This study aims at empirically measuring a universal criterion for materials evaluation, i.e., learning opportunities, in a locally- and a globally-designed materials. Adopting the conceptual framework of sociocultural theory and its conceptualization of learning as participation (Donato, 2000), the researchers utilized the methodological power of conversation analysis to examine how opportunit...

Simprac is web-based virtual patient simulation for the diagnosis and management of chronic illness. Users have the opportunity to manage patients over a series of consultations that vary, based on the management plan selected at the end of each consultation. Chronic illness is frequently a complex problem with multiple, and often competing, priorities and such an ill defined knowledge space mi...

Learning a language is said to implicate self-concept in a way that does not occur in other disciplines, and to entail a particular kind of anxiety related only to language situations (see Gardner & Mac Intyre, 1993; Horwitz, Horwitz & Cope, 1986, 1991). To date, however, research into affective learner variables such as anxiety, self-confidence and motivation and their impact on learner perfor...

One of the purposes of consciousness is to acquire knowledge. The models of this task traditionally assume a division between the known and the knower, a division that leads into doubtful reasoning about some kind of (frequently disguised) homunculus. The current paper tries to avoid such fallacies by viewing the adaptation of the mind as an evolutionary process, a process distinct (but not ind...