Many people in Spain are studying English in order to find jobs in this country or to migrate as a result of the economic crisis. Language classes, however, are limited in duration and are often not enough to enable students to progress as much as they would like to. Language learners have to spend a considerable amount of time out of class…

Based on sociocultural and contextual perspectives, this study examines how Japanese language learners perceive a conflict between their beliefs and actions when speaking the target language in the classroom context, and how these learners change their beliefs or actions to overcome the conflict. Data were collected during a second-year level…

This article makes the case for using translanguaging in developing the academic writing of bilinguals. It reviews the emerging literature on learning and teaching theories of translanguaging and presents theoretical understandings of biliteracy development and specifically on the teaching of writing to bilingual learners. The article analyzes…

This paper examines dynamism in students' situational willingness to communicate (WTC) within a second language classroom. This longitudinal study involved twelve English as a Second Language (ESL) participants who enrolled in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programme in New Zealand for five months. Based on data from classroom…

Drawing on learners' diaries, the study reported in this article focused on the English language classroom anxiety (ELCA) of eight Greek EFL learners in private language school settings. The study investigated the extent to which anxiety is amenable to change and the factors contributing to the creation and increase in students' anxiety in class.…

This article analyzes the various types of information that alternative assessment and traditional assessment practices provided in an English foreign language (FL) reading course for graduate students at a public university in Medellín, Colombia. This study followed the principles of qualitative research, and a case study was used as a research…

In examining life history narratives of 14 linguistically and culturally diverse pre-service teachers, this study addresses two research questions: How do pre-service teachers construct difference between themselves and others? How do they express a sense of belonging and community membership (or construct citizenship) in representing themselves…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the development of learner autonomy and the application of Web 2.0 tools in the language classroom. Design/methodology/approach: The approach taken is that of qualitative action research within an explicit theoretical framework and the data were collected via surveys and…

The paper investigates how a student on a master's-level teacher education course for English language teachers goes about constructing her grammar knowledge. The learner is a novice teacher with English as a foreign language. Learner diary, interview, and group interaction data were analysed thematically, revealing that she made relatively few,…

The sociocultural perspective of second language teacher education (L2TE) (e.g., Johnson, 2009), unlike the traditional one, values the importance of teacher development through actual teaching practice. Student teachers' (STs) initial beliefs should be challenged and reconstructed by taking into account particular teaching contexts. This…

Should we correct our students' language errors? Most ESL teachers would answer this question with a resounding Yes while at the same time wondering how to meet the challenge. The collaborative project reported below was designed to provide ESL teacher trainees with an opportunity to experience the ups and downs of providing corrective feedback on…

This paper examines whether and to what extent data-driven learning (DDL) activities can improve the lexico-grammatical use of abstract nouns in L2 writing. A topic-based corpus was compiled to develop concordance learning activities, and 40 Chinese students majoring in English were randomly assigned to a control group or an experimental group. At…

This study investigated the possibility that initial-level learners may acquire oral skills through synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC). Twelve Taiwanese French as a foreign language (FFL) students, divided into three groups, were required to conduct a variety of tasks in one of the three learning environments (video/audio, audio,…

Studies of interaction in ESL classrooms have not taken into account how space and materials used in classroom impact interaction. This case study examines how three ESL teachers in two different school districts, four high school and twelve junior high ELLs and the two-classroom spaces co-construct the cultural and literacy practices of the…

The aims of this paper are twofold: to investigate how Taiwanese teachers of English as a Foreign Language turned experiences into critical reflections via journal writings and to describe how they gauged critical reflections as teaching inquiry. The participants were 12 Taiwanese in-service teachers enrolled in an elective course entitled…