 minutes to answer questions. Using data from Rasch person measures, a series of mixed model analyses were used to assess the participants’ performances on remember, understand, and evaluate comprehension questions as mediated by input modality. Input modality—reading, reading-while-listening, and listening—was the independent variable, while the remember, understand, and evaluate comprehension questions made up the dependent variables. The New Vocabulary Levels Test (NVLT) scores were used as the covariate. The results indicated that the participants scored higher overall on the remember questions (M = 54.06) than on the understand questions (M = 52.62) or the evaluate questions (M = 49.31). Regarding task-type findings, the reading and reading-while-listening tasks resulted in significantly better comprehension than listening tasks but were not significantly different from one another for remember and understand comprehension questions. For evaluate comprehension questions, all three inputs resulted in significantly different comprehension with reading resulting in the highest comprehension, followed by reading-while-listening, and then listening. The NVLT was a significant predictor of comprehension at all levels, but it had small R2 values. Listening tasks resulted in significantly lower scores than both the reading and reading-while-listening input conditions for all three comprehension levels. In addition, the participants rated that they perceived the reading-while-listening and listening tasks to be more difficult than reading tasks. Reading and reading-while-listening tasks were rated as more enjoyable than listening tasks. After the quantitative data were gathered, qualitative interviews were conducted to better investigate the research hypotheses and the quantitative findings. Six participants were from the same university as the quantitative sample (N = 6, 1 male and 5 female) and four participants were from another nearby university (N = 4, 3 male and 1 female). These participants completed the second text, The Bottle Imp (Stevenson, 2008), by reading Chapters 1–2, reading-while-listening to Chapters 3–4, and listening to Chapters 5–6 in the same manner as the quantitative groups except they did not follow a Latin squares design. After the completion of each two-chapter section, the participants provided verbal recalls to ensure that they correctly performed the task and to gain insight into what was understood from the text. Next, they answered comprehension questions and gave task enjoyment and task difficulty ratings. Finally, the participants answered interview questions designed to clarify their thoughts about the tasks. Verbal recalls and interviews were audio-recorded, and the interviews were transcribed and coded based on Saldaña (2016). The mixed-methods results identified a gap between Japanese L2 learners’ ability to comprehend listening to texts in English compared to the reading and reading-while-listening conditions. This gap persisted regardless of the levels of critical thinking required. The participants also performed more poorly on tasks as the critical thinking levels increased. Receptive vocabulary knowledge as measured by the NVLT was found to predict comprehension; however, because the graded readers were typically lexically appropriate for the participants, it had small R2 values. More lexically complex texts might have resulted in the NVLT correlating more strongly with comprehension. Finally, listening tasks were perceived to be more difficult and less enjoyable than reading. These findings suggest that input method has a significant influence on L2 learners’ ability to complete comprehension tasks at three levels of Anderson and Krathwohl’s (2001) revised taxonomy. The bulk of comprehension test items are from the bottom two levels of the taxonomy, so educators and researchers should consider the role that input method plays. Additionally, L2 learners might benefit from instruction that builds listening comprehension and listening fluency skills. As critical thinking demands increased, comprehension scores decreased regardless of the input method. This finding aligns with Anderson and Krathwohl’s Revised taxonomy, which posits that a critical thinking hierarchy exists and that a degree of proficiency with lower levels of the hierarchy is necessary for the successful completion of higher-level tasks. Educators should consider how critical thinking contributes to task difficulty and language learners should be provided with language tasks that work to improve critical thinking skills. / Applied Linguistics

Most would agree that reading fluency is a concern of every L2 teacher. Repeated reading (RR) positively affects fluency development, supported by much research with L1 children. However, relatively little focus has been given to L2 RR. Most research on RR in L2 settings has focused on audio-assisted RR, used insufficient data collection methods prone to human error, and taken place in an EFL setting. In our experiment, we used eye–tracking as a direct mode of measurement of the effects that RR has on early and late reading measures. In this study, 30 intermediate-level English language learners studying in an intensive English program in the United States participated. Participants silently read three carefully leveled narrative texts, three times each. As they read each passage, an eye–tracking machine gathered data on their eye movements. With immediate repeated exposure to the texts, students improved their reading fluency in both early and late measures of reading.