In this study, the construct of English competence for non-English major postgraduates is defined as the ability to effectively use various strategies and comprehensively exert the ability of reading, listening, writing, speaking and translation with academic, world, linguistic and intercultural knowledge in academic activities, classroom learning…

Saudi students studying English as a foreign language often do poorly in their English courses, and despite a growing number of studies on this issue the root causes have remained a mystery. To gain a more comprehensive perspective, this study investigated the underlying reasons for Saudi EFL learners performing poorly in English by including all…

Purpose: Although English for academic purposes (EAP) courses are vital components of engineering disciplines in the universities of Iran, studies investigating engineering students' English language needs are infrequent, and even more infrequent are studies comparing how the students of different engineering disciplines vary in their English…

This article sets out to introduce a Personalised Autonomous (PA) model as a holistic and sustainable model to address the issue of international students' English Language Proficiency (ELP) in Australian higher education. This model was embedded in a credit-bearing course entitled Personalised English Language Enhancement (PELE). Both…

Turkey has hosted many international students from various countries in recent years. After learning Turkish in Turkish language teaching centers of the universities, these students move onto their undergraduate or graduate studies at different departments where they are required to use Turkish in all academic skills without reservation. The aim…

Universities in East Asia are increasingly adopting English-medium instruction (EMI) to enhance their global competitiveness. Yet little research has been conducted on the impact of English on graduate students in this context, as past research has mostly examined undergraduates. This survey study investigates graduate students at a major…

The current study had two objectives: (a) to quantitatively investigate whether Japanese language learners of English have inclusive second language (L2) self-related motivations, and how inclusive L2 self-related motivations contribute to English learning effort and self-rated English ability, and (b) to qualitatively examine how Japanese…

Aim/Purpose: To identify and rectify the learning difficulties of online learners. Background: The major cause of learners' failure and non-acquisition of knowledge relates to their weaknesses in certain areas necessary for optimal learning. We focus on e-learning because, within this environment, the learner is mostly affected by these…

This paper reports a study using a quasi-experimental design to examine whether an academic writing course in English can improve graduate students' academic and popular science writing skills. To address this issue, we designed pre- and post-assessment tasks, an intervention assessment task and a scoring rubric. The pre- and post-assessment tasks…

This qualitative study explores the sources of the self-efficacy development of five Chinese doctoral students' use of English as a second language in a southeastern university in the United Sates. Although individual differences were reported, common themes were also recognized. Consistent with the self-efficacy theory and previous studies in…

Source-based writing is becoming more common in tests of academic English, in part to make tests more reflective of authentic academic writing. However, the concern has been raised that over-reliance on language from the source texts in essays may mask gaps in proficiency and thus lead to an inaccurate assessment of writing skill. In this paper,…

We report a small-scale study investigating the perceptions of postgraduate students who are non-native speakers of English and those of academic staff with regard to those students. Previous research has focused only on the former and identified a number of linguistic and cultural challenges these students face in adapting to Anglophone…

Reviews the development over the past ten years of a postgraduate course for translators and interpreters offered by the School of Modern Languages at the University of Bath in England. (CLK)

Describes three components of the teaching assistant program used in the screening process. Outlines the training procedures for all teaching assistants, follow-up program, program director and instructor's perspectives. Presents tables on recommendations and questions asked on feedback forms which focus on improvement and international experience…

Adult English-as-a-Second-Language students enrolled in a speaking improvement course (which emphasized general speaking habits) read aloud lists of true and false sentences at the beginning and end of the course. Native speakers judged their intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accent. Most participants showed significant improvement in at…