Second or foreign language (L2) learners’ development of interlanguage pragmatic (ILP) competence to understand and properly interpret utterances under certain social and cultural circumstances plays a pivotal role in the achievement of communicative competence. The current study was designed to explore the effects of synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) and asynchronous com...

This study investigated the effects of blog-mediated instruction on English-as-a-foreign language (EFL) learners’ writing performance and anxiety. In addition, it aimed to probe into the EFL learners’ attitudes towards blog-mediated writing instruction. The participants of the study included forty-six Iranian EFL learners from two intact university classes, who were randomly assigned to the Con...

The idea is growing among educators that thinking skill needs to be given a direct attention. On one hand, critical thinking is supposed to broaden students’ thinking in all regards (Schafersman, 1991); and on the other hand learners’ attitudes towards the second language can affect both their performance in the class and their final accomplishment. To this end, the present study started with t...

Due to the participatory nature of Web 2.0, polite communication on social media and news sites can stand side by with uncivil comments. Research online incivility has been conducted users reading in their mother tongues (L1), while potential effects a second language (L2) have largely under-explored. This paper analyzes comments written an L2 attitudes around emerging technologies. Accordingly...

This study investigated the relationship of the attitudes and cultural background of Arab students in Israel to their reading comprehension of stories from Jewish and Arab culture. Participants were 74 eighth-grade Arab students (age 14±15 years) from Israel, learning Hebrew as a second language (L2). An attitude questionnaire, stories from Arab and Jewish culture and multiple-choice questions ...

The purpose of this study was to explore the predictors of negative attitudes towards learning English from L2 learners’ points of view. A mixed methods research approach was adopted with a sequential exploratory design, followed by an endorsement phase. Eighteen high school students in Fars province (Iran) were interviewed on the sources of negative attitudes towards learning English. Based on...

this study investigated the cognition of 70 tunisian teachers on the place of culture in english education. it showed that tunisian teachers believe that english textbooks and curricular documents are not specific about the cultural dimension of efl. it also revealed that l2 teachers, whose mother culture is distant from that associated with l2, hold ambivalent attitudes towards culture. they a...