The study aimed to investigate the effectiveness and challenges of using monolingual dictionaries among second-year technical students at the Technical Institute of Research in Basrah. The research employed a quasi-experimental design, and the required data was collected from 120 students who were categorized as upper intermediate learners based…

Developing advanced proficiency in a second language benefits both learners and the societies to which they belong. Educators, employers, and learners can define advanced level proficiency in a language as being able to use language for academic and professional purposes beyond daily life. But being able to use the language at work is not the only…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the words and phrases used by student graduates in job interviews. Twenty-Seven Malaysian graduates participated in the study. "How to face challenges" was the focal theme chosen for analysis of the data. The findings indicated that successful interviewees covered six out of seven…

This study investigates the use of formulaic sequences (FS) in academic writings of Chinese learners of English as a foreign language across different levels of studies at a public university in China. Frequency-based formulas were retrieved from a corpus of student academic texts written at five time points between Year 1 and Year 3. The…

One of the driving forces for a wider adoption of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in higher education is that students may demonstrate improvements in English language proficiency through an increased English exposure from content learning. However, to what extent previous English exposure has an impact on students' learning experiences…

It has been proposed that an implicit learning deficit explains the difficulties with grammar commonly observed in children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD). The present study further investigates this link in two ways. Firstly, we investigate whether kindergartners with DLD have more difficulties with preposition understanding and…

Research in the field of language attrition suggests that the use of a foreign language (FL) diminishes among language learners when it ceases to be actively employed. The present study aimed to investigate whether similar patterns of lexical attrition occurred among FL teachers, who were generally considered to possess a strong resistance to FL…

Measuring lexical diversity in texts that have different lengths is problematic because length has a significant effect on the number of types a text contains, thus hampering any comparison. Treffers-Daller et al. (2018) recommended a simple solution, namely counting the number of types in a section of a given length that was extracted from the…

This study explored attitudes toward English as a lingua franca (ELF) among in-service English teachers in Bhutan. Employing a mixed-method design, we collected data from 191 participants through surveys and interviews. The findings revealed that the majority of teachers held positive attitudes toward ELF. They identified English as a…

English proficiency is advantageous for any graduate. In Malaysia, despite English being formally introduced around age 5, proficiency in the language is still lacking in some graduates. English should be introduced to children during their formation years so they can be proficient. However, in many private preschools, English proficiency is not a…

When a student enrolls in Miami-Dade County Public Schools (M-DCPS) for the first time, the student's parents/guardians complete a Home Language Survey. This survey inquires whether a student's first language is a language other than English, whether a student's primary language is one other than English, and whether a language other than English…

Governmental language policies in China have varied across recent decades, including the intensive promotion of Mandarin as a language of unification and public championing of regional varieties. Concomitantly, increasing urbanisation, regional migration, and cross-linguistic marriage have led to greater use of Mandarin in private domains. Given…

This article examines Swedish civics teachers' perspectives on difficulties and opportunities that their second-language (L2) students encounter when reading textbook texts in civics. The study is based on individual semi-structured interviews with teachers in Grade 9. Civics teachers report uncertainty about identifying the source of difficulties…

This study investigates the acquisition and maintenance of periphrastic and se-passives in second language (L2), heritage (HS), and (Spanish-dominant) native Spanish speakers (NS) by addressing: (i) How accessible are Spanish periphrastic passives (which also exist in English) and se-passives (unique to Spanish) for L2ers and HSs in production?…

We investigated the time it takes 54,146 English learners (ELs) to attain English proficiency as they progressed from age 5 to 11 on average (Kindergarten through fifth grade in the United States). We also examine to what extent the time-to-proficiency estimate is affected by child-internal and child-external factors, including primary disability…