English writing, an indispensable skill in English learning, plays an important role in improving learners' language proficiency. With the wide spread and use of wired or wireless internet, EFL students can easily help and be helped with English writing. Therefore, the application of internet-based peer feedback training on writing to foreign or second language teaching and learning has opened up new possibilities for EFL students to improve their writing. Based on the theory of scaffolding and a computer-aided collaborative learning platform, the present study explored the effectiveness of internet-based PFT on 80-sampled Chinese EFL college students' writing error correction and their writing proficiency improvement. The findings of the study showed that 1) the internet-based PFT had positive effects on the improvement of EFL college students' writing, 2) compared with the more-proficient students, the less-proficient students made greater progress in their writing after the internet-based PFT on error correction and they became more capable of correcting both local errors and global errors, thus raising the quality of their writing error correction, 3) the more-proficient group showed no trust on the received peers' feedback because of the entrenched prejudice that their peers were incompetent for revising English writing.
With the rapid development of information and technology, language learners have more ways to acquire the target language. Recently, WILL has gained popularity, for informal web-based learning of English has been depicted as a process driven by the purpose of communication. Thus, teachers have many challenges when teaching learners who have experienced informal online language learning. Therefore, teachers may change their teaching strategies in order to achieve their teaching effectiveness. The present study investigated 30 Chinese in-service college English teachers' beliefs of WILL in order to provide for teachers the insight into the current consciousness language teachers should have of these practices.
Idioms, an indispensable part of English vocabulary acquisition, play an important role in second language learning. Mobile learning has broken through the constraints of time, space in learning. The present study explored the effectiveness of English idiom instructing and learning based on one form of mobile learning—SMS (Short Message Service). Compared with context-based approach and self-study approach, SMS-based approach was more effective in teaching English idioms for non-English majors in China. The findings of the study showed that students who regularly received short mini-lessons of English idioms via SMS on their mobile phones were more interested in learning and gained more in acquiring English idioms than their peers on pamphlets or context.
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