EFL Learners Research Articles

Using learner corpus data for grammatical accuracy development in written productions

Abstract This study investigates the differential effect of various noticing activities on grammatical accuracy development in EFL learners’ written productions. We focus on different types of noticing activities based on an error-tagged learner corpus and report on effective practical experiments involving learner corpus data. A pretest/posttest quasi-experimental design is used with three experimental groups (receiving different treatments) and one control group. Error frequencies, at both group and individual levels, and proportions of learners producing errors on three specific error types (articles, verb tense, verb agreement) are compared. Our results suggest that accuracy in the use of articles and verb agreement could be more easily fostered through the comparison of learner output with native data (the BNC, in our case). As for verb tenses, the impact of a more traditional form of corrective feedback seems greater while the use of online machine translation tools does not seem to foster much accuracy development.

Lecturer’s Belief and Classroom Practices on The Use of Video in English Language Teaching

This study aims to investigate the EFL lecturer's beliefs in teaching speaking using video to fifth-semester students in a private university in Indonesia. A qualitative method was employed as the design of this study, involving an in-depth exploration of the lecturer's perspectives and practices. An English teacher was purposefully selected as the research subject of the study. The data were collected through stimulated recall and semi-structured interviews, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of the lecturer's beliefs and classroom practices. The findings were categorized into six major themes: 1) the source of the lecturer's belief in teaching speaking using video; 2) the purpose of using video in teaching speaking skills; 3) the reasons for using video in teaching speaking skills; 4) the reflection of those beliefs in classroom practices; 5) considerations in choosing the videos; and 6) challenges faced by the lecturer in teaching speaking using video. The results revealed that there was no discrepancy between the teacher's beliefs and teaching practices. The lecturer believes that using video in teaching speaking classes enables students to learn individually, which is reflected in his teaching practice. For example, the lecturer allows students to watch videos individually, facilitating a more personalized learning experience. This alignment between belief and practice underscores the importance of integrating multimedia tools in language teaching, as they can enhance student engagement and autonomy. The study highlights the potential of videos as a valuable resource in language education, particularly in improving speaking skills among EFL learners

Enhancing media literacy skill building in pedagogical universities: Our view and experience

The article presents a review of the integration of media literacy content in foreign language courses at pedagogical higher education institutions. This study is aimed to share and present for academic discussion some of the authors’ perspectives that proved to be successful in mastering media literacy skills as well as in developing language competencies in EFL learners. A particular focus has been made on the methodological base, the principles and strategies of media literacy skill building as well as on the criteria for the selection of learning materials and techniques that ensure the effective implementation of media literacy programs into the existing syllabi. The use of contemporary teaching methods such as flipped classroom, problem-based learning, group projects, capitalizing on higher order thinking skills and interactive classroom activities is viewed as an integrated approach aimed to develop critical perception of media products alongside with a range of sociocultural and communicative competences in students of pedagogy. One of the main objectives of integrating media literacy content into a variety of tertiary courses is to enhance emotional resilience to manipulative influences of the media which is achieved through activating critical thinking skills referring to information flow as well as to students’ own media consumption habits. The pilot implementation being conducted in the terms of the international project “Learn to Discern”, preserved its original methodological constituents which included media literacy as such, information literacy, critical thinking, digital and visual literacy and fact checking skills. Acknowledgements The study is supported by the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), the Embassy of the United States of America and the Embassy of the United Kingdom in Ukraine, in partnership with the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine and the Ukrainian Press Academy. Disclosure Statement The authors reported no potential conflicts of interest. * Corresponding author: Svitlana Buchatska, 0000-0001-6063-5858 sbuchatska@vspu.edu.ua

Factors Influencing Comprehension of Metaphors in Academic Reading Texts among Iraqi EFL Learners

Metaphor is recognized as a valuable tool for analysis and as a means to effectively convey meaning. Although metaphor is supposed to be used to effectively convey meaning, learners of English, particularly those in the foreign language context, often have difficulty comprehending metaphors in academic text. The current study aims to contribute to understand deeply of the influencing factors on metaphor comprehension among Iraqi EFL learners when they read academic texts. The study draws on Steen’s (2010) MIPVU model and Lakoff and Johnson’s (1980) Conceptual Metaphor Theory to identify and analyze the metaphorical expressions. The data for the study were collected from two academic reading comprehension texts. Five Iraqi EFL university learners participated in determining the metaphors contained in the texts. The findings revealed that authors of academic texts often incorporate a wide range of metaphorical expressions. These expressions can vary in their familiarity, ranging from very familiar to less familiar and even unfamiliar, to engage readers’ cognitive processes and facilitate the conceptualization of the metaphor. The findings revealed that the factors influencing metaphor comprehension are varied and that they are of two broad types: external factors related to cultural and social considerations, and internal factors related to linguistic and educational settings. The findings could enable practitioners to devise more effective approaches for teaching metaphor comprehension to EFL learners.

Errors in the English Article System Among EFL Learners: Evidence from the Kurdistan Region - Iraq

The identification of the sources and types of students’ errors in the use of the English article system is beneficial in assisting them to overcome such problems. This study aims to investigate the types and sources of article errors made by Kurdish EFL learners. The data was collected from 61 third-year university students who were studying English at the time of the present study. The types of article errors were analysed based on surface structure taxonomy (SST). Contrastive and error analyses were adopted to analyse the sources of article errors. The study findings suggest that the students committed different types of errors in the use of the English article system, namely, substitution, omission, and addition. Omission errors were the most frequent type of article errors, while substitution errors were the least frequent ones. The sources of errors are divided into two categories: inter-lingual and intra-lingual. Analysis of the student's written samples indicates that most of the errors in the articles are attributed to the target language itself. The implications of the study suggest that teachers should pay more attention to the acquisition of the English article system. Limitations and future research considerations are discussed in the article.

Classroom willingness to communicate among EFL secondary school students in Poland and Spain

The objectives of this study were to analyze the classroom Willingness to Communicate (WTC) of EFL learners in secondary schools in Poland and Spain, and to identify the factors that predict this type of WTC in both settings. The study found limited practical significance in the differences between the two groups’ WTC, with more similarities than differences emerging in the circumstances that encouraged or inhibited communication. The study examined several potential predictors of WTC, including gender, age, socioeconomic status (SES), relative standing among peers in oral production and interaction, Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE), Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCA), and intercultural sensitivity. Of these factors, five (relative standing among peers in oral production and interaction, FLE, FLCA, extroversion and intercultural sensitivity) were found to predict classroom WTC in both settings. The study concludes by discussing some practical implications of these findings for EFL teaching at the secondary level.

Exploring the Impact of Learning English on Shaping Saudi EFL Learners’ Identities

Language learners’ identities are no longer constant and stable but complicated, conflicting, and multidimensional (Darvin & Norton, 2023; Norton, 1997). Its users’ identities format language and those identities are dynamic because students engage in many discourses and negotiate their positions within diverse communities of practice. The main aim of this mixed-methods study is to explore how learning the English language impacts Saudi students’ identities and what factors contribute to it. To achieve these purposes, the study randomly recruited a sample of 60 male and female college-level students studying for a Bachelor of Education. in English language at Majmaah University’s College of Education – Saudi Arabia- were randomly recruited to complete online questionnaires, and semi-structured interviews were conducted individually with five male and five female high-achieving EFL English as a foreign language learner. The results showed that knowing English is highly valued in Saudi Arabia and essential to securing a good job and achieving personal financial success. The research participants expressed positive perceptions of the English language, native English speakers, and the culture of English-speaking nations, showing that they possessed both intrinsic solid and extrinsic motivational orientations. The outcomes of the interviews and questionnaires indicated that most respondents still needed to create a new foreign-language identity.

The Relationship between Willingness to Communicate in English and Psychological Adjustment of Iraqi EFL Learners

The current research aims to examine the willingness to communicate and psychological adjustment of Iraqi EFL undergraduate students. To achieve the main aim, a sample of 100 male and female Iraqis’ undergraduate students studying English as a foreign language was chosen randomly from two different public colleges in Baghdad city for the academic year 2023-2024. Two scales have five Likert alternatives of 17 and 16 items developed by McCroskey & Richmond (1990) and Wais (2010), respectively were administered to the research sample to collect the needed data. The results revealed that Iraqi EFL undergraduate students have a willingness to communicate in the English language. Iraqi EFL undergraduate students have a good level of psychological adjustment. There is no statistically significant difference in the willingness to communicate between male and female students. There is no significant difference in psychological adjustment between male and female students, as for students’ willingness to communicate and psychological adjustment relationship, a positive correlation is proved. It implies that the more psychological adjustment a student experiences in the learning environment, the more students have a willingness to communicate in the English language. The researcher recommended creating a very encouraging educational environment would motivate language learners to communicate more.

The role of mindfulness on the relation between critical thinking and well-being of Chinese EFL learners

Critical thinking has been defined as one of the abilities that the Chinese EFL learners require to become skillful in the 21st century. Furthermore, recent investigations have indicated that Positive Psychology (PP) and strengths have a pivotal impact on students, and among the related issues of PP, well-being plays a great role in this process. Additionally, mindfulness as one of the language learner's mental characteristics is a strategy that has been revealed to have a positive influence when applied as a management strategy against stress. So the present study aimed to explore whether mindfulness could play a mediating role in the relationship between critical thinking and well-being. For this purpose, 360 Chinese EFL students were recruited to take part in this study to fill out questionnaires on mindfulness, well-being, and critical thinking. At that point, the structural equation modeling utilizing the pwrSEM program statistical package was used to reveal their possible connections. Results indicated that critical thinking has a positive influence on well-being through mindfulness. Overall, mindfulness's main role in this field has been identified and based on the present findings, some suggestions have been made.

The Relationship between Perceived Teacher Emotional Support, Online Academic Burnout, Academic Self-Efficacy, and Online English Academic Engagement of Chinese EFL Learners

This study explores the impact of college students’ perceived teacher emotional support on English academic engagement in technology-enhanced online learning contexts. It examined whether 450 Chinese students’ perceptions of teacher emotional support were related to students’ English academic engagement and mediated by students’ online academic burnout and academic self-efficacy. All of the sample students were recruited to complete an online questionnaire, and some students and teachers were invited to do a semi-structured interview. SPSS24 and PROCESS3.5 macro were utilized to undertake the descriptive, correlational, and mediation analyses. The findings showed that teachers’ perceived emotional support and student academic efficacy positively affect students’ online English academic engagement. In contrast, online academic burnout negatively affects students’ online English academic engagement. Student academic efficacy partially mediated the effects of perceived teacher emotional support and student academic engagement in online learning contexts. The interviews confirmed the findings, and the influences and roles of teachers’ emotional support were described in terms of teacher and student dimensions in an interview. Directions and further implications for researchers, teachers, and educators are presented at the end of the study.

Training Low-Achiever EFL Learners with Metacognitive Strategy Training for Effective Vocabulary Retention

Training Low-Achiever EFL Learners with Metacognitive Strategy Training for Effective Vocabulary Retention

Portrait of Teaching Writing in Online Classroom

Nowadays, online classrooms are growing in popularity. Especially given the Covid-19 outbreak in Indonesia, which has forced online learning. This study aims to investigate online learning in EFL learners’ writing classrooms. This study uses a qualitative method and a descriptive qualitative research design to examine in detail how teachers teach EFL learners in online writing. Researchers collected data through the technique of nonparticipant observation, and the researcher "observes from the sidelines" the action being observed. The results of this study reveal that the observed teacher's teaching method is not consistent with the four reference strategies employed by the researchers. The four strategies include; building knowledge of field, modeling of text, joint construction of text, and independent construction of text. Because, after being observed, the teacher employs only one strategy to teach writing, specifically building knowledge of field.

Navigating English-mediated online discourse: Communication strategies of Indonesian EFL learners in online discussions

For non-native English speakers, effective and meaningful communication in English can pose challenges due to potential limitations in their communicative competence. Such challenges can cause communication breakdowns if not effectively managed. This complexity is compounded when English communication occurs in an online setting, where technological issues and lack of social presence may disrupt the communication. This study aims to explore the communication strategies utilized by Indonesian EFL learners when participating in online group discussions. The data were collected from six groups of first-year English Department students involving a total of twenty-two students engaged in 20-minute online discussions per group. The analysis focused on the discourse produced by the participants during these discussions observing the strategies employed by the participants. The findings indicated that Indonesian EFL learners predominantly applied achievement and compensatory strategies. These strategies encompassed code-switching, circumlocution, approximation, the use of all-purpose words, word foreignizing, and appealing for help. Among these strategies, code-switching emerged as the prevailing strategy for Indonesian EFL learners engaged in online group discussions. While conversing, code- switching was automatically and naturally used, particularly when referring to Indonesian acronyms and names. At last, implications and future directions are addressed.

Серьезность грамматических ошибок, совершаемых учащимися курсов английского языка как иностранного (EFL): Опрос мнения преподавателей

The present study investigates 110 EFL teachers’ perception of the gravity of ten types of grammatical errors made by EFL learners in terms of acceptability. Moreover, it examines the relationship of age, gender, academic degree, years of teaching experience, and the highest level taught with the teachers’ judgements. Results revealed that the teachers’ evaluations form a hierarchy in which errors are placed at different gravity levels in accordance with their level of acceptability. Moreover, the three variables of academic degree, years of teaching experience, and the highest level taught had a positive correlation with the teachers’ evaluations. This study suggests that teachers should make their evaluations systematic, treat errors in accordance with their priority, and become aware of the factors that contribute to evaluations of grammatical errors.

ChatGPT's Motivational Effects on Japanese University EFL Learners: A Qualitative Analysis

ChatGPT's Motivational Effects on Japanese University EFL Learners: A Qualitative Analysis

Cultural Diversity and Classification of EFL Blended Learning Module in Higher Education

The integration of culture and language has played an enormous role in the context of EFL teaching and learning materials in the higher education context. Therefore, evaluating whether the EFL learning materials have been designed to include culture-related content becomes crucial. This research qualitatively analyzed the presentation of an EFL blended learning module’s source culture, target culture, and international culture. The result shows that source culture material is 67%, target culture 9%, and international culture 24%. The findings indicated that the EFL blended learning module is mainly dominated by source culture as the most frequently portrayed, while target cultures were the least frequently portrayed. The present study reveals a vivid imbalance in the exposure of cultural elements in the EFL blended learning module. This result should be well-considered by stakeholders regarding the purpose of the use of the blended learning materials.

The Effectiveness of Cooperative Learning (CL) on Reading Comprehension of EFL Learners at Tertiary Education

The Effectiveness of Cooperative Learning (CL) on Reading Comprehension of EFL Learners at Tertiary Education

Does engagement with feedback matter? Unveiling the impact of learner engagement and grit on EFL learners’ English writing achievements

Does engagement with feedback matter? Unveiling the impact of learner engagement and grit on EFL learners’ English writing achievements

Investigating the Influence of Cultural Background Knowledge on Reading Ability among Arabic Speaking EFL Learners in a Saudi College

Investigating the Influence of Cultural Background Knowledge on Reading Ability among Arabic Speaking EFL Learners in a Saudi College

The enactment of positive emotions via teacher scaffolding: The case of Chinese high school EFL learners’ engagement with teacher written feedback

With the flourishing of positive psychology, there is a heightened emphasis on the value and significance of engagement. Although recent years have witnessed the growing interest in learner engagement with feedback in L2 writing, little attention has been towards understanding the role of teachers in fostering their students' engagement. To fill this gap, our exploratory study examined the effects of teacher scaffolding on EFL learners' engagement with teacher written feedback. Anchored in a high school in mainland China, our study employed a mixed-methods design, collecting data from multiple sources (i.e., questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, teacher written feedback, and first as well as revised writing samples) over a semester. The findings revealed that the teacher adhered to the key tenets of positive psychology and implemented positive pedagogical practices to facilitate students’ revision. Both quantitative and qualitative data showed that with teacher scaffolding Chinese high school EFL learners actively engaged with teacher written feedback from affective, behavioral, and cognitive perspectives. Our study concludes with the important pedagogical implications.