Mobile-assisted language learning has emerged as a valuable tool for L2 pronunciation learning as it offers ample opportunities for learners to perform authentic learning activities anytime and anywhere. However, the extent to which mobile devices may facilitate or enhance L2 pronunciation has yet to be systematically investigated. To address the research gap, the study drew on a meta-analytic framework to examine the overall average effect of mobile devices on L2 pronunciation learning. The meta-analysis consisted of 13 primary studies featured in an experimental vs. control group design published between 2009 and 2020. These studies involved 655 participants and reported 19 effect sizes in the results. The analysis revealed a robust effect size ( d = .66) as captured by a random-effects model, indicating a significant effect concerning the use of mobile devices on L2 pronunciation learning. In the meta-analysis, significant moderators were also identified, and their moderating effects were critically examined. In light of the research findings, it is argued that innovative activities and tasks using mobile devices can be adopted for both language instructors and learners due to their portability, connectivity, and individuality.

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A growing trend exists for authors to employ a more informal writing style that uses “we” in academic writing to acknowledge one’s stance and engagement. However, few studies have compared the ways in which the first-person pronoun “we” is used in the abstracts and conclusions of empirical papers. To address this lacuna in the literature, this study conducted a systematic corpus analysis of the use of “we” in the abstracts and conclusions of 400 articles collected from eight leading electrical and electronic (EE) engineering journals. The abstracts and conclusions were extracted to form two subcorpora, and an integrated framework was applied to analyze and seek to explain how we-clusters and we-collocations were employed. Results revealed whether authors’ use of first-person pronouns partially depends on a journal policy. The trend of using “we” showed that a yearly increase occurred in the frequency of “we” in EE journal papers, as well as the existence of three “we-use” types in the article conclusions and abstracts: exclusive, inclusive, and ambiguous. Other possible “we-use” alternatives such as “I” and other personal pronouns were used very rarely—if at all—in either section. These findings also suggest that the present tense was used more in article abstracts, but the present perfect tense was the most preferred tense in article conclusions. Both research and pedagogical implications are proffered and critically discussed.

There has been a considerable increase in the number of studies on hedges that can help authors to reduce commitment and negotiate the meaning between the reader and the writer. This study examines hedging devices based on corpus-based analysis of 750 research articles (4,831,500 running words) extracted from 15 leading journals in the areas of linguistics and EFL. Wordsmith Tools 5.0 was used for identifying hedging devices. The frameworks of both Hyland (1998aHyland ( , 2005 and Varttala (1998) were integrated to identify the functions of hedging devices. The results reveal that modal auxiliary hedging (44.9%) is found more than the other types, while the noun category is the least used (2.17%). However, the use of different syntactic features (personal or impersonal) when combined with epistemic lexical terms appeared to influence different interpretations of lexical hedging mainly regarding the politeness strategy. Additionally, it is the authors' responsibility to hedge their own propositions. Learners should know the rules of hedges to distinguish real facts and findings from researchers' biased views and conclusions, and to use these markers accurately in their own works. The current study is practical for EFL learners as it discusses many types of hedges for familiarizing students with the appropriate use of hedging.