This paper presents the results of a study exploring the intercultural development of first-year Japanese university students engaged in online intercultural exchange (OIE) using two variations: one implementing guided reflection, and the other relying on the learner autonomy model. Intercultural development was quantitatively measured using the Intercultural Sensitivity Scale (Chen & Starosta, 2000) and qualitatively investigated through participants’ written reflections. Results of the OIE using guided reflection showed significant gains in respect for the target culture, whereas the OIE that followed the autonomous learning model yielded significant gains in self-efficacy in relation to intercultural contact. Qualitative analysis of student reflections confirmed these findings and provided insight into the processes involved in achieving these results.

This study adds to the literature on computer-mediated communication (CMC) by examining the impact of online voice recording (VR) activities and peer-to-peer videoconferencing (VC) conversations on the development of beginning Spanish learners’ speaking performance. Specifically, this paper explores (1) whether VR and VC activities promote oral proficiency, and if so, whether those gains can be seen both in presentational and interpersonal modes of communication; and (2) whether VR and VC activities foster oral proficiency in similar ways to face-to-face (F2F) communication. A quasi-experimental, pre-/post-test design was used in the study. Three sections of a first semester Spanish course were assigned to one of the following conditions: F2F, VR, and VC. Complexity, accuracy, and fluency measures were used to analyze learners’ speaking performance in the two tasks. A mixed effects model analysis was used to investigate differences across time as well as among groups. Results show that both F2F communication and VR activities promote complexity and fluency in presentational tasks and fluency in interpersonal tasks, although F2F produces superior results regarding complexity in presentational tasks. VC activities promote complexity and fluency in presentational tasks and complexity, accuracy, and fluency in interpersonal tasks. Overall, this study shows that medium is not merely a delivery device but has important implications for learning outcomes. In this sense, these findings contribute to answering the wider question of how the use of technology in second language instruction plays a decisive role in current teaching practices.

This qualitative study investigates a media transfer project in which a digital game was used to promote student creativity in an English as a foreign language (EFL) class. The paper first addresses the potential of opportunities for stimulating student creativity and motivation. Creativity has been highlighted as a core competency and has garnered considerable interest in many fields in recent years; however, creativity and creative writing are rarely cultivated in EFL writing classrooms. This study uses a digital game and designs a creative writing project to provide an authentic learning opportunity through which students were able to develop their creativity, use the target language in a meaningful way, and enjoy learning. A murder mystery game, Her Story, was selected because it provides a springboard for creative writing due to its fragmented and ambiguous narrative. Based on the game plot, 25 Korean university students reimagined the narrative in creative writing projects of their own. The study analyzes the students’ writing according to three constructs in Torrance’s model of creativity: originality, flexibility, and elaboration. The results demonstrate how the students’ writing exhibits considerable creativity in all three constructs. Student reflection papers and surveys indicate that participating in the project enhanced the students’ motivation for and engagement in learning.

In this study, we used a data-mining approach to identify hidden groups in a corpus-based second-language (L2) vocabulary experiment. After a vocabulary pre-test, a total of 132 participants performed three online reading tasks (in random orders) equipped with the following glossary types: (1) concordance lines and definitions of target lexical items, (2) concordance lines of target lexical items, and (3) no glossary information. Although the results of a previous study based on variable-centred analysis (i.e. multiple regression analysis) revealed that more glossary information could lead to better learning outcomes (Lee, Warschauer & Lee, 2017), using a model-based clustering technique in the present study allowed us to unearth learner types not identified in the previous analysis. Instead of the performance pattern found in the previous study (more glossary led to higher gains), we identified one learner group who exhibited their ability to make successful use of concordance lines (and thus are optimized for data-driven learning, or DDL; Johns, 1991), and another group who showed limited L2 vocabulary learning when exposed to concordance lines only. Further, our results revealed that L2 proficiency intersects with vocabulary gains of different learner types in complex ways. Therefore, using this technique in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) research to understand differential effects of accommodations can help us better identify hidden learner types and provide personalized CALL instruction.

Today, people want to consult dictionaries of good quality, but they expect them to be available online for free. For this reason, publishers need advertisements to cover the costs of producing and maintaining online dictionary content. This paper aims to investigate the role of advertisements in language reception, production, and learning following online dictionary consultation. It also undertakes to determine whether advertisements in an online dictionary affect the time needed for dictionary-based decoding and encoding. In the experiment, participants consulted one of the most prestigious dictionaries of English for foreign learners, OALD9 (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 9th edition). Two versions of the dictionary were employed in the study: one that includes advertisements and is available online free of charge, and its advertisement-free counterpart, OALD9 Premium. In the receptive task, the participants were requested to explain the meaning of new English words. In the productive one, they had to use the words in sentences. Meaning retention was checked in the immediate post-test. The research reveals that advertisements in OALD9 impede language reception, production, and learning, and also extend the time for comprehending new words. Suggestions for further research into advertisements on dictionary websites are presented in the final part of the paper.

Data-driven learning (DDL; Johns, 1991), involving students’ hands-on use of corpora for self-guided language learning, is a methodology now increasingly used in many tertiary contexts to enhance the teaching of disciplinary postgraduate thesis writing. However, there are still few studies tracking students’ actual engagement with corpora for DDL. This mixed-methods study reports on the tracking of students’ corpus use via a purpose-built corpus query and data visualisation platform integrated into a large postgraduate disciplinary thesis writing program at a university in Hong Kong. Data on corpus usage history (e.g. times of access, duration of use), query syntax (e.g. query lexis/phraseology and use of wildcards and part-of-speech tags), query function (e.g. frequency lists/distribution, concordance sorting and collocation) and query filters (e.g. searches by faculty, discipline, or thesis section) were collected from 327 students spanning over 11,000 individual corpus queries. The results show significant interdisciplinary and inter-/intra-user trends and variation in the use of particular corpus functions and query syntax adopted by corpus users. Students varied in the type of knowledge (e.g. domain-specific, language-specific) they were accessing, and frequently went beyond the exemplars of the DDL course materials to generate unique queries under their own initiative. Qualitative case study data from three corpus users’ activity logs also show distinctive individual corpus engagement by query frequency and function. These data provide a clearer insight into what students actually do during DDL and the different directions and trajectories that individual users take as a result of DDL. All accompanying DDL tasks are also included as supplementary materials.

Corpora have given rise to a wide range of lexicographic resources aimed at helping novice users of academic English with their writing. This includes academic vocabulary lists, a variety of textbooks, and even a bespoke academic English dictionary. However, writers may not be familiar with these resources or may not be sufficiently aware of the lexical shortcomings of their emerging texts to trigger the need to use such help in the first place. Moreover, writers who have to stop writing to look up a word can be distracted from getting their ideas down on paper. The ColloCaid project (www.collocaid.uk) aims to address these problems by integrating information on collocation with text editors. In this paper, we share the research underpinning the initial development of ColloCaid by detailing the rationale of (1) the lexicographic database we are compiling to support the collocation needs of novice users of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and (2) the preliminary visualisation decisions taken to present information on collocation to EAP users without disrupting their writing. We conclude the paper by outlining the next steps in the research.

This study investigates the potential of a podcast-based approach aimed at helping foreign language learners improve their pronunciation of features that tend to be fossilised in their interlanguage. Training took place over a period of three weeks in which podcasts were used for perceptual and productive practice as well as for peer evaluation. Participants in this study (N=47) were randomly assigned to two groups that acted as control and experimental at the same time. One group received training on the English /s – z/ contrast and the other one was trained on the pronunciation of English /b d g/ as stops in intervocalic position. Pre- and post-tests were used to measure the participants’ perception and production of the target features. The results show that training had a positive impact on the participants’ perception and production of the target sounds. Even though the differences between groups did not reach statistical significance for every sound in every task, the data reveal that the approach adopted could foster substantial improvements in the participants’ pronunciation of features that tend to be fossilised, even after short periods of training.

This exploratory study focuses on international students’ usage of digital tools in order to understand what role such tools play in the transition to their new academic environments and what learning opportunities they provide. Not only do digital tools accompany international students’ social, cultural, and linguistic transitions as they move to France to further their language competence, but their usage also reveals part of the social and semiotic adjustments they have to make in the process. Sixteen international students who volunteered for the study were given a smartphone application with which they could track learning opportunities by taking pictures and writing textual commentaries. The data, collected over a period of five weeks, thus include the resulting entries these participants shared in their mobile multimodal diaries with the researchers, as well as an end-of-project debriefing that was conducted to shed further light on the international students’ digital habits and their attitudes towards self-tracking. This study indicates that digital tools can play an important and pervasive role in facilitating international students’ linguistic development and their dealings with everyday life abroad. It also confirms that self-tracking apps can be instrumental in enhancing students’ awareness of learning opportunities outside the classroom.

This paper critically examines the integration of online fanfiction practices into an advanced university English language classroom. The fanfiction project, The Blogging Hobbit, was carried out as part of a course in the teacher education program at a Swedish university for students who were specializing in teaching English at the secondary school level. Participants were 122 students who completed the course in 2013 and 2014. In both classes, students were organized into groups of three to six to write collaborative blog-based role-play fanfiction of a missing moment from JRR Tolkien’s fantasy novel The Hobbit. The 31 resulting pieces of collaborative fanfiction, the online formats they were published in, the 122 reflective essays produced by the two classes, and interviews with a focal group of participants were used to explore how technology and learners’ experience with this technology may have mediated the resulting stories. In addition, the classroom fanfiction texts were compared with comparable online writing published in the fanfiction site Archive of Our Own (Ao3) to identify thematic and stylistic differences. The results showed that students’ lack of familiarity with publishing in blogs often posed a challenge that some groups were able to overcome or exploit to facilitate or enhance the readability of their completed stories. Compared to online fanfiction, the classroom fanfiction was less innovative with respect to focal characters yet more collective in its focus, with stories being told from multiple characters’ perspectives.

Many studies have demonstrated that vocabulary size plays a key role in learning English as a foreign language (EFL). In recent years, mobile game-based learning (MGBL) has been considered a promising scheme for successful acquisition and retention of knowledge. Thus, this study applies a mixed methodology that combines quantitative and qualitative approaches to assess the effects of PHONE Words, a novel mobile English vocabulary learning app (application) designed with game-related functions (MEVLA-GF) and without game-related functions (MEVLA-NGF), on learners’ perceptions and learning performance. During a four-week experiment, 20 sophomore students were randomly assigned to the experimental group with MEVLA-GF support or the control group with MEVLA-NGF support for English vocabulary learning. Analytical results show that performance in vocabulary acquisition and retention by the experimental group was significantly higher than that of the control group. Moreover, questionnaire results confirm that MEVLA-GF is more effective and satisfying for English vocabulary learning than MEVLA-NGF. Spearman rank correlation results show that involvement and dependence on gamified functions were positively correlated with vocabulary learning performance.

The growing availability of mobile technologies has contributed to an increase in mobile-assisted language learning in which learners can autonomously study a second language (L2) anytime or anywhere (e.g. Kukulska-Hulme, Lee & Norris, 2017; Reinders & Benson, 2017). Research investigating the effectiveness of such study for L2 learning, however, has been limited, especially regarding large-scale commercial L2 learning apps, such as Duolingo. Although one commissioned research study found favorable language learning outcomes (Vesselinov & Grego, 2012), limited independent research has reported issues related to learner persistence, motivation, and program efficacy (Lord, 2015; Nielson, 2011). The current study investigates the semester-long learning experiences and results of nine participants learning Turkish on Duolingo. The participants showed improvement on L2 measures at the end of the study, and results indicate a positive, moderate correlation between the amount of time spent on Duolingo and learning gains. In terms of perceptions of their experiences, the participants generally viewed Duolingo’s flexibility and gamification aspects positively; however, variability in motivation to study and frustration with instructional materials were also expressed.

Even though current technologies allow for automated feedback, evaluating content and generating discourse-specific feedback is still a challenge for automated systems, which explains the gap in research investigating the effect of such feedback. This study explores the impact of automated formative feedback on the improvement of English as a second language (ESL) learners’ written causal explanations within two cause-and-effect essays and across pre- and post-tests. Pre- and post-test drafts, feedback reports for first and revised drafts from the automated writing evaluation system, and screen-capturing videos collected from 31 students enrolled in two sections of an advanced-low-level academic writing class were analyzed through descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. Findings revealed statistically significant changes in learners’ causal explanations within one cause-and-effect essay while no significant improvement was observed across pre- and post-tests. The findings of this study offer not only insights into how to further improve automated discourse-specific feedback but also pedagogical implications for better learning outcomes.

Drawing upon research on narrative and speech styles and on digital and multimodal communication, the author proposes multimodal narrative discourse analysis (MNDA) with associated pedagogical and analytical procedures to teach and study storytelling. The second language (L2) students first participated in multimodal narrative simulations in the virtual world of Second Life. The university students then presented, evaluated, and revised stories in both face-to-face and digital contexts through multiple modalities and technologies. MNDA further provided tools and methods for analyzing the students’ discursive processes and agentive experiences of L2 storytelling. The results of MNDA showed that the proper use of narrative elements, discourse structures, and stylistic devices, as well as bodily, visual, and video resources, assisted the students in developing multimodal designs and storytelling styles. This technology-mediated discourse approach to L2 storytelling suggests the importance of teaching and researching broader narrative contexts and activities other than simply elocution in multimodal communicative activities.

The use of videoconferencing technology to support the delivery of language programs shows great potential in regional and rural settings where a lack of access to specialist teachers limits equitable access to education. In this article, we investigate the establishment of two regional and rural primary school networks in Australia for videoconferenced language learning. Adopting a perspective taken from the discipline of information systems called structuration theory, we examine how the technology they use both changes and is changed by its use in language learning, and how schools and teachers take control of technology and adapt their educational approaches. Case studies were carried out on the two networks using multiple data sources, including interviews and observation of language classes. The findings reveal that even with the same conceptual foundations and aims, divergent models of practice emerge as sustainable adaptations to localised factors. These differences are shaped by, among other things, an interplay between the quality of infrastructure, prior knowledge, and the “material properties” of the technology, including its functions, limits, and deployment in physical space. A closer look at these practices illustrates limitations and possibilities specifically for language education, but also more broadly illustrates how the success of these videoconferencing initiatives are influenced by a nuanced combination of social, educational, and technological factors.