Although research on teacher collaboration has proliferated in the last few decades, scant attention has been paid to the development of teacher collaboration in school contexts. Informed by the perspective of complexity theory, this study investigates the complex process of teacher collaboration through qualitative interviews in an English…

This article reports on a case study that investigated changes in the motivation of Chinese ESL learners over a three month period of residence in an English-speaking environment. The participants consisted of 11 Chinese ESL learners, who were tertiary students and taking general or academic English courses in New Zealand. They took part in the…

With increasing arguments and evidence suggesting its benefits, First Language (L1) use (including translation exercise) is experiencing a resurrection in Second Language or Foreign Language (SL/FL) classrooms. One form of L1 use is composing comparable and parallel texts, which can be an important pedagogical resource but which has received…

In the field of second language learning motivation, the studies on process-oriented nature of possible L2 selves are scarce. In order to address this research gap, this study explored how a group of five Chinese non-English-major undergraduates developed their possible L2 selves during the transition year from high school to university. The…

The present study investigates students' attitudes toward English graded teaching in North China Electric Power University (NCEPU for short). In essence, differences between learners of different grades and achievement groups were examined with regard to five constructs, namely, their perception of English graded teaching, the impact of English…

Connecting reading and writing, proposed by many scholars, is realized in this case study. The 30 participants in this study are the English majors of the third year in one School of Foreign Languages in Beijing. They are encouraged to write journals every week, based on the source text materials in their Intensive Reading class, with the final…

Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) theory focuses on developing language learners' meta-linguistic understanding of the interrelation among linguistic form (grammar/vocabulary), meaning, and context. Guided by SFL when using a mandatory textbook and open educational resources, this study investigates how exposure to this blended teaching and…

Informed by an ethnographic approach, this study aims to investigate the professional culture of a group of English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in a high school in China. Relying on data gathered through extended field observation and in-depth interviews, this study seeks to uncover the distinctive characteristics of EFL teacher culture…

Thematic progression (TP) patterns used in English leaner essays provide clues as to how they organize information and develop important concepts in their essays. This quasi-experimental research proved that instruction in TP produced positive effects on Chinese college students' use of linear progressions, constant progressions and new Themes.…

The scale of English language education in China is astounding, but recent research has shown that the latest national English education policy for Chinese schools has not been implemented successfully due to various reasons. One reason given for the lack of success is the impracticability of the top-down policy itself excluding teachers'…

This case study analyzed data from an asynchronous written mediated exchange between a native speaker and nonnative speaker of English. Three methods of analysis-error analysis, propositional complexity (idea units), and qualitative analysis were used to analyze learner performance over time. The results from these methods were visualized and…

World Englishes has become a robust field of inquiry as scholars pursue more nuanced understandings of linguistic localization and multilinguals' negotiations of language differences. Yet research demonstrates that teachers and learners of English as a foreign language continue, albeit in a partially conflicted way, to believe that prestigious…

Peer feedback carries a number of potential benefits to students, yet how they learn in the process remains under-researched. Building on ideas of feedback as dialogue, this study aims to unpack the respective perceptions of the provider and the receiver of peer feedback in relation to the benefits and challenges of dialogue about academic…

The Chinese undergraduate student population currently represents 12.8% of all international students enrolled in the United States (Institute for International Education, 2015a). In an effort to understand the experiences of this population in their first year of college in the United States, a phenomenological study was conducted using a…

This study examines the interaction between learner-oriented codeswitching (CS) practices and the degree to which intermediate Chinese L2 learners of English engage in classroom interaction. The guiding questions are whether the teacher's CS use facilitates classroom interaction at moderate L2 proficiency, and if so, at which specific stages of…