Existing initiatives purporting to promote teacher research are often found to be inadequate to encourage EFL teachers to engage in research due to the fact that they impose a top down, expert model approach to research engagement. This study reports on a pioneering programme at Sultan Qaboos University Language Centre in the Sultanate of Oman…

Developing English for communicative purposes is a key objective of language classes in many parts of the world. As a logical prerequisite to communication practice, learners need to have Willingness to Communicate (WTC) before they will engage in L2 interaction (Macintyre et al., 1998). Teachers can play an important role in helping learners to…

This study investigates the perceptions of stakeholders on the impact of a high-stakes assessment of English language teachers' proficiency--the minimum language standards Language Proficiency Assessment for Teachers (English) [LPATE], which was introduced in 2000. Given that the test has now been in place for 17 years, the study investigates the…

The transformation of higher education has been a pressing concern for policy makers and practitioners. This article provides examples of the transformative potential of assessments designed within the framework of a multi-literacies and heteroglossic pedagogy in an Applied English Language course at a South African university. These assessments,…

Think-Pair-Share, a cooperative discussion strategy developed by Frank Lyman and colleagues (1981), is often utilized in first language contexts but rarely in second language (L2) contexts. To investigate its usefulness in the L2 context, a traditional English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reading class was transformed by integrating…

The field of English Language Teaching (ELT) has long sought to identify traits of good language learners, in an effort to teach these traits to less successful language learners (Rubin, 1975). Emotional Intelligence has recently come to the forefront of research on language learning and teaching, and is now increasingly recognized as an important…

Writing is one of the most challenging skills for many EFL learners to master. It is also considered to be the most difficult to teach. To motivate students to write more without burdening teachers with additional rating work, college English teachers at a university in China introduced a journal project. Peer learners were paired anonymously and…

This study aims to identify the language anxiety level of students studying at a Turkish state university, and investigate the role of creative drama in reducing language anxiety in speaking classes. To have a general picture of students, 565 students were administered an adapted version of the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS).…

The aim of this pioneering study was to define and describe motivation for the acquisition of interlanguage pragmatic competence. Interlanguage pragmatic motivation was investigated from two perspectives: (1) general pragmatic motivation, displaying L2 learners' motivation to acquire pragmatic strategies, pragmatic routines, politeness strategies,…

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…

The recent trend of university internationalization has seen a rapid increase of English as medium of instruction (EMI) courses in Taiwanese tertiary education. Yet, few large-scale studies have been conducted to investigate student learning in EMI courses. This study surveyed 476 students from 25 EMI courses at six universities in Taiwan to probe…

This study investigated whether enhanced extensive reading contributed to significant gains on the incidental acquisition of English prepositions. English as a Foreign Language (EFL) secondary school students in Korea ("N" = 12) received enhanced extensive reading instruction for one semester in an after-school program. Pre-and…

This article investigates the relationships between test takers' strategy use and test performance on an EFL reading test. For this study 209 Chinese college students were invited to participate in a reading comprehension test and answer a 30-item strategy use questionnaire. Results showed that two factors underlay test takers' reading test…

Krashen (2004) has advocated that narrow reading, i.e., reading a series of texts addressing one specific topic, is an effective method to grow vocabulary. While narrow reading has been championed to have many advantages for L2 vocabulary learning, there remains a relative dearth of empirical studies that test the impact of narrow reading on L2…

This study investigated the readiness of university students for autonomous learning of English as a foreign language. Data was collected using questionnaires and interviews. The study assessed learners' readiness for autonomous learning across three dimensions: a) learners' perceptions of their educational responsibilities; b) learners' abilities…