Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), with the advantage of generating instant, human-like, and customized responses, shows promising potential as a feedback provider in second or foreign language (L2) writing. However, the effectiveness of GenAI feedback on student engagement remains understudied, and especially lacking is a comprehensive comparison of student engagement with GenAI versus teacher feedback. To gain more pedagogical insights, the present study first compared the characteristics of feedback produced by the generative pre-trained transformer (GPT; version 4o) with those of teacher feedback, and then it delved into student engagement. Thirty-two Chinese undergraduates from two English classes were recruited. These classes each completed two argumentative writing tasks and received GPT and teacher feedback in a counterbalanced way. Data from multiple sources, including feedback messages, initial and revised drafts, questionnaires, and reflective journals, were collected and analyzed. Several findings were rendered: First, the teacher was inclined to focus predominantly on language use issues and deliver feedback in directive, informative, and query forms; nevertheless, GPT tended to pay considerable attention to content and organization, and featured frequent use of praise and summary. Second, problems, such as repetitive feedback and inaccurate/incomplete correction, existed in GPT feedback, which is worth attention. Furthermore, students demonstrated significantly lower engagement with GPT feedback than with teacher feedback, especially in the affective and behavioral dimensions. Practical implications concerning the use of GPT feedback were further discussed.

Process drama has been widely utilized in educational settings to enhance student engagement and achieve communicative goals. Despite its growing application, there is limited empirical evidence assessing its effectiveness specifically for improving English as a Foreign Language (EFL) speaking competence among undergraduate students in China. This study investigates the efficacy of process drama in enhancing EFL speaking competence among non-English major undergraduates in China. A total of 84 participants were involved, with 42 assigned to an experimental group (EG) that received process drama-based instruction, and 42 to a control group (CG) that followed conventional teaching methods. Data were collected through pre- and post-tests evaluating speaking competence. The analysis employed paired samples t-tests, independent t-tests, and ANCOVA to compare the pre- and post-test results. The results demonstrated significant improvements in speaking competence in both groups; however, ANCOVA revealed that the EG exhibited significantly greater improvement compared to the CG (p = .003). This study confirms that process drama is significantly more effective than conventional teaching methods in enhancing English speaking competence, providing novel insights into the specific benefits of process drama, highlighting its potential to address the limitations of traditional teaching approaches and offering a valuable contribution to the field.

This study investigates the extent to which second language (L2) graduate students' collocation use in academic writing improves with the independent use of a corpus tool, by analyzing the writing assignments of 115 Chinese EFL graduate students from an academic English course. The experimental group (N = 73) received brief in-class training on the use of a corpus tool developed for collocation use (Linggle) and was required to use it for their two homework assignments, whereas the control group (N = 42) was not made aware of the tool before their homework submission. The mean mutual information (MI) scores of the collocations used in the two writing assignments were compared between the experimental and control groups to evaluate the effect of independent corpus consultation (ICC). Overall, the results showed a marginally higher mean MI score for the experimental group, and the differences varied by collocation type. Survey results further revealed that fewer than 40% of the participants frequently used the tool, and the participants reported difficulties in using the query syntax, understanding corpus results, and maintaining technical access to the tool. Our findings have useful pedagogical implications for considering independent corpus consultation as a supplementary tool for academic English instruction.

Numerous studies have demonstrated that second language (L2) comprehension is often accompanied by activations in the first language (L1). Using both behavioral measurement and event-related potential (ERP), this study conducted two experiments to investigate whether a direct activation pathway exists from L2 lexical representation to L1 lexical representation (the lexical pathway) in intermediate proficient bilinguals. In Experiment 1, we designed a vowel letter search task on English word pairs, which enables bilinguals to prevent semantic priming in the first 300 ms processing stage after the words’ onset. In Experiment 2, Mandarin–English bilinguals were recruited to complete this task on English word pairs with occasional first character repetition between the Chinese counterparts of a word pair. Results showed a significant main effect within both the P200 and N400 time windows, indicating the activation of bilinguals’ L1 lexical representation during these intervals. However, the main effect of semantic relatedness was only significant in the N400 time window. These results suggest that bilinguals can activate their L1 lexical representation directly before engaging in conceptual representation. This finding supported a lexical pathway of activation from L2 lexical representation to L1 lexical representation during visual-word recognition in intermediate proficient bilinguals.

Doctoral students need guidance from both language teachers and academic supervisors for academic publication. However, previous studies have predominantly focused on corrective feedback from language teachers. The small number of studies on supervisory feedback were mainly undertaken in English-speaking countries on theses and dissertations, and mostly examined supervisors in applied linguistics, who probably have much in common with language professionals. To fill the research gaps, we investigated the foci of the feedback from a non-English-speaking supervisor on drafts of his doctoral students' research article intended for a top conference in computer science. The results show that the supervisor commented not only on the content but also on the requirements for research writing, the logical flow of ideas, surface-level language issues, and visual elements. The findings can inform language teachers of what supervisors may value so that language professionals can provide feedback that better caters to the needs of students in research writing.

Natural experiment, as one of the most common quasi-experimental designs, has been applied in language education research outside of China for over 20 years, increasing in both number and topic richness. However, its application is still rare in language education research in China. This study first introduces the natural experiment, including its core concepts, estimation method, data sources and types, robustness check, and extensions. Then we review language education studies that employ natural experiments for causal inferences. These studies fall into nine themes（e.g., teaching method/program, instructional medium, educational support, migrant language policy, tracking, early childhood education and care, and instruction time）. This paper is aimed at promoting interdisciplinary research in language education. It also has implications for education research in general.

BackgroundThere are over 14 million migrant children in the compulsory education system in China and the number has been increasing rapidly. However, the quality of education in schools for migrant children is often poor. Meanwhile, numerous studies indicated the importance of reading skills developed by the end of third grade. Few studies, however, have investigated the early reading development of migrant children in migrant schools in China. In the current study, we examined, with a randomized control trial design, the effects of reading strategy instruction via teacher professional development for migrant children in migrant schools.MethodA total of 1,679 students from 47 third-grade classes in 13 migrant schools for migrant children in Beijing, China, participated in the study. The intervention was composed of teacher professional development on reading strategy. Students in both treatment and control conditions received books for independent reading.ResultsThe program resulted in a higher overall reading performance for students in the treatment classes than those in the control classes, with the difference larger in inferential comprehension and for students who did not live in Beijing before starting elementary school (which we speculate captures the degree of family mobility and the rural–urban gap in the access to educational resources).ConclusionThe results suggest that a reading strategy instruction via teacher professional development may promote the reading development of migrant children in migrant schools in China.

ChatGPT生成学术文本的功能极其强大,问世后即在教育界和学术界引起极大反响.该研究首先介绍ChatGPT的使用现状,然后讨论其在英语学术论文写作和教学中的潜在用途和问题.ChatGPT可以在了解研究趋势和热点、生成写作大纲、丰富写作思路、阅读文献以及润色论文方面提供写作帮助,在了解研究领域、提供反馈和生成教学材料方面提供教学帮助.使用ChatGPT也需要注意很多问题,如可能引发剽窃、产出的文本内容时有错误、缺少正确的引用文献、产出内容不稳定、导致数字鸿沟.学生可以将其作为论文写作的起点与灵感来源,教师也可用其支持论文写作教学,但师生都需要对生成的文本质量保持警惕,做到扬其长避其短,保持学术诚实、诚信和透明.

AWCF can facilitate academic writing development, especially for novice writers of English as a foreign language (EFL). Existing AWCF studies mainly focus on teacher and learner perceptions; fewer have investigated the error-correction effect of AWCF and factors related to the effect. Especially lacking is research on how successfully students can use AWCF to correct errors in source-based academic writing. Meanwhile, Grammarly, an automated writing evaluation (AWE) tool, is under-represented in AWCF studies despite its extensive use in EFL classrooms and its significant advantages. Correspondingly, we evaluated how effectively EFL students could use Grammarly-provided feedback for error correction in research writing and what factors were related to user responses (i.e., revision operations) and response accuracy. The results show that the error scores decreased significantly after revision and the participants correctly addressed 85% of the Grammarly-flagged usages. The error-correction success was impressive, considering how the technical nature of research writing might affect feedback accuracy and user responses, both related to response accuracy. In fact, feedback accuracy contributed to response accuracy both directly and indirectly (via user responses). The findings have implications for source-based academic writing instruction and AWE tool development.

Fluent speech is essential for smooth communication, whereas second language (L2) speech fluency is rarely comparable to first language (L1) speech fluency (Segalowitz, 2010). The gap is caused by various factors and may lead to communication anxiety or even communication breakdown. Therefore, fluent speech is one of the ultimate goals of L2 teaching and learning. L2 speech fluency represents an essential aspect of L2 testing and research. One of the latest monographs on L2 speech fluency, Second Language Speech Fluency: From Research to Practice written by Tavakoli and Wright (2020), explores this topic from two perspectives, i.e., fluency as speech performance and fluency in interaction. The authors claim two aims of this book. First, this book aims to introduce definitions, theoretical frameworks, methodological principles, and relevant empirical studies of L2 speech fluency. The other aim is to promote a multidisciplinary perspective to connect research of fluency as a psychological concept with that of fluency as a social concept. The major contributions of this erudite yet reader-friendly book lie in reconceptualizing and systemizing L2 speech fluency and identifying research gaps with an updated systematic review of both research and practice. However, some important topics in this field do not find a place in this book. Below we review the contents and strengths of the book and discuss some missing topics that have attracted increasing scholarly attention but still warrant further research.

Multidimensional analysis regards combinations of linguistic features as indicators of a particular register and shifts researchers’ attention from specified linguistic features to linguistic variation as a continuum with clustering patterns and normalised frequencies of clusters of linguistic features. Cross-sectional comparison helped to examine the gap between the register features of the Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ writing and those of their British counterparts. X. Zhao and W. Dai found inconsistency of register style in Chinese undergraduate EFL learners’ academic writing, with formal language structures mixed with informal ones. Students actively engaged in a module of English for general academic purposes (EGAP) called English through Projects with a focus on academic writing. Through the EGAP module, the EFL learners produced texts that more resembled academic prose on three out of five dimensions: more informationally dense, more context-independent and less overtly persuasive.