PROBLEM: Italian-Americans belong to one of the cultural groups that have suffered discrimination throughout the decades since their or their families' immigration to the United States. As early the first half of the twentieth century, Italian-Americans had already suffered discrimination, alienation, and exclusion. Such factors became obstacles…

With anglophone countries now experiencing unprecedented levels of ethnic and linguistic diversity, it is considered increasingly important that young people learn to communicate in ways which are effective for the multilingual and intercultural contexts they live in, will work in and will travel to. One of the key vehicles for promoting and…

Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) are widely used to measure speaking ability in a second or foreign language. The Michigan English Language Assessment Battery (MELAB) Speaking Test is an OPI used for academic and professional purposes around the world. However, little research on this or other OPIs has quantitatively compared test takers' speech…

The present study aims to shed some light on how engineering lecturers teaching in English at a Spanish university view their work (teaching goals) within the current European internationalisation trend of offering courses and master programmes in English. A questionnaire where content and language integrated learning (CLIL) and English-medium…

There is a considerable amount of research investigating students' transition from college to university but it is important this focus is directed specifically towards the transition of international students, as the difficulties they face are profound. The literature surrounding international students seems to lack an in-depth understanding of…

This study sets out to investigate professors' needs from an English as a foreign language program in a public university regarding demands, interests, and lacks based on the methodology of needs analysis. Data collected through a survey, focus groups, and individual interviews showed that professors need to meet the institutional language policy…

This study explored the impact of listening strategy training conducted within two strategy interventions on pre-intermediate and intermediate EFL learners' comprehension of unidirectional listening. Participants were divided into two experimental groups (n = 156) and a comparison group (n = 50). Each experimental group was trained in eight…

Faced with a labor shortage and low profile of diversity, the province of Newfoundland and Labrador in Canada has been making an effort to attract and retain newcomers. Guided by Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ecological systems theory, this qualitative study investigates the challenges faced by newcomer youth, including permanent residents coming as…

Many scholars have conducted research into ways to improve EFL learners' writing proficiency by seeking to address several problems related to achieving this goal (Darani, 2014; Lu, 2013; Thomas, Thomas, & Moltow, 2015; Wang, 2013). However, the issues of learner identity in written communication and the role of the language EFL writers use as…

This study examines how the English officialization policy of higher education in an EFL context interplays with administrative workers' motivational orientations towards English learning. The data consisted of questionnaire responses of 117 administrative members with undergraduate degrees and qualitative interviews with 9 who answered the…

Vietnam universities have experienced remarkable changes brought about by their internationalization policies. The switch to English as a medium of instruction (EMI) for some academic programs was one of these critical changes. Literature has reported numerous issues related to EMI, including inadequate language proficiency of teaching staff. This…

On a multifaceted basis, this paper explores the challenges experienced by native and non-native English language teachers (NESTs and NNESTs) in a tertiary-level EFL setting in Turkey. Adopting a qualitative case study design, the data were gathered from five NESTs through interviews and from five NNESTs through hand-written accounts based on the…

This quant-QUAL sequential explanatory mixed methods study describes a framework for evaluating the communicative competence (Canale & Swain, 1980; Canale, 1983) of non-beginner students of Chinese for placement purposes at U.S. four-year postsecondary institutions. A pragmatic lens was used to collect and analyze data that generated a…

In present China, bilingual teaching, as an education model, can meet an urgent demand for increasing interdisciplinary talents who have high levels of professional knowledge as well as competent foreign language abilities to deal with the ever-increasing global social, economic, scientific and technological exchanges, and international…

Although English-as-a-second-language (ESL) programs for matriculated students have been a presence in U.S. higher education since the 1940s, little has been documented in the literature concerning ESL courses, ESL placement tests, and the procedures in which incoming students are placed into appropriate classes.The present study takes three…