In this article we present the results of a qualitative research study on the pedagogical factors that influence English teaching in four public schools of Medellín, Colombia. Twelve teachers were interviewed regarding three linguistic principles: communicative competence, native language effect, and interlanguage. The data analysis led to the…

This article discusses the impact of the Standards for Foreign Language Teaching in the 21st Century on language programs at American universities. Surveys were administered to American students and to faculty at a university in Spain asking questions about the five goal areas of the standards. Responses from these groups were analyzed and…

Arabic and Chinese are 2 of 13 languages designated as "critical" by the U.S. Department of State. There is an urgent need to expand the teaching force in these languages. Understanding how best to prepare critical language teachers from abroad is imperative. This study examined the perceptions of 16 pre- and in-service teachers (6 Arabic and 10…

This paper is a part in a bigger research project related to ELT quality in secondary schools in Vietnam since the implementation of the new series of English textbooks was officially passed by in 2006, and the innovated direction was paid to task-based language teaching (TBLT). The purpose of this paper is to make argumentation on why, what and…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the rural "cultural" problems and to determine their effect on the learning of English. Twenty students from different ethnic backgrounds and English language proficiency in six rural schools in Terengganu, Malaysia were interviewed. In addition the teachers also from different rural schools…

The purpose of this study is to elicit problem causing word stress patterns for Turkish EFL (English as a foreign language) learners and investigate whether Internet-based pronunciation lesson is superior to traditional pronunciation lesson in terms of enhancing Turkish EFL learners' accurate production of stressed syllables in English words. A…

Some believe that a learner must acquire the ability to produce and recognize all speech sounds used by the speaker of the target language while others think that if the goal is communication it is not necessary to teach all phonemic aspects. In fact in teaching (especially the phonology of) a language, the learners' objectives are to be taken…

This study was conducted to investigate the extent to which scores on depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge as two dimensions of vocabulary knowledge would contribute to predicting the EFL learners' reading performance with a minimum vocabulary size of 3000 word families and also to find out the difference, if any, between the reading…

There is a need to expose the learners in the hospitality industry to real workplace requirement in terms of communication skills. In view of its importance, human resource managers, researchers and educators in the field of hospitality management or the hotel practitioners have to pay more serious attention to it. Thus, it is pertinent that both…

Teaching English at the primary school level is a challenge in countries such as Colombia where children study this language for only one hour a week in most institutions, and in the best of cases for 3 hours a week. Most of the public schools do not have enough and/or adequate English materials at their disposal for students to work with;…

The present research aimed at four points: First, Identifying the most appropriate standards of EFL Saudi teachers' performance in the light of quality standards. Second, designing an objective and comprehensive evaluation rubric based on quality standards to evaluate EFL Saudi intermediate teachers' performance. Third, determining to what extent…

Podagogy, a fusion of podcasting and pedagogy, is evidence-based educational podcasting for teaching and learning. The purpose of our article was to compile a playbook of evidence-based strategies, the plays, for integrating podcasting into PreK-12 classrooms with English language learners (ELLs). Data for developing the playbook were drawn from…

Within second language education, concern over teachers' content knowledge has typically manifested itself as concern over the teacher's target language proficiency. In increasing numbers, teacher preparation programs are turning to ACTFL's Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) for measurement of this proficiency and using OPI ratings as high-stakes…

This study investigates the relationship between acculturation and language learning during a year-long study abroad program at the pre-collegiate level. The researcher presents the experiences of four U.S. American sojourners to Sweden as case studies. This mixed-methods study looks specifically at students with no prior knowledge of the target…

Since 2008, Outcome-Based Learning (OBL), a student-centred strategy aiming to enhance the quality of teaching and learning, has been launched as a major initiative among higher education institutions in Hong Kong. When adopting OBL at course level, other than designing the OBL framework, it is also very important to evaluate the effectiveness of…