The appearance of interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in schools in Britain and other parts of the world has been accompanied by research that attempts to analyse their effects on teaching and learning processes. The majority of studies to date have been carried out in schools in England in mainstream numeracy and literacy classes. The present paper…

In this column, the three authors address the teaching of ELs within the content areas. Specifically, they highlight the difference between having language and content objectives, utilizing small-group work to maximize involvement, and inclusion of beginning English speakers into the learning process. Currently there is a gap of 36 points between…

Teaching thinking skills is one of the most important elements in the learning process. This paper examines how teachers "open up" and "close down" opportunities for promoting thinking skills in EFL classrooms in China through the analysis of the interactions between the teacher and students. A sociocultural analysis of…

This is an account of how one class of English language learners compared and contrasted their language learning experiences with English language teaching (ELT) research findings during a five-week Intensive Academic Preparation course at an Australian university. It takes as its starting point the fact that learners, unlike teachers and…

This study investigated the impact of a designed web-based learning module on Year 12 students' learning of argumentative writing. The module known as WebQuest Learning Module or WebQLM comprises four units of learning. The subjects were 68 Year 12 Arts Stream students in an urban school in Penang. The main objective of this study was to…

The present study explores the use of the first language in a context of foreign language teaching. This qualitative research presents the classroom practice and points of view of French and English teachers and students within a public educational institute in central Mexico using the techniques of questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.…

The use of virtual environments to support as well as to complement language teaching and learning processes is becoming a recurrent practice and sometimes policy in several educational institutions. This paper reports the results of an inquiry carried out at the language center of a private university in Bogotá. Those results intended to describe…

Conceptualizing learners' individuality as dynamic and contextually situated, this paper reports on an inquiry that examined the genesis of a disabled learner's success in learning foreign languages on the Chinese mainland. Using source texts such as the learner's published diaries, letters and her autobiography, the inquiry revealed that language…

This study was initiated to explore how pre-university students who enrolled in the Malaysian Higher School Certificate program perceived their experiences in learning ESL through Problem-Based Learning (PBL). This small scale study involved 35 pre-university students in an upper sixth form in a secondary school in Kelantan, Malaysia. Participants…

Teaching materials in languages for specific purposes have evolved in the last few years dramatically. The Internet currently plays a significant role in such development and has permitted both a wider range of resources and its free availability almost anywhere in the World. This paper presents a selection of different types of recent materials…

This article reviews research on working memory (WM) and its use in second language (L2) acquisition research. Recent developments in the model and issues surrounding the operationalization of the construct itself are presented, followed by a discussion of various methods of measuring WM. These methods include word and digit span tasks, reading,…

Individualized instruction, a form of materials-centered self-instruction, has a long, undocumented history in the United States. The context of individualized instruction requires learners to regulate their own learning processes, including their emotional responses to learning. This study offers a situated view of the processes and strategies…

This article examines how adult learners were socialized by one another in the context of content materials in conjunction with the teacher's participation. Based on the premise that second language learning is experiential and emergent and using discourse analysis of students' asynchronous electronic postings and writing assignments together with…

This paper reports on a study that investigates how different learning methods might affect the learning process of character handwriting among beginning college learners of Chinese, as measured by tests of recognition, approximate production, precise production, and awareness of conventional stroke sequence. Two methodologies were examined during…

This paper details the use of a free and access-controlled wiki as the learning management system for a four-week teaching module designed to improve the oral communication skills of Japanese university EFL students. Students engaged in repeated experiential learning cycles of planning, doing, observing, and evaluating their performance of a role…