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Enhancing Vocabulary Learning: Informative, Humourous and Engaging Conversations with Bing Chat
Vocabulary, the backbone of language acquisition, holds immense significance when it comes to effective communication, comprehending various texts, and expressing thoughts and opinions. In this blog post, I will introduce you to the remarkable world of learning vocabulary with Bing Chat, the interactive chat mode of Microsoft Bing search. Get ready to embark on an…
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Upon Embracing My Future: The Certainty of Uncertainties
If you are going to ask me about my future plans or your future plans, read this first!
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Critical Review: “Hedging in the Results and Discussion Section of English Applied Linguistics Research Articles by Vietnamese and Foreign Writers” (Tran & Tang, 2022)
Academic writing is a genre that requires the impersonal presentation of facts, showing evidence and constructing knowledge objectively and effectively (Hyland, 1994). This notion has positioned hedging as a vital part of academic discourse. The starting point of hedges as a linguistic term is normally attributed to the work of Lakoff (1973), associating hedges with “fuzziness” or…
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My Very First Scopus Q1 Article: “Canva-Based E-portfolio in L2 Writing Instructions: Investigating The Effects and Students’ Attitudes”
I have always been passionate about finding new ways to help my students improve their language skills. However, I notice that many Vietnamese high school students are struggling with writing, and they don’t have enough practice time in class. They only have one writing lesson per unit, 45 minutes each. I feel that they need…
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Easy Self-study: Contextualized Vocabulary Learning with Dictionaries, Corpora, and More
Before you read: The below lead-in contains a lot of vocabulary items for a challenge at the end of the blog. At the moment, ignore the unfamiliar words and phrases (if you have). Go back when I tell you to do so. As a non-native English speaker and a newbie EFL teacher, I am no…
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Welcoming the Approaching Festive Season: A Corpus-Based Investigation of “Xuân” Clusters in Vietnamese Tết Music
Vietnam, together with many other Asian countries, is culturally well-known for their celebrations on the occasion of Lunar New Year, or Tết. This time is long believed to be a fresh start for an incredible new journey. Tết is also a public holiday in Vietnam, when most services are closed and people come back home…
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Corpora Helped Me With Some Language Problems That Dictionaries Cannot
Two weeks ago, in one of my student’s writings, he wrote: “…global warming effects which causes dramatic damages to people at scale.” Putting the grammatical problem with “causes” aside, I was particularly into the phrase “at scale”. “Where on earth has he learned this awkward phrase?”, I wondered. As usual, I went for dictionaries to…
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Experiencing a Creative Block for Halloween-Themed EFL Lessons? Come Here!
Halloween is approaching, and in EFL classrooms, it has long been recognized as an essential occasion to introduce some cultural elements of English-speaking countries to learners. Teachers are always creative in designing their lesson plans and setting the atmosphere in the classroom. Throughout my learning experience, I have got great opportunities to join various Halloween…
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Making Language Instructions More Content-Based: How Did We Solve Our Problems?
When we together designed activities for teaching English language areas and skills, we strove to achieve at least one of the following: multimodality, content-relatedness, and real-life-task-relatedness.
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Reflections on Designing Input-Based Tasks: Important Concerns
In a previous post, I introduced the concept of input-based tasks in explaining some myths about task-based language teaching (TBLT). This blog will continue with some notes on designing an input-based task that Professor Rod Ellis brought into discussion in our talk. Following the principles and concerns, I will also include an example with illustrations.…
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