Recent advances of communication technology have brought a myriad of advantages to distance education. Students' interactivity and connectedness are no longer a concern in distance education. Yet, with this comes the challenge of maintaining academic integrity. As online instructors, we noticed a tendency among our online students to opt out of using our courses' formal discussion groups for their course communication, and instead, independently create a group in the social instant messaging app, WhatsApp, away from our direct observation. In this mixed method research, we first investigated what motivate our students (n= 64) to create the WhatsApp group and what types of interaction they engage in as a group. Then, we examined our online students' perceptions of cheating in reference to their participations in the group. Our findings revealed that our online students perceived cheating differently and expressed their objection to the inclusion of the term 'cheating' in the distance-learning contexts, as they believed that distance learning is an open educational environment which permits collaboration and open discussion.

The present empirical study examined the efficacy of coupling L1 or L2 definitions with pictorial glosses on incidental vocabulary learning when L2 learners exclusively play a purposely designed hidden-object game. Elementary EFL learners (n= 162) took a vocabulary pretest and a picture recognition test (PRT) and a word recognition test (WRT) immediately after playing the game, and again two weeks later. ANOVA analyses were conducted to measure vocabulary acquisition and retention. The findings revealed that the L1 text + picture gloss group did significantly better than the other two groups in the immediate acquisition of vocabulary. Concerning vocabulary retention, the two vocabulary measurements yielded different outcomes. In PRT, the L1 text + picture gloss group kept the highest retention rate, whereas in WRT, the L2 text + picture group did better than the other groups. This study suggests that assessment methods may yield different outcomes in multimedia vocabulary learning studies.

Undeniably mass media have become the primary source of information and communication for the majority of, if not all, members of modern societies. The nature of the information thus communicated and the manner in which it is dispensed through media certainly have a profound influence on people's perceptions of the world around them. The relation between the media, on one hand, and culture, social life, and politics on the other, is an interesting one in which media fulfills dual functions, reflecting and also shaping issues occurring within these three domains (Bell & Garrett, 1998). In the initial media coverage of the 2011 Norway terrorist attacks, some western media authors, inaccurately and unjustly, held Muslims and Islamic groups as being responsible for the attacks. Using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this study seeks to ascertain how language was manipulated in this coverage of the terrorist attacks in order to give expression to blind prejudice against Islam and Muslims. As findings of the analyses reveal, the tones of allegation in these articles and reports differed dramatically from one article to another ranging from tones of mere suspicion to those of overt accusation. The varying degrees of uncertainty or assertion of the authors' statements were reflected in the varied linguistic forms and devices used within the discourse.

Visual complexity is widely considered to be an important variable underlying visual perception. While videos have become versatile in their use of visual imagery, surprisingly, little research has been devoted to understanding the impact of visual complexity. In this paper, we present Automated Video Analysis (AUVANA) software, an open-source tool for extracting, computing, and visualizing visual complexity in digital videos. Through leveraging more sophisticated computer vision and video processing algorithms, AUVANA automatically extracts and computes 78 video visual complexity indices. Results of explanatory analyses demonstrated that rather than a unitary construct video visual complexity is more likely a multidimensional and multifaceted phenomenon. We conclude the paper with a discussion about the potential applications of the software

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Although core in the teaching of academic language skills, little research to date has investigated what makes video-recorded lectures difficult for language learners. As part of a larger program to develop automated videotext complexity measures, this study reports on selected dimensions of linguistic complexity to understand how they contribute to overall videotext difficulty. Based on the ratings of English language learners of 320 video lectures, we built regression models to predict subjective estimates of video lecture difficulty. The results of our analysis demonstrate that a 4-component partial least square regression model explains 52% of the variance in video difficulty and significantly outperformed a baseline model in predicting the difficulty of videos in an out-of-sample testing set. The results of our study point to the use of linguistic complexity features for predicting overall videotext difficulty and raise the possibility of developing automated systems for measuring video difficulty, akin to those already available for estimating the readability of written materials.

Innovative technologies, such as the Audience Response System (ARS) provide an opportunity to steer students into active engagement and meaningful discussions. Many previous studies on the use of ARS, mainly in large traditional classes, have accentuated the positive impact in terms of increased students' learning and engagement through the incorporation of ARS into classroom practices. However, in synchronous online courses, wherein the lack of visual contact tends to stifle active engagement, the impact of using ARS is certainly worthy of investigation. Thus, in this mixed method study, online English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' perceptions concerning the use of mobile-based ARS (M-ARS) and its impact on enhancing their engagement, interactivity, and learning attainment were examined via a questionnaire whereas challenges pertaining to the use of M-ARS were solicited via semi-structured interviews. The results revealed that the implementation of M-ARS in online teaching correlate significantly with EFL students' engagement and learning experience whereas qualitative analysis revealed some important points with regard to integrating M-ARS into online classrooms. Directions and suggestions for future research are offered.

Pidgin languages across the world are characterized by a universal set of linguistic features that, therefore, can be utilized for their identification. Among these linguistic traits, two are found in Gulf Arabic Pidgin (GPA); an overt reduction of sophisticated linguistic items and an increased regularity of less complicated linguistic items used to fulfill other linguistic functions (Nass, 2008;Bakir, 2010;Avram, 2014). The purpose of the present study is twofold: 1) to descriptively analyze some essential morphological (inflectional affixation) and syntactic features within the nominal and verbal systems of GPA, and 2) to statistically measure the level of the consistency among GPA speakers in their use of inflections, sentence structures, and navigation markers. The study starts with reviewing and discussing the literature on pidgins and the main linguistic characteristics of well-studied pidgin languages with the reference to the sociolinguistic environment in which this language variety is typically evoked. This is followed by a review on the few studies conducted on GPA. It ends with a discussion on the current linguistic status of GPA in light of the results obtained.