The present study investigates the relationship between English as a Foreign Language (EFL) undergraduates' use of AI-generated self-assessment (AIGSA) and their reported metacognitive skill development. A survey was administered to examine the perceptions of 242 EFL students in Saudi Arabia and Yemen regarding AIGSA and to assess their perceptions of the validity of AIGSA in comparison with instructors' assessments. The quantitative results indicated that EFL students have a high perception of the use of AIGSA in their learning (M = 3.97, SD = .622). The study also revealed a moderate positive correlation between the perceived use of AIGSA and the reported development of EFL students' metacognitive skills (r = .432). The analysis revealed that nationality exerted a significant role in students' perception, where Saudi EFL students reported a higher perception (M = 4.05) than their Yemeni counterparts (M = 3.89, Z = 2.166, p = .001). Moreover, the thematic analysis indicated that AIGSA supports learners' self-monitoring and regulation through accessible, detailed, and low-pressure feedback, while its perceived validity remains contextual and complementary to teacher assessment. By foregrounding learners' evaluative knowledge and trust in feedback sources, this study offers novel insights into how AIGSA functions as a metacognitive scaffold rather than a substitute for teacher feedback.
Intensive foreign language programs may place strong psychological demands on students and may increase the risk of academic burnout. Mindfulness has often been examined as a learner resource associated with lower distress, but less is known about how specific socio-cognitive patterns of attention and engagement relate to burnout in intensive Arabic learning in higher education. This study examined the relationships between three socio-cognitive mindfulness facets, unmindful disengagement, novelty producing, and novelty seeking, and four burnout dimensions, academic efficacy, cynicism, disengagement, and exhaustion. Participants were 176 international scholarship students enrolled in a two-year intensive Arabic program at a Saudi public university. Data were collected using a survey. The model was tested using generalized structured component analysis. The results suggest that novelty seeking was the most consistent correlate of a lower burnout profile. Higher novelty seeking was associated with higher academic efficacy and lower cynicism, disengagement, and exhaustion. Unmindful disengagement showed the opposite pattern. It was linked to higher cynicism, disengagement, and exhaustion, but it was not significantly related to academic efficacy. Novelty producing did not show significant unique associations with any burnout dimension once the other mindfulness facets were included. These findings suggest that students’ curiosity and active exploration of Arabic learning opportunities were more consistently associated with burnout dimensions than creative production alone in this sample. These findings identify novelty seeking and unmindful disengagement as concurrent correlates of burnout dimensions in this sample. Longitudinal and instructional research is needed to test whether practices that encourage noticing, exploration, and sustained attention are followed by changes in burnout.
This error analysis aimed to investigate Vietnamese university students' written grammatical accuracy in EFL writing, given the crucial role of verbs and their intricate morphosyntactic features (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002). However, systematic investigation into morphosyntactic verb errors and their causes remains limited. To address this gap, the study aimed to: (a) identify the types and frequency of morphosyntactic verb errors made by elementary-level EFL undergraduates, and (b) examine their causative factors. The researchers conducted an error analysis of 224 compositions written by EFL undergraduates at a university in Vietnam. The findings showed that misformation errors were the most prevalent, followed by omission and addition, while misordering was least common. Most errors stemmed from intralingual factors, with false concept hypothesis as the primary source, though interlingual transfer also exerted a notable influence. The findings partially align with previous research, likely due to differences in study scope, writing genres, and participant characteristics. The insights suggest that teachers should implement targeted, rule-based activities (e.g., tense drills, verb correction tasks, and coded feedback) to improve learners' control of morphosyntactic verbs. They also highlight the need for more robust research designs to better capture learner performance and contextual influences on error production.
Research on formulaic language in L2 writing has demonstrated that the use of lexical bundles is crucial to disciplinary discourse and development and that bundle use varies across proficiency levels and tasks. However, little is known about which writing-relevant textual properties these lexical bundles reflect. Do texts that employ more formulaic expressions become more lexically specific and/or more referentially or causally cohesive, or does formulaic language simply signify discourse without contributing to meaning? This study addresses these questions by investigating whether lexical-bundle coverage is associated with three Coh-Metrix composites (i.e., Specificity, Referential Cohesion and Deep Cohesion) in a corpus of 480 Arabic-L1 English argumentative essays. More specifically, the paper explores two types of lexical bundles, which are topic-specific and global ones, and seeks to examine their relationships with the three composites. To achieve this, essay-level composite scores were modelled on topic-specific and global coverage using a multivariate multiple regression with fixed effects for prompt and educational level. The results demonstrate that topic-specific lexical bundles are significantly associated with Referential Cohesion, whereas global coverage is associated with Deep Cohesion. Neither type is reliably associated with Specificity. These findings suggest that topic-specific bundles pattern with stronger local semantic alignment, whereas global bundles are more closely linked to causal/argumentative scaffolding.
This study investigated the impact of a social justice-oriented teacher education course that incorporated explicit emotion regulation (ER) training on Iranian EFL teachers’ ER strategies and perceptions of classroom justice. Forty-three teachers participated in a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design. In the quantitative phase, paired-samples t-tests revealed significant post-test increases in teachers’ use of engagement-oriented ER strategies. The largest effects were observed in cognitive change, t(42) = 9.68, p < .001, d = 1.48, followed by situation modification, t(42) = 6.32, p < .001, d = 0.96, and response modulation, t(42) = 6.70, p < .001, d = 1.02. Attentional deployment also improved moderately, t(42) = 3.53, p = .001, d = 0.54, while situation selection showed no meaningful change. Teachers’ perceptions of classroom justice likewise increased significantly across distributive, t(42) = 7.90, p < .001, d = 1.20, procedural, t(42) = 18.54, p < .001, d = 2.83, and interactional dimensions, t(42) = 17.41, p < .001, d = 2.65. The qualitative phase identified four themes: growing self-awareness of emotions and triggers, intentional use of engagement strategies, strengthening fairness and transparency in classroom interactions, and persistent challenges in managing negative emotions under institutional pressures. Together, these findings demonstrate that integrating ER strategy training into justice-oriented teacher education can produce statistically and practically significant improvements in both teachers’ emotional competence and their enactment of fairness, while also underscoring the importance of sustained institutional support to maintain these gains.
This research examined the impact of managing extraneous cognitive load on incidental vocabulary acquisition during digital game-based vocabulary learning (DGBVL) activities. The participants were 70 Arabic-speaking university freshmen (CEFR A2) who were randomly assigned to an Integration Group, where the extraneous load was managed, and a Control Group, where it was not. The students played an arcade-style online game that taught them ten low-frequency pseudowords. Then they were given Immediate and Delayed post-tests which measured eight areas of word knowledge, including both receptive and productive skills. A 2 × 2 repeated-measures MANOVA revealed significant main effects of group and time. The integrated format, which was less cumbersome for their cognitive load, allowed the participants to experience more vocabulary gains and better retention than the control group. The advantages were particularly strong for the productive aspect of word knowledge, which demands more from working memory. These results support the hypothesis that the proper handling of extra cognitive load leads to an increase in both learning efficiency and retention. It therefore, emphasizes the significance of teacher intervention in the design of DGBVL with cognitive load as a factor.
Language barriers can constitute a formidable hurdle to receiving adequate healthcare. Linguistically accessible healthcare is a crucial part of optimising health outcomes for hospitalised patients, and linguistic minority patients often face worse health outcomes than their majority peers. Against this background, this study asks how hospital staff assess a linguistic minority patient’s language proficiency and how they identify the need for a multilingual communication strategy between the patient and their healthcare providers. This is done through a systematic literature review of 50 studies published between 2018 and 2023. Findings show that language proficiency assessments are widely overlooked and treated as if they were self-evident. Language proficiency assessments thus become an invisible process that is not clearly anchored in any recognized workflow. Where responsibility for determining a patient’s proficiency in the institutional language and their need for a multilingual communication strategy is identified, it rests with hospital admission and triage staff. However, there is no widely accepted procedure or protocol that would guide admission staff members on how to perform this task in a way that will provide ongoing language support to patients for the entirety of their hospital stay. We conclude that the development of language assessment policies and procedures is an urgent task to improve healthcare provision for linguistic minority patients.
This study explores whether teaching verb grammar by emphasizing tense-aspect distinctions, rather than the traditional 12-tense model used in EFL classrooms, offers advantages for teachers and students, contributing to the broader discussion on reduction of cognitive load in mastering English tense system and bridging the gap between theoretical and pedagogical grammar. Our experiment involved a presentation that introduced students to the distinctions between tense (present, past, future) and aspect (progressive, perfective) through a compositional approach, combining tense with one aspect at a time, followed by brief practice. To measure learning outcomes, we conducted a pretest four weeks before the classroom presentation, a posttest the same day, and a delayed posttest four weeks after the presentation. A questionnaire was also distributed to get learners’ feedback about the presentation. The results suggest that our proposed instructional model benefits early EFL learners of grammar by improving their understanding of tense and aspect through reduced cognitive overload. However, more advanced students already exposed to the traditional 12-tense model showed less improvement. These findings highlight the need for an overall shift away from the traditional 12-tense model, but with a gradual instructional transition for experienced learners.
As intelligent technological tools increasingly permeate educational contexts, chatbots have emerged as prominent aids in language learning. This study investigates the comparative effectiveness of human- and AI-generated feedback on EFL learners’ essay writing, focusing on differences and similarities in feedback quality and impact. Specifically, the study examines how feedback from a human instructor and a generative AI (GenAI) chatbot, ChatGPT, varies across three dimensions: structure and organisation, content and ideas, and grammar. A diachronic perspective is adopted to analyse how each type of feedback contributes to student revision over time. Participants included twenty-six EFL college students enrolled in an English composition course. The study focused on the production of comparison essays through a three-stage process. In the first stage, students independently wrote their initial drafts at home, with access to dictionaries or online resources but without direct assistance. In the second stage, the drafts received written feedback from a human instructor. In the third stage, students revised their essays again based on feedback generated by ChatGPT. All drafts were subsequently evaluated by both human raters and the AI system using the aforementioned criteria. Findings show that AI-generated feedback in the third stage produced scores comparable to human feedback in the second stage, particularly in identifying grammatical issues and improving clarity. However, human feedback provided richer, more context-sensitive guidance, especially in enhancing content development and sentence complexity. In contrast, ChatGPT's responses tended to be more uniform and focused primarily on surface-level corrections. These results underscore the potential of integrating GenAI tools into EFL writing instruction while also highlighting their current limitations. The study contributes to a deeper understanding of how human and AI feedback complement each other, offering pedagogical insights into the thoughtful use of AI in academic writing contexts.
This study investigates the integration of dialogic reflection, that of reflective practice that emphasizes the importance of dialogue in fostering in critical thinking, meaning making, and the reconceptualization of professional practices (Brown & Sawyer, 2016), with John Macmurray’s (1961) relational philosophy to address the tensions between functional and personal dimensions of education within high-performance systems. In such systems, education is often reduced to measurable outcomes and instrumental goals, sidelining the personal and relational aspects of teaching and learning. Building on Fielding and Moss’s (2010) critique of performative education, this research emphasizes the need for informal, open-ended, invitational dialogue that prioritizes person-centeredness and ethical deliberation over closure and instrumentalism. The study aims to fill a critical gap in the literature by proposing a relational, dialogic approach to reflection that contrasts with confrontational or prescriptive methods, fostering a deeper understanding of the purpose and practice of education. The research employs a qualitative design, utilising in-depth semi-structured interviews with seven language teachers (English, Chinese, and Malay) from a mainstream secondary school in Singapore. These teachers engaged in dialogic reflection, guided by critical questions about the purpose of education, the nature of knowledge, and the role of relationships in teaching and learning (Fielding & Moss, 2010). The interviews were designed to elicit teachers’ beliefs and practices, focusing on the interplay between academic goals and holistic student development. Data were analysed using Dialogic Discourse Analysis with codes derived from the dimensions of personal and functional meaning, ensuring a relational understanding of their educational practices. Key findings reveal that dialogic reflection enables teachers to: (1) critically examine and redefine the purpose and scope of language education, (2) reconceptualize well-being and personal relationships in schools, and (3) challenge the disciplinarity of language education by integrating personal and functional perspectives. Teachers reported a shift in their understanding of education, moving beyond instrumental goals to embrace a more holistic, person-centred approach. This transformation highlights the potential of dialogic reflection to foster autonomy, self-creation, and new ways of living within educational practices. The study contributes to the field by proposing a relational dialogic reflection framework that bridges functional and personal perspectives. This framework offers actionable insights for teachers, researchers, and policymakers, advocating for a more person-centred, ethically grounded approach to professional development in language education. By prioritizing dialogue and relationality, the framework challenges the dominance of performative paradigms and supports the creation of educational environments that value both personal growth and functional achievement.
Language teachers’ research engagement has recently gained significant attention in L2 education. However, the challenges faced by graduate TEFL students in Iran during various research stages—reading, conducting, and applying research—remain underexplored. This study employed a qualitative descriptive approach, interviewing 30 TEFL students (15 Ph.D. and 15 M.A.) from state universities in Iran. Findings revealed that participants experienced stress and demotivation due to the complexities of statistical data and quantitative methodologies, often feeling ill-equipped to handle such content. In contrast, qualitative research was perceived as more approachable. A lack of support from professors exacerbated these challenges, highlighting the need for improved mentorship and guidance. Additionally, students struggled with argumentative writing and felt a disconnect between theoretical research and practical teaching applications. Engaging in action research emerged as a valuable tool for professional development, empowering teachers to address their unique challenges. To foster a more supportive academic environment, it is crucial to enhance mentorship and integrate action research into teacher training programs. This approach will enable teachers to engage more effectively with research, ultimately improving their teaching practices and promoting better educational outcomes. Addressing these issues is essential for creating an environment conducive to effective research engagement.
Professional development (PD) plays an important role in enhancing teachers’ expertise, professional identity, and classroom practice. In recent years, the Vietnamese government has invested in PD to develop EFL teachers’ capacity, aiming to improve the quality of English language teaching and learning. Therefore, ensuring the effectiveness of PD is essential for maintaining accountability. Our paper investigates EFL teachers’ PD experiences in the Vietnamese tertiary education context. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with seven EFL teachers from a Vietnamese university in Hanoi, this paper identifies characteristics of PD that contributed positively to their experiences and those that discouraged them from participating in PD activities. Five positive characteristics of PD emerged from our data: relevance of PD content, characteristics of PD facilitators, design of PD activities, opportunities to interact with facilitators and peers, and novelty of PD activities. Our interviews identified four characteristics of PD that prevented teachers from participating in PD, namely mismatched PD content, work commitments, family commitments, and financial considerations. Our paper contributes to the PD literature by offering a set of key considerations for designing and organising PD activities in Vietnam.
This study aimed to investigate whether Mindful Learning (MiL), Meaningful Learning (MeL), and Joyful Learning (JL) are predictors of Deep Learning (DL) in AI-based language learning. The study employed a convergent mixed-methods design by combining phenomenology and ex-post facto approaches. This study recruited eight EFL students for the interviews and 276 EFL students for the quantitative part. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews, researcher field notes, and questionnaires. The data were analyzed using inductive thematic analysis, descriptive statistics, Pearson Product Moment, and SEM. The findings revealed that qualitatively, MiL, MeL, and JL are related to DL. However, the SEM outputs indicated that JL is the only non-predictor. The study offers four implications directed for the use of AI-based applications in facilitating DL in AI-based learning in EFL contexts.
Recent shifts in education, particularly in English language teaching (ELT), have emphasized learner-centered approaches over teacher-centered ones. The ECRIF framework (Encounter, Clarify, Remember, Internalize, Fluently Use) is widely recognized for providing a practical roadmap for facilitating active, meaningful, and student-centered learning experiences. This study investigates its effectiveness in developing learning outcomes and engagement among Moroccan EFL middle school students. Data were collected from a sample of 67 ninth-grade students, using a pre-test, post-test, and feedback questionnaire. The results revealed that the ECRIF framework significantly enhanced students’ performance in the grammar test compared to traditional instruction. While both instructional methods resulted in learning gains, the improvement observed in the control group was modest compared to the substantial progress made by the experimental group. The structured stages and interactive activities incorporated throughout the instructional session contributed to the positive impact of the ECRIF framework on the experimental group’s achievement. The students expressed high levels of satisfaction and positive perceptions toward the ECRIF approach, as reflected in their responses to the feedback questionnaire. Overall, the present study demonstrated that the ECRIF activities used during the lesson not only improved students’ learning outcomes but also maximized their engagement and participation. These findings suggest that the framework can effectively foster both student learning and engagement in the English classroom. To this end, the study calls for the integration of ECRIF framework to enhance learner-centered practices and improve educational outcomes.
Professional development in tertiary ESL settings is generally discussed in terms of formal workshops and training programmes. The informal, self-directed professional development (PD) that emerges through everyday teaching practice, particularly in under-resourced ESL settings, is often overlooked. Addressing this gap, this study presents an autoethnographic reflective narrative of a longitudinal, informal, self-directed PD trajectory undertaken by an ESL practitioner-researcher in Sri Lanka Informed by Dewey’s and Schön’s reflective practitioner model, Farrell’s framework for reflecting on practice, and the British Council’s continuing professional development (CPD) framework for teachers, the study uses data from the author’s PhD research, experiential data from classroom experimentation with digital tools, social platforms, and more recently AI technologies, as well as classroom practice, conference participation, contributions to peer-reviewed publishing, and feedback from learners and colleagues. Situated within the author’s specific institutional and sociocultural context and influenced by personal motivations, this autoethnographic reflective narrative suggests that teacher agency, critical reflection, ethical responsiveness, pedagogical innovation, and contextual sensitivity can foster sustained PD. A key pedagogical takeaway from this study is that ESL practitioners should view technology integration into instruction as a reflective process of experimentation, evaluation, and adaptation. The study presents actionable strategies for ESL practitioners, institutions, and policy makers. ESL practitioners can professionally develop through systematic observation, critical reflection, pedagogical experimentation, and the documentation and dissemination of classroom-based insights. Institutions and policymakers can support such informal, self-directed PD by recognising reflective practice, integrating mentoring and peer learning into workload structures, and endorsing context-sensitive policies that validate classroom inquiry and blended professional learning pathways.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has increasingly become a major discussion topic within the field of language education, prompting teachers to adapt to this rapidly changing teaching landscape. The current research study focuses on how language teachers are preparing themselves to navigate the use of AI for educational purposes. Specifically, it aims to uncover the role of AI-focused online language teacher communities as a means to learn more about AI. A mixed-methods approach is employed, combining qualitative content analysis of community posts and self-reported data from in-depth interviews with community members and non-members, alongside descriptive data on community membership growth. This study hopes to contribute to the growing body of research on AI in language education by providing insights into how language teachers can capitalise upon online language teacher communities on Facebook, which are free and which are free and easily accessible worldwide. It will also highlight the potential of such online communities to serve as collaborative spaces for teachers to explore new technologies and enhance their practice in the age of AI.
The study explored the emotional labor of Iranian English language teachers in digital learning environments, drawing on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) as the theoretical framework. Emotional labor, encompassing surface acting, deep acting, and naturally felt emotions, is essential for managing interpersonal dynamics in teaching. While emotional labor in traditional classrooms has been extensively studied, its manifestation in online settings remains underexplored. This qualitative study examined how the satisfaction or frustration of basic psychological needs—autonomy, competence, and relatedness—influenced teachers’ emotional regulation strategies during online instruction. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten mid-career Iranian English language teachers, and the data were analyzed using thematic analysis. Findings indicated that autonomy enhanced emotional authenticity, with teachers who felt empowered in their teaching methods displaying naturally felt emotions or engaging in deep acting. Competence was a significant determinant of emotional regulation, as teachers with higher technical and pedagogical confidence were more likely to express authentic emotions. Relatedness, though challenging in virtual environments, emerged as crucial for fostering meaningful teacher-student interactions and mitigating emotional dissonance. However, institutional policies and technological constraints often frustrated these psychological needs, compelling teachers to rely on surface acting. The findings underscore the complex interplay between emotional labor and motivation in digital contexts, offering insights into supporting teachers' well-being and enhancing their professional efficacy in online teaching.
This study explores the perceptions of educational videos in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning among students from different gender groups and academic disciplines, specifically Social Sciences, Humanities, STEM, and Health Sciences. Using an experimental survey-based design, the research examines how male and female learners, as well as students from various academic fields, perceive video-based instruction across five key dimensions: cognitive processing, affective response, contextual learning, perceived relevance, and usefulness. Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) is applied to provide a framework for optimizing video-based EFL instruction by managing cognitive load and enhancing learner engagement across diverse groups. The findings indicate that females tend to rate videos higher in Affective Response and Perceived Usefulness, while men show lower ratings in Perceived Relevance and Cognitive Processing, with consistent scores overall. Faculty-based differences were also evident: Social Sciences and Humanities students rated videos higher in terms of affective response, contextual learning, and perceived relevance. These results highlight the importance of tailoring video content to meet the diverse needs of learners based on gender and academic discipline. The study suggests that educators should integrate both interactive and structured materials to enhance learning outcomes for all students.
Second language scholars have been examining how various planning conditions affect the writing proficiency of second language learners. However, the degree to which these effects differ according to specific planning conditions and task difficulty remains insufficiently explored. This research aimed to compare the effects of pre-task planning (PTP) and careful online planning (COP) on L2 writing, with a specific focus on how task difficulty was influenced by varying argumentation demands. Forty-eight intermediate EFL students were assigned to two groups (n= 24). Each group performed two writing tasks that varied in difficulty, based on the level of argumentation required. The texts produced by the participants were evaluated for their lexical and syntactic complexity, accuracy, and fluency. The results revealed no significant differences in lexical and syntactic complexity between the PTP and COP conditions. In contrast, careful online planning demonstrated significant improvements in both accuracy and fluency. Additionally, the influence on accuracy was affected by task difficulty, showing greater advantages for easier tasks compared to more difficult ones. No similar effects were found for lexical and syntactic complexity or fluency. The study also discussed its pedagogical implications and limitations.
This study explores how Thai pre-service English teachers (PSTs) engage in self-directed professional development (SDPD) during their rural teaching practicum, where resource constraints and technological limitations challenge traditional teacher preparation. Drawing on Garrison’s Self-Directed Learning model, the Theory of Planned Behavior, Morris and Rohs’s Digital SDL Framework, and a culturally sensitive reinterpretation of SDPD, the study employed a mixed-methods design. Data were collected from 49 PSTs through a structured questionnaire and from four purposively selected participants through semi-structured interviews. Quantitative results indicated high SDPD engagement, with PSTs actively searching for teaching ideas, experimenting with techniques, and reflecting on their practice. However, much of this self-direction was relational, being supported by peer discussions, mentor guidance, and LINE-based collaboration networks. Qualitative findings further revealed challenges in adapting university-based lesson plans to rural, under-resourced classrooms, alongside struggles with classroom management and limited digital infrastructure. Digital tools and AI applications, such as ChatGPT and online resources, supported SDPD by enhancing lesson planning and creative approaches, though teachers noted concerns about information overload and an overreliance on algorithmic content. The study contributes a culturally contextualized understanding of SDPD as relational and socially mediated rather than purely individualistic, highlighting how Thai PSTs blend personal initiative with collective support. These insights have implications for teacher education policy and practice, emphasizing the need to prepare PSTs for rural realities through critical digital literacy training, authentic scenario-based methods, and a recognition of culturally relevant peer networks.
