This paper investigates spoken directive language use in office hour consultation contexts by international teaching assistants (ITAs) in training, individually and in comparison with practicing academic professionals. The purpose is to inform instruction in advanced spoken English for academic purposes, to contribute to intercultural pragmatics…

Acculturation and language proficiency have been found to be inter-related both from the perspective of second language acquisition (Schumann, 1978, 1986) and socio-psychological adaptation in cross-cultural contacts (Ward, Bochner, & Furnham, 2001). However, the predictions as to the effect of a particular strategy on success differ, with…

In this article, factors inhibiting the use of mother tongue as the language of learning and teaching (LoLT) in rural foundation phase classes is investigated. I analysed qualitative data from focus group interviews with 20 foundation phase teachers that were selected through purposive sampling. Findings show that factors such as prior learner…

The Southern Conference on Language Teaching (SCOLT) held its annual conference March 10-12, 2011, at the Crowne Plaza in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in collaboration with the Louisiana Foreign Language Teachers Association (LFLTA) and the Southeastern Association of Language Learning Technology (SEALLT). Those individuals whose proposals were…

The main goal of this study was to investigate whether computer-mediated communication (CMC) intercultural exchange offers the conditions necessary for the development of the sociolinguistic competence of second language learners. Non-native speakers (NNS) of French in British Columbia interacted through CMC with native speakers (NS) of French in…

In much of the literature on the exploitation of corpora for language learning, the learners are viewed as researchers, who formulate and test their own hypotheses about language use. Having identified difficulties encountered in corpus investigations by our intermediate-level students of Italian in a previous study, we have designed a…

Language learner strategies (LLS) have long been viewed as a variable of individual differences, or as cognitive skills. This study, focusing as it does on the data taken from a series of focus groups with 47 senior secondary students in mainland China, seeks a new interpretation of strategy development and use from a sociocultural perspective.…

The literature on corrective feedback (CF) that second language writers receive in response to their grammatical and lexical errors is plagued by controversies and conflicting findings about the merits of feedback. Although more recent studies suggest that CF is valuable (e.g., Bitchener, 2008; Sheen, 2007), it is still not clear whether direct or…

Foreign language anxiety (FLA) has been the focus of many studies into affect in classroom settings. However, the growing numbers of distance language learners worldwide in recent years calls for greater attention to be paid to this increasingly important constituency of language learners. Following on from Hurd's investigation into FLA with…

This article presents research findings on acculturation strategies (attitudes and behaviors) in the language domain of Russian-speaking adolescents in Latvia in the context of the education reform. Data comes from a longitudinal study of adolescents from schools with Russian as the language of instruction in Riga; the same schools were invited to…

Listening comprehension input is necessary for language learning and acculturation. One approach to developing listening comprehension skills is through exposure to massive amounts of naturally occurring spoken language input. But exposure to this input is not enough; learners also need to make the comprehension corpus meaningful to their learning…

This study examined the applicability of the construct transfer climate in EAP education. In an EAP setting, transfer climate can be viewed as the support for learning transfer from an EAP course that students perceive in mainstream academic courses. The research question was as follows: What can a transfer climate perspective reveal about…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the L2 use rate in EFL classrooms through introducing three task conditions in learning lexical items. Data were collected from a group of freshman university students (male and female) studying in Islamic Azad university of Sabzevar, Iran (N = 73). Based on their performance on a Michigan TOEFL…

This article explores the compensatory strategies used by two Indonesian children who experienced first language attrition when acquiring English in the English-speaking environment. They use compensatory strategies to compensate for their lack of competence in first language. They employ both interlingual strategies and discourse strategies when…

The importance of oral language development among elementary school students is widely acknowledged, both in the research and in policy documents worldwide. Facility with one particular style of language, decontextualized language, is critical for success in the school context. This style of language is not readily accessible to all students. This…