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The growing adoption of emerging technologies for language pedagogy, literacy development, and language assessment has accelerated computer-assisted language learning (CALL) as a major field of education and led to the establishment of major specialized journals, such as Language Learning and Technology, Computer Assisted Language Learning, and ReCALL. As technologies further advanced, we began to see individuals and schools increasingly adopt CALL technologies and use their interactive features to facilitate language learning. Consequently, CALL research began to gain momentum and expand its research foci during the mid-1990s (Levy, 2000; Uzunboylu & Ozcinar, 2009). This expansion gave birth to some independent and stand-alone subfields, such as computer-assisted language testing (CALT) (Parmaxi et al., 2013).

Recent findings have provided growing evidence in support of process-genre- oriented writing pedagogy. However, these types of approaches tended to place formfocused instruction (FFI) in the background, particularly the explicit teaching of grammar (i.e., isolated FFI). As such, limited improvement in writing accuracy was reported by recent studies. It is, therefore, important to look into how isolated FFI might further improve this aspect of writing within process-genre-oriented writing classrooms. The current study investigates the effects of post-writing isolated FFI (post-FFI) on second language (L2) writing accuracy within this writing environment. Using mixed methods quasi-experimental design, the findings show that post-FFI benefits students as it improved their overall writing accuracy, particularly errors that impede meaning (levels 2 and 3 errors). This improvement was attributed to noticing, contextualised learning of forms, and students’ psycholinguistic readiness as supported by students’ qualitative responses. Nonetheless, some challenges were also reported by students regarding the intervention. Implications for L2 writing pedagogy and future research are discussed., Recientes hallazgos han proporcionado una creciente evidencia en apoyo de la pedagogía de la escritura procesual orientada al género. Sin embargo, estos tipos de enfoques tienden a colocar la instrucción centrada en la forma (FFI) en un segundo plano, en particular la enseñanza explícita de la gramática (es decir, FFI aislado). Por ello, los estudios recientes informan de una mejora limitada en la precisión de la escritura. Por lo tanto, es importante investigar cómo la FFI aislada podría mejorar aún más este aspecto de la escritura dentro de las aulas de escritura como proceso orientadas al género. El presente estudio investiga los efectos del FFI aislado en la post-escritura (post-FFI) en la precisión de la escritura de la segunda lengua (L2) dentro de este entorno de escritura. Utilizando un diseño cuasiexperimental de métodos mixtos, los resultados muestran que el post-FFI beneficia a los estudiantes, ya que mejora su precisión general en la escritura, particularmente los errores que impiden el significado (errores de nivel 2 y 3). Esta mejora se atribuyó a la atención, al aprendizaje contextualizado de las formas y a la preparación psicolingüística de los estudiantes, tal y como se desprende de sus respuestas cualitativas. No obstante, los estudiantes también informaron de algunos problemas relacionados con la intervención. Se discuten las implicaciones para la pedagogía de la escritura en L2 y para futuras investigaciones.

Despite the building up of research on the adoption of automated writing evaluation (AWE) systems, the differential effects of automated written corrective feedback (AWCF) on errors with different ...

This review maps the scientific literature on social media as a language learning environment published between 2008 and 2019. Over 1,600 journals from the Scopus database were surveyed and 396 doc...

Given the recent technological advancements and the critical role that grammar plays in students’ writing development, several digital tools that provide computer-mediated corrective feedback have emerged. One such tool is Grammarly, which identifies duplicate content and errors in grammar, vocabulary, mechanics, and language style. This tech review, therefore, provides an overview of its affordances and how they can be used in English as a Second Language (ESL) and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing. While Grammarly can be a powerful tool that teachers and students can explore in their writing classrooms, it has some limitations that require further enhancements.

Given the increasing number of research on social media for educational purposes, few studies have examined the scientific literature in this field of interest. However, reviews that comprehensively mapped this research landscape in a broader view remain very limited. It is on this premise that the current study identifies the growth trajectory, distribution, and topical foci of scientific literature on social media in education published between 2007 and 2019. A total of 2,215 documents from Scopus-indexed journals were analysed. Using a bibliometric approach, the findings show a steady growth of scientific output and citations and the expansion of the topical foci in the past decade. Of the 15 examined social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have attracted the greatest attention, while the rest remained underexplored or unexplored. The popularity of certain platforms among scholars was attributed to three factors: the number of active users, the pedagogical affordances, and the geographical scope. Implications for future studies are discussed.

Very few studies have comprehensively mapped out the landscape of English language teaching (ELT) research, particularly those that are not accessible to wider international readership. Thus, this bibliometric study examines ELT doctoral and master’s theses in the Philippines. A total of 98 theses and dissertations completed between 2010 and 2018 were collected from various Philippine universities. Quantitative analysis was used to examine the characteristics and topical foci of the selected studies. Findings reveal that most of the theses and dissertations mainly focussed on only four ELT areas. The other 17 areas remain underexplored ( N = 11) or unexplored ( N = 6). Findings further suggest that there has been a lack of direction and slow expansion of ELT research areas in the country. This trend is primarily attributed to the absence of clear ELT research agenda. Implications for English language education, teacher education, and future direction for ELT research in the country are discussed.

One recent development in writing pedagogy is the use of Web 2.0 technologies such as Facebook. Although there have been a lot of studies on Facebook use in writing classrooms, very few studies hav...

Since the introduction of task-based language teaching, tasks have become an integral component of the curriculum, ESL classrooms, and ELT coursebooks in the Philippines. Hence, this study examines the complexity of tasks in selected ELT coursebooks. Specifically, this study sought to determine the complexity features of tasks per grade level and how they progress from the simplest to the most complex within each ELT coursebook level and across grade levels. Based on the analysis, almost a quarter of the language activities in these coursebooks are tasks, most of which have complexity levels 3, 4, 5, and 6. Further findings reveal that none of the ELT coursebooks show a linear progression of task complexity within and across grade levels. Implications for ELT coursebook development and future studies are discussed.

Recently, the education system has faced an unprecedented health crisis that has shaken up its foundation. Given today's uncertainties, it is vital to gain a nuanced understanding of students' online learning experience in times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although many studies have investigated this area, limited information is available regarding the challenges and the specific strategies that students employ to overcome them. Thus, this study attempts to fill in the void. Using a mixed-methods approach, the findings revealed that the online learning challenges of college students varied in terms of type and extent. Their greatest challenge was linked to their learning environment at home, while their least challenge was technological literacy and competency. The findings further revealed that the COVID-19 pandemic had the greatest impact on the quality of the learning experience and students' mental health. In terms of strategies employed by students, the most frequently used were resource management and utilization, help-seeking, technical aptitude enhancement, time management, and learning environment control. Implications for classroom practice, policy-making, and future research are discussed.

Experts generally believe that written corrective feedback (CF) positively affects writing quality and learners’ accurate use of language. However, researchers have not yet identified the most effe...

Recent developments in the region and in the Philippines have prompted the Philippine government to push for a new basic education curriculum. Along with these changes is the adoption of the new En...

Several studies have been conducted on teachers’ perception and implementation of communicative language teaching (CLT) in Asia. However, how CLT is implemented in the Philippine context and how it is perceived by tertiary teachers is underexplored. Thus, this study sought to determine the beliefs, practices, and problem encountered by tertiary teachers in implementing CLT. Ten experienced tertiary teachers from a private university in the Philippines were purposively selected to participate in the study. Using a 34-item questionnaire, this study used a survey method to determine the beliefs, practices, student’s reactions, and problems encountered pertaining to CLT. The findings revealed that teachers did not extensively integrate the principles of CLT into their beliefs. The results also reflected how they implement CLT in their respective classrooms. Findings further showed that teachers did not extensively employ tasks, syllabus, and materials that would realize CLT in language classrooms. Interestingly, Audiolingual Method remains to have some influence in teachers even if they claim to use CLT. These findings can be attributed to several contextual factors such as class size, limited class hours, and teachers’ and students’ attitude. Several implications for teaching and future studies are discussed. The findings prove to be significant in several ways. First, it provides language teachers baseline information on their current practices which is crucial to extending their teaching repertoire and developing teacher development programs. Second, the findings can be used as a springboard for further studies on teaching practices in ESL/EFL contexts using other methods of elicitation, such as think-aloud protocol and logs.

The current study used a scale-based approach and complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) analysis to comprehensively capture the effects of the sociocognitive-transformative approach on 2nd langua...

It has been observed that Southeast Asian countries and universities have ranked poorly in global research productivity and impact. The same is true for the field of language and linguistics. Some studies revealed that productivity and citation patterns in this field are lower compared to other fields of study. Thus, this study sought to examine the research performance of SEA countries and universities in the field of language and linguistics for efficient policy-making. The research performance of each SEA country and university was assessed through Scopus database using the following bibliometric indicators: total number of publications (P), total number of citations excluding self-citations (C), citations per publication (CPP), percent of non-cited articles (%PNC), and h-index. Findings revealed that SEA countries have only produced almost 2 % of all published articles in language and linguistics and around 1 % share in overall worldwide field citations. Interestingly, both the SEA countries and universities exhibit a trend toward increasing their yearly research productivity and citations. However, research productivity and citations in the field of language and linguistics are dominated by selected universities in each country particularly in Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines. This study has implications for research policy-making and future studies.

The current study sought to provide information on whether ESL learners’ use of reading strategies is associated with the type of text they are reading. To address this objective, 21 ESL learners read 20 different texts of varying types and answered the Metacognitive Awareness of Reading Strategies Inventory by Mokhtari and Sheorey (J Educ Psychol 94(2):249–259, 2002) to measure their use of reading strategies. Using descriptive and inferential statistics, results showed that ESL learners generally applied a wide range of strategies consistently when reading different text types. These results were explained using a schema-theoretic view of reading. Findings further revealed that there was a significantly higher use of global reading strategies compared to the two other factors (i.e., problem-solving reading strategies and support reading strategies). Such a finding was attributed to the reading proficiency level of the learners. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Examining language teacher beliefs and practices has been the subject of inquiry for the past 20 years. While some studies confirmed the consistency between teachers’ beliefs and practices, others also confirmed that beliefs are not always reflected in their classroom practices. It has also been found that teachers’ beliefs and practices do not always integrate the recent and established principles in second language teaching. To this end, this study sought to explore the teaching beliefs and practices of experienced ESL teachers and to determine whether these beliefs and practices run consistent with the current principles in ESL pedagogy from a sociocognitive-transformative perspective. For the stated purpose, five experienced ESL teachers were interviewed. The findings revealed that while there are consistencies between their beliefs and practices, some divergence were also observed. These results were attributed to several factors such as the abstractness of principles and attitude toward students. Implications for teacher education and future studies are discussed. Keywords: second language teaching; sociocognitive-transformative approach; teacher beliefs; teacher cognition; teacher practices DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2016-2201-12

Several studies have explored complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) as an index of language development, as an index of language performance, and as an index of writing quality. Although there have been studies that dealt with complexity measures as an index of proficiency, none so far have examined it in the company of accuracy and fluency as indices of proficiency. Thus, this study investigates whether CAF measures differentiate the four proficiency levels of L2 writers and whether relationships exist among the 18 CAF measures. More than 5000 essays from the International Corpus Network of Asian Learners of English (ICNALE) were analyzed using the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer. Overall findings reveal that an interaction exists between language proficiency and CAF measures. Specifically, the length of production unit indices, degree of phrasal sophistication indices, weighted clause ratio, and words per text were found to best separate proficiency levels. The study also presents the patterns of relationship among the CAF measures which provided insights into how multiple measures may be selected and reclassified in so far as language proficiency is concerned. Implications for L2 writing assessment, pedagogy, use of automated text analyzers, and future studies are discussed.

In English as a second language (ESL) writing pedagogy, much attention has been given to electronic portfolio (e-portfolio) assessment via social networking sites. However, little is known about how Facebook can be used as an e-portfolio platform. Hence, this paper describes the impact of Facebook-based e-portfolio on ESL students’ writing practices and the challenges they encountered in implementing this type of e-portfolio. For this purpose, 171 first-year university students completed a 15-item self-report questionnaire and provided details on the problems they encountered during the e-portfolio implementation. Results indicate that Facebook-based e-portfolio had a positive impact on students’ writing practices, making it a viable tool for e-portfolio assessment. Nevertheless, some challenges and suggestions for future implementation were reported. The paper concludes with implications for writing assessment practices and future studies.

Previous studies revealed that isolated and integrated form-focused instruction (FFI) are two effective means of improving language proficiency of students, separately. However, few empirical studies have explored their complementarity in the context of English as a second language. This study, therefore, investigates the effects of combining isolated and integrated FFI on the speaking and writing skills of second language (L2) learners at the tertiary level in the Philippines. Forty-one college students were divided into two groups: Group A received both the isolated and integrated FFI, while Group B received the standard English programme for college freshmen. Findings suggest that students who received the combined isolated and integrated FFI have significantly improved in their productive skills and have outperformed the students from the control group.

The current developments in second language (L2) pedagogy and the introduction of twenty-first century education compel scholars, educators, and leading education agencies in the Asia Pacific region to revisit their respective curriculum and framework for designing and preparing their English language teaching materials. However, after surveying available literature and studies in L2 pedagogy, it could be posited that there is paucity of a materials design model that would address these developments. Hence, this paper offers a sociocognitive-transformative materials design model to guide ESL and EFL teachers, material developers, and publishers in the Asia Pacific region in preparing instructional materials based on sound theories, principles, and practices. The process of model development was anchored on the grounded theory which allows a theory or model to emerge from the data. In the context of this study, the data (i.e., scholarly literature) was obtained from the top journals in applied linguistics and second language pedagogy. It is from these data that the preliminary model was developed. Using a three-pronged validation approach, findings confirmed the robustness of the model from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The findings further confirm the possibility of integrating current and relevant pedagogical concepts without contradicting one another and without contradicting other established L2 pedagogical frameworks.

The second language teaching has been constantly experiencing paradigm shifts. Teaching approaches and pedagogical beliefs come and go, others are modified and updated. With these developments, a number of new and perennial issues arise as well. This paper, then, identifies the transitions and developments in the second language pedagogy from the traditional methods to postmethod. With the increasing influence of postmethod pedagogy in language classrooms, this paper attempts to discuss and shed light on these key issues derived from recent literature and studies using the grounded theory. This paper further aims to offer alternatives on how these challenges can be confronted using an ESL teaching model and teaching–learning principles from a sociocognitive-transformative perspective.

Although CLT has been widely accepted and practiced, some problems have arisen in its implementation and wrong notion particularly in EFL and ESL context. This study, therefore, sought to determine the beliefs, practices, students’ interest, and problem encountered by tertiary teachers in implementing CLT. Specifically, this paper aimed to address the following objectives: (1) To find out if the teachers use CLT in the classroom; (2) To find out the teachers’ belief about CLT; (3) To find out the teachers' classroom practices and activities in implementing CLT; (4) To find out the students' reaction to the use of CLT in the classroom; and (5) To find out the problems encountered by teachers in implementing CLT. Ten tertiary teachers participated in the study. Based on the analysis of the findings, most of the respondents claim that they often if not always use CLT in the classroom but with minimal influence of Audiolingual Method. A lot of them believe that language is a tool for communication, conveying meaning and performing language functions used to establish and maintain social relationship. However, there is still an influence of Audiolingual Method in their view of language. Majority of the teachers also believe that language can be best learned and acquired through communicative approach. Moreover, they usually employ practices and activities using CLT. However, some respondents still employ the Audiolingual Method particularly on how they draft the syllabus, teacher modeling, and the use of speech laboratory for pronunciation. Several implications for teaching and future studies are discussed.

This article discusses the fundamentals of language macroskills. Specifically, the paper defines and describes the six macroskills which include both the productive skills (i.e., speaking, writing, and representing) and receptive skills (i.e., listening, reading, and viewing). Some ways on how these skills can be taught are also presented.

Several approaches to second language teaching have been proposed since the 19th century. Despite these changes in the landscape of second language teaching task-based language teaching (TBLT) remains to be prevailing approach in language classrooms. However, many English language teachers lack full awareness on what TBLT is and how it can be efficiently implemented in their respective classrooms particularly in Asian classrooms using the most current language teaching and learning principles. This paper, therefore, sought to provide insights on implementing TBLT in ESL classrooms from the sociocognitive-transformative lens. The first section of the paper provides practitioners (textbook writers, teacher, curriculum developers) extensive insights on the principles underpinning TBLT and how these principles can be put into practice in language classrooms. It also presents how various language teaching theories, principles, and approaches can be integrated in teaching grammar using TBLT. The second section briefly discusses the sociocognitive-transformative approach and how TBLT can be implemented using such an approach with the aim to address the challenges and issues confronted by teachers when using TBLT. Some implications for classroom practices and research are discussed.

Providing written corrective feedback (WFC) is a pedagogical strategy that makes students aware of their learning progress and the areas they need to improve. Despite the numerous research on the effectiveness of this approach, studies have failed to recognize the importance of determining whether students’ and teachers’ WCF perspectives and preferences correspond. Thus, this study aims at determining university students’ preferences and perspectives on written corrective feedback in contrast with their teachers’. A modified parallel questionnaire was used in gathering both quantitative and qualitative data. Findings show that participants do have uninformed disagreements on some issues regarding their WCF perspectives and preferences which are never considered. Such concerns need to be addressed for error correction practice to be more effective.

Benefits of service-learning to higher educational institutions and community have received considerable attention. Accordingly, practitioners, researchers and educators in American, European, and some parts of Asian regions have adopted methods of integrating course-based or classroom-based teaching and civic and community service and other developments. In the Philippines, however, no comprehensive SL model that can address these developments appears to exist. Hence, this paper, which is part of a large-scale project on institutionalizing SL in the Philippine HEIs, offers an SL pedagogy model designed to guide academicians and other stakeholders in preparing SL-related teaching and learning materials, and to serve as a basis for institutionalization anchored on theories, principles, and practices. The model development process uses exploratory-interpretative design. Specifically, grounded theory is used in the procedure that allows a model to emerge from the generated data consist of scholarly literature, SL-related documents, and interview. With the practitioners and researcher-practitioners serving as validators, findings confirm the theoretical robustness and practical viability of the model reflecting notions of critical pedagogy (i.e. empowering the powerless and the voiceless) and reciprocal partnership.