This article reports a study that investigated how two Saudi Arabian men negotiated their positionality vis-à-vis a host community in the United States and how they engaged in different discursive practices in order to achieve fuller participation in the various worlds that became important to them. The study takes data from a larger research…

This mixed methods classroom research examined if accountability groups in the lower proficiency levels of a university intensive English program would improve students' language acquisition. Students were assigned partners for the study period with whom they completed assignments inside and outside of class, as well as set goals for use of…

The intensive English development/TESL program (TESL-GT) was created through a partnership between Ecuador and one Midwestern university. Through this program, Ecuador's Ministry of Education sought to enhance the instructional effectiveness of secondary English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers. The 67 Ecuadorian teacher participants in this…

Freely available online videos are the basis of an Intensive English Program (IEP) listening and speaking course described in this article. Strands and activities of this course could easily be adapted for use in other institutions. For each strand of the course, rationales are stated, activities are described, and suggested online resources are…

The use of tests has been targeted as a critical point in validity, which suggests that contexts for test use warrant closer investigation. This article describes a study of decision making during test use in the context of a university intensive English language program. Over a period of 2 1/2 years, data were collected by audio-recording…

This study explores L2 learners' awareness of meaning of L2 conventional expressions and the effect of form-meaning associations on the use of the expressions in L2 pragmatics. Definitions and examples were elicited through an aural Vocabulary Knowledge Scale modified for expressions. Elicited definitions were used to explore the meanings that…

The Houston Independent School District offers two different English as a Second Language (ESL) programs for students whose native language is not English and who need to develop and enhance their English language skills (English Language Learners, or ELLs). The Content-Based ESL model (CB-ESL) consists of an intensive program of English…

The present study reports on the motivations of adult, international learners of English, studying English 20 hours a week in a US-based Intensive English Program (IEP). Though often used as participants in language acquisition studies, there are few studies of these learners' motivational profiles. In the current study, a questionnaire designed…

This study sought to account for East Asian learners' cross-cultural transitions to US university Intensive English classroom culture within a technology-mediated language teaching approach, PrOCALL (Project-Oriented Computer Assisted Language Learning). It explored the influence of this approach on classroom interaction patterns acquired in the…

Developing assessments within a program can create more useful measures of our students' language. This includes rating scales used in performance assessments such as writing or speaking tests. This article describes the process of development, use, and revision of a writing placement scale by teachers in an intensive English language program. To…

This study investigated the use of blogs in an intensive English program at a university in Lebanon. The paper reports on how blogs can contribute to language acquisition and the development of related literacy skills. Blogs were incorporated into the required curriculum as supplemental material over two semesters. The aim of the strategy was to…

Vincent Tinto's theory of academic and social integration provides a framework for investigating perceived problems associated with Chinese international students' engagement at a public research-intensive university in the U.S. Midwest ("Midwest" University). These "problems"--classroom silence, segregation and…

Concordancers are software programs that allow users to search for all occurrences of a word or sequences of words. Early descriptions of the potential for student concordancing were given by Tim Johns, who called it Data Driven Learning (DDL). Johns (1991) explains DDL as an investigation allowing students to form their own questions about the…

This study focuses on exploring poor and good learners' language beliefs and their language strategy use in an attempt to see whether there is any significant relationship between the poor and good learners. This paper particularly seeks to examine to what extent language beliefs as a construct are reflected in learners' language behavior, which…

Although English as a second language (ESL) programs are common in the United States, there is surprisingly little research documenting the existing structures and mentoring strategies they use. This lack of research could be partly due to ESL programs' widely varying internal structures (Larson, 1990) and the fact that they are often marginalized…