Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to compare brain activation from Japanese readers reading hiragana (syllabic) and kanji (logographic) sentences, and English as a second language (L2). Kanji showed more activation than hiragana in right-hemisphere occipito-temporal lobe areas associated with visuospatial processing; hiragana, in turn, showed more activation than kanji in ar...

this study seeks to examine how teachers’ educational background (those who have educated in tefl in comparison to those who have educated in literature) may influence their beliefs and attitudes on language learning, teaching and the teaching methods they apply in their classes. on a general basis, depending on teachers’ opinion, learning process might be seen as behavioristic, inductive, inte...

_______________________ Research in second language acquisition and reading in particular indicate that certain literacy skills transfer across languages. This study examines the reading strategies used by advanced Korean and Chinese ESL learners. Particular attention is devoted to how word recognition and processing skills developed in learners’ native languages (L1) may influence the type of ...

While the advantages of cooperative learning activities have been extensively acknowledged in L2 literature, this type of pedagogy has not received due attention in the Iranian EFL context. Indeed, the traditional reading method still dominates in most Iranian EFL university classes even though it fails to meet its main objective which is training competent EFL readers. In an attempt to address...

“Protocol analysis” or “think-alouds” or have been extensively employed in the fields of psychology and cognitive science as a verbal-report method of producing concurrent verbalization. Think-alouds require participants to tell researchers what they are thinking and doing while performing a task. The participants are usually instructed to keep thinking aloud, acting as if they are alone in the...