Many countries in the world have regarded the cultivation of learner autonomy as one of the important goals of language teaching. During the past fifty years, researchers and scholars have explored the connotations of learner autonomy, and carried out some empirical researches in different contexts. There are more and more researches on learner…

Contrastive rhetoric (CR) has made great contributions to our understanding of L2 writing. Nevertheless, CR has endured countless criticisms over the years, resulting in "reimagined" forms attempting to address many of these criticisms. In doing so, these forms have shaped CR into a collection of complex ideologies that have…

An enduring contribution of Richards Sparks' work has been his exploration of the relationship between a learner's first language (L1) and a language that he or she learns subsequently (L2). The present paper considers that relationship from the perspective of learners and teachers of a 'foreign' language in classroom settings. The paper first…

Assessment as learning (AaL) aims to develop students' metacognitive awareness of their learning process, and promote their academic study and self-regulated abilities. The study investigates the benefits and challenges perceived by students regarding the implementation of AaL strategies in a general writing course in a Chinese university. The…

The present study aims to investigate the young EFL learners' attitudes towards assessment in light of the recent changes in the Moroccan educational policy. It specifically tries to identify variables that could be linked to positive or negative attitudes towards assessment. The study makes use of methodological triangulation where both…

In this critical essay, Yumi Matsumoto uses the concept of English as a lingua franca to understand multilinguals' communicative practices and to support an alternative understanding of English language use among international students in US university classrooms. The essay draws on two examples of university classroom interactions involving…

An issue in education today is the lack of effective teaching methods for immigrant and emergent bilingual students. Mathematics teachers of students that speak English as a second language face particular challenges because of the complexities of math vocabulary words, which may bring more confusion. My study examines methods one secondary…

Building upon the theory of teacher cognition, the purpose of this study was to discover how pre-service teachers envision "learning" English as English Language Learners (ELLs) and "teaching" English to ELLs. We examined metaphors of 98 pre-service teachers who were enrolled in their first literacy methods course in their…

This qualitative study explored the experiences of six Chinese and South Korean graduate students in the United States. Semistructured interviews and an interpretive phenomenological approach were used in which three major themes emerged: (a) academic challenges and acculturation, (b) academic support from host institute, and (c) cultural and…

Authentic materials such as TED Talks have become an everyday presence in the ELT classroom, often for practice listening and taking notes. However, teachers can struggle to teach the sub-skills that are involved in notetaking, and instead often simply tell students to 'take notes'. This approach lacks the scaffolding required for the complex…

Research in language learning indicates that process drama (PD), an educational approach where students and teachers work in and out of role to explore themes and issues, can be well suited to the Japanese higher education (HE) context. Despite the benefits highlighted in the literature, PD remains a niche approach to language teaching and…

There now exists an established body of work outlining the challenges international students can face as part of the acculturation process, including a range of academic and non-academic pressures to overcome. For many students, writing essays in academic English for the first time is problematic. This article considers pedagogical approaches for…

Multi-word expressions are formulaic language universals with arbitrary and idiosyncratic collocations. Their usage and mastery are required of learners of a second language in achieving naturalness. However, despite the importance of multi-word expressions to mastering a second language, their syntactic architecture and colligational…

This study examined the impact of a blended teaching approach versus traditional instruction on listening comprehension and strategy use among EFL students in a Taiwanese university. Using a quasi-experimental design, 103 low-intermediate students were divided into experimental (n=52) and control (n=51) groups over 18 weeks. The experimental group…

This article illustrates how science teachers can build upon the spatial repertoire within sheltered English instruction to support multilingual learners (MLs). Specifically, this work explores how multiple modalities within a secondary marine biology classroom can be leveraged for instruction to support language and content learning, as well as…