Numerous studies have been carried out to find the relation between neighborhood effect and retention of lexical items. This study was an attempt to find such a relationship among Iranian EFL learners. Participants, advanced second English learners, were chosen based on the Oxford Placement Test. Participants completed a lexical decision task that was designed and performed by a computer softwa...

Abstract This paper looks into the dilemma of what counts as a grammatical ‘learner error’ in ELT on basis recent results from English variationist research and lingua franca research. Examples these studies show that features often perceived ‘errors’ for EFL speakers also occur ESL production—where they are called ‘innovations’—and even native language (ENL) term ‘spoken universal’ would seem ...

Patients with severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) usually experience expiratory flow limitation (EFL) during spontaneous breathing at rest [1]. As EFL reduces the effectiveness of expiration, it results in dynamic hyperinflation with consequent dyspnoea, which is one of the major complaints of patients with COPD. In these patients, the consequences of EFL are markedly increased ...

The present research used a corpus-based method to investigate Chinese EFL learners’ acquisition of “N + that” appositive clauses by comparing data from the TECCL corpus English learners and NESSIE native speakers. Quantitatively, number Ns (nouns) distributed in has no significant difference that NESSIE; but results Chi-square tests revealed are frequently these s...

Sleep-related disorders represent an important health burden and their prevalence increases with age. In patients with snoring or sleepiness, the presence of expiratory flow limitation (EFL), determined via the negative expiratory pressure (NEP) method, is related to the apnoea/hypopnoea index (AHI). In this study, we examined whether EFL can be used to predict obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome...

In recent years, considerable concern has arisen over issues of intercultural competence (IC) in relation to English education in the fields of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) or English as a Second Language (ESL), due largely to globalisation. However, relatively little qualitative research has been conducted on EFL teachers’ beliefs and their effects on classroom practices. Through in-dep...

BACKGROUND Expiratory flow limitation (EFL) is seen in some patients presenting with a COPD exacerbation; however, it is unclear how EFL relates to the clinical features of the exacerbation. We hypothesized that EFL when present contributes to symptoms and duration of recovery during a COPD exacerbation. Our aim was to compare changes in EFL with symptoms in subjects with and without flow-limit...

As most traditional classroom environments in English as Foreign Language (EFL) still restrict learners’ collaboration and interaction in college writing classes, today, the majority of EFL learners are accessing Social Networking Sites (SNSs) as online communities of practice (CoPs) for adopting informal collaborative learning as a way of practicing English beyond the classroom. This study aim...

Previous studies have shown that some English vowel contrasts remain difficult for English learners to perceive. This study investigated three potential factors affecting vowel perception: cross-language vowel systems, spectral distance, and language proficiency, for the discrimination and identification of English /ɪ/-/ε/, /ε/-/æ/, /ʊ/-/ʌ/, and /ʌ/-/ɒ/ contrasts in four groups of listeners: L1...