In EMI, an important issue concerns how content-area teachers perceive their roles in supporting students' development of English. This study addressed the issue by comparing EMI teachers across four disciplines to explore how the content they taught affected the kind of language support they provided in EMI classes. The study was conducted with 81 university-level EMI teachers in Taiwan. The findings revealed how teachers' beliefs and perceptions of their students' English proficiency were related to the subject matter they taught. Teachers in the "hard sciences" (e.g., engineering) gave more attention to content than language, while those in "soft sciences" (e.g., arts and humanities) subjects made greater use of strategies that developed both content knowledge and effective language skills. The study highlights the need for a discipline-based approach to EMI professional development, enabling EMI teachers to integrate language support for EMI students with disciplinary content and learner needs.
The increasing predominance of digital writing in higher education has raised important questions regarding its cognitive and neural implications. This study examines differences in neural activation patterns and neuroeducational markers between manual and digital writing in university students using electroencephalography (EEG) with the Emotiv EPOC+ 14 system. Employing an intrasubject experimental design (n = 10), participants completed equivalent handwritten and typed reflective tasks under controlled conditions. Results revealed that handwriting elicited broader and more bilateral brain activation, associated with greater emotional engagement and sensorimotor integration. In contrast, digital writing showed more focused activation patterns and higher cognitive demand, particularly in working memory-related frequencies. Gender differences were also observed, with males displaying stronger left-hemispheric lateralization and females demonstrating more bilateral activation. These findings provide neurophysiological evidence that writing modality influences cognitive and affective engagement, offering implications for differentiated pedagogical practices in higher education.
The present study aimed to explore the relationships among EFL learners' L2 grit, L2 motivation, and L2 achievement. The study also investigated the role of L2 motivation and L2 achievement in predicting L2 grit. In this quantitative study, which was conducted with 500 Turkish EFL learners, the data on L2 grit and L2 motivation were collected through a questionnaire, whereas the data on L2 achievement were obtained from the composite scores of the term. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Pearson product-moment correlation, and simple standard regression analyses. The results showed a positive and statistically significant correlation between L2 grit, L2 motivation, and L2 achievement. Notably, the largest statistically significant correlation emerged between L2 grit and L2 achievement, whereas the smallest one was between L2 motivation and L2 achievement. Besides, both L2 achievement and L2 motivation contributed to the prediction of EFL learners' grit, with L2 achievement demonstrating greater predictive power. The findings suggest practical implications for EFL instruction and for promoting learners' grit.
Notwithstanding the assumed role of language teaching syllabi in shaping teachers' emotional conflicts, nuanced examination of syllabus-related issues in forming teachers' emotion labour remains limited. The present study addressed this gap by exploring the emotional dissonance of 15 Iranian and 13 Turkish EFL teachers concerning their syllabi in use. Utilizing a post-structural framework and applying a thematic approach to data analysis, the research identified both similarities and differences in the origins of teachers' emotional responses to schools' syllabus policies. These policies act as "feeling rules", both generating emotional conflicts and parcelling out resilience strategies to teachers. Drawing on narrative frames and semi-structured online interviews, the study identified three primary areas of emotional struggle: Identity crises, cultural-related struggles, and agency/autonomy-oriented conflicts. However, these conflicts manifested themselves differently in the two EFL contexts. Iranian teachers reported emotional strain concerning the teacher-learner affective bond due to syllabus policies. The findings also showed that both Iranian and Turkish teachers develop professional, social, and emotional techniques to cope with these challenges and avoid burnout. It is suggested that incorporating modules on capitalization of emotion labour into policy communication and teacher development programs and calibrating syllabi to localized sociocultural demands of EFL classroom can mitigate negative impacts of prescribed syllabi and foster teacher agency and professional identity, thereby enhancing job satisfaction and teacher retention.
The technique feature analysis (TFA) checklist and digital game-based vocabulary learning (DGBVL) were introduced for enhancing incidental vocabulary learning (IVL) gains. However, TFA precision was found to be random owing to factors causing cognitive overload, especially in DGBVL activities. Therefore, this study aimed to revise TFA by examining the effect of cognitive load theory (CLT)-informed DGBVL activity design on IVL. CEFR A2-level Omani-Arabic speakers (N = 140) were randomly assigned to a control and three experimental groups, where they completed DGBVL activities with optimized intrinsic (IL), extraneous (EL), or germane (GL) cognitive load for learning 10 target words incidentally. Participants were tested immediately and three weeks later on 8 aspects of word knowledge. Results showed that the experimental groups outperformed, and the TFA checklist precision was enhanced, suggesting that CLT-informed designs were effective. Pedagogically, teachers, material developers, and researchers can use our enhanced TFA checklist for designing effective DGBVL activities.
