In Taiwan, English was only officially taught at the secondary and tertiary levels before 2001. Since 2001, English courses have been formally incorporated into the curriculum in primary schools. Research on teaching and assessing English in primary school education is relatively new compared with research on other levels of education in Taiwan. The present study investigated the degree to which games, songs, and stories helped increase primary school pupils’ English vocabulary size and encouraged learning in an intensive English course. It also explored how different test techniques influenced pupils’ performance on a vocabulary test. Seventy-two primary school pupils participated in the study. The results showed that games, songs, and stories had a positive effect on learning and increasing the pupils’ English vocabulary. In the vocabulary test, the pupils in higher grades outperformed those in lower grades and performed differently in terms of test techniques.

In second (L2) or foreign language (FL) learning, learning strategies help learners perform tasks, solve specific problems, and compensate for learning deficits. Of the strategy types, metacognitive strategies manage and regulate the construction of L2 or FL knowledge. Although learning strategies are frequently taught via teacher demonstration, an alternative but underresearched approach is through embedded instruction in tasks. To develop strategy awareness in language learning, the present study aimed to investigate how well a task-based teaching framework was able to develop intermediate Chinese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) university students’ metacognitive awareness of listening comprehension. Eighty-eight sophomores participated in the study, which used a quasi-experimental design. The experimental group received strategy-embedded task-based listening instruction for 18 weeks, whereas the control group received only strategy-based instruction. Listening tests and questionnaires were used in the pretest and posttest stages. The results showed that the experimental group improved their metacognitive awareness of strategies for listening and outperformed the control group in the listening test. The students in the experimental group considered tasks to be an important medium of input enhancement for improving listening ability.

Considerable evidence indicates that self-efficacy, task value, anxiety, and the use of language learning strategies are related. However, there is currently an insufficient understanding about their relations in high-stakes testing contexts. The author aimed to investigate how well social factors, test value, anxiety, test performance, and learning strategies predict high school students' self-efficacy in preparing for the English listening test as part of the University Entrance Examination in Taiwan. This research involved a large-scale questionnaire survey and a collection of students' English test scores. The participants were 636 students in Grade 12 of high school in Taiwan. A quantitative analysis of the questionnaire was conducted via hierarchical regression analysis. The results show that students' recent English test performance and test anxiety were two strong predictors of self-efficacy in preparing for the high-stakes test. In addition, resource management and metacognitive listening strategies had better predictive power over prior English level and test value.

Reading ability has had a prominent role in English language education in Taiwan. The comprehension of materials and teacher instruction in English depends on students’ English proficiency, and their achievement emotions regarding competence-related activities may influence how they read and complete tasks in English. This study aims to investigate the mediating role of positive and negative achievement emotions in the relationship between instructional clarity, English proficiency, and reading strategies. A questionnaire survey was conducted with 640 university students in Taiwan. The findings corroborated control-value theory. The structural model revealed that the participants’ use of reading strategies was strongly influenced by teachers’ instructional clarity and students’ English reading proficiency. Only positive emotions mediated the relation between instructional clarity, English proficiency, and reading strategies. Negative emotions, though correlated with the two predictors and the reading strategies, did not mediate the relationship between them.