The increasing demand for lifelong learners and reflective practitioners has re-‎conceptualized the ‎connection between assessment and learning to the extent ‎that alternative assessment methods (i.e., self-, ‎peer and teacher-assessment, etc.) ‎have emerged. However, their incorporation into various language ‎skills might ‎bring about certain consequences. Among them, the writing skill is ofte...

Background. The existing literature has focused on learner perceptions or beliefs about peer review tasks over the recent decade. However, little been known relationships among written corrective feedback (WCF), related teacher mentoring process, and revision practices.
 Purpose. We thus aimed at addressing gap by exploring how WCF may inform practices in peer-reviewed process.
 Metho...

English teachers need continuous professional development programs but the problem is that, at least in Iranian EFL context, either teacher trainers have almost no time for such programs or running such programs is not cost effective; therefore, a more practical way out of this problem is for the teachers themselves to discuss pedagogical issues in online peer-to-peer settings. The main purpose...

We present a learning system, Socially Guided Exploration, in which a social robot learns new tasks through a combination of self-exploration and social interaction. The system’s motivational drives, along with social scaffolding from a human partner, bias behavior to create learning opportunities for a hierarchical Reinforcement Learning mechanism. The robot is able to learn on its own, but ca...

By Nada Dabbagh Scaffolding is originally a Vygotskyan (Lev Vygotsky, 1896-1934) concept based on the idea of providing supportive assistance to the learner within the parameters of a learner’s zone of proximal development (Zo-ped or ZPD) (Wood, Bruner, & Ross, 1976). ZPD is a measure of a learner’s current ability and knowledge what he/she is able to perform with no assistance and the learner’...

Little research has explored how preschools can support children’s second-language (L2) vocabulary development. This study keenly followed the progress of twemty-six Turkish immigrant children growing up in Norway from preschool (age five) to fifth grade (age ten). Four different measures of preschool talk exposure (amount and diversity of teacher-led group talk and amount and diversity of peer...