Acquiring good listening and speaking skills in English are the main concern of many second and foreign language learners, and today's English teacher needs to be well versed in current approaches to the teaching of the aural/oral skills. In this paper, current trends in the teaching of listening and speaking will be examined and some of the most important terminology that is used in contempora...

Clickers might own a bright future in China if properly introduced although they have not been widely acknowledged as an effective tool to facilitate English learning and teaching in Chinese contexts. By randomly selecting participants from undergraduates in a university in China over four academic years, this study aims to identify the impact of clickers on college English listening and speaki...

PURPOSE There is a paucity of information detailing the phonological skills of Spanish-English bilingual children and comparing that information to information concerning the phonological skills of predominantly English-speaking (PE) and predominantly Spanish-speaking (PS) children. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between amount of output (i.e., percentage of time each...

Research on the effect of language skills on earnings is complicated by the endogeneity of language skills. This study exploits the phenomenon that younger children learn languages more easily than older children to construct an instrumental variable for language proŽ ciency. We Ž nd a signiŽ cant positive effect of English proŽ ciency on wages among adults who immigrated to the United States a...

Many students from non-English speaking backgrounds find it difficult to use English in the virtual learning communities. This paper proposes a task designed for a campus-based English course in a Singapore university and explains the theoretical underpinnings of the design. It is argued that communication skills in both “virtual” and “natural” learning communities need to be learned. As such, ...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of initial first and second language proficiencies as well as the language of instruction that a student receives on the relationship between native language ability of students who are English language learners (ELLs) and their development of early literacy skills and the second language. METHOD This study investigated the developm...

this article clarifies the importance of listening and speaking in language development. both represent two of the most difficult components of english language fores/ (eglish as a second language) learners to acquire listening comprehension is central to second lani,r,uge aquisition. it also appears to be crucially important for advanced level learners. the main aspect of speaking is communica...