With the widening urban-rural gap caused by urbanisation, the equity of urban-rural education has become a research hotspot. This study explored the differences in motivational beliefs about English learning among Chinese urban and rural students and the impact of motivational beliefs on their English performance. A total of 6326 urban and 2600…

Intercultural communicative competence (ICC) has been widely acknowledged as a core element of today's foreign language education. However, even though the importance of intercultural language teaching is commonly recognized among adult learners and at the post-secondary level, teachers of adolescent English learners often find it hard to…

This article aims to contribute to the explanation of why bilingual education (CLIL) may reduce the differences in motivation and English proficiency commonly seen between students from different SES backgrounds (Shepherd and Ainsworth 2017). From a mixed-methods approach involving a questionnaire and focus group interviews, fourth year Secondary…

This paper explores a group of secondary school students' feelings about Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) using a self-determination theory (SDT) lens. It adds to the limited, existing literature on TPRS and is the first to study it from a purely motivational perspective. The paper analyses the extent to which students…

Modern foreign languages (MFL) are now established on the timetable of English primary schools. This study accesses the views of the pupils on the experience of learning this relatively new subject and of making the transition to secondary school languages classes. By means of semi-structured interviews with the same sample of 18 pupils in Year 6…

Following recommendations by the European Commission, bilingualism has been promoted in various ways in the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg. Language classes and the concept of immersion were gradually introduced in primary schools, while, at the secondary level, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) programmes were…

This article reports part of an empirical research study undertaken in state secondary schools in England in 2012/2013, to investigate the extent to which Content and Integrated Learning (CLIL) promotes pupil motivation in the teaching of modern foreign languages (MFLs). Pupil perspectives of the impact of CLIL on their motivation are presented…

Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has been said to increase not only foreign language proficiency but also learner motivation (Coyle, D., P. Hood, and D. Marsh. 2010. "CLIL: Content and Language Integrated Learning." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). In contexts where CLIL is elective, however, the question can be…

This article presents an empirical study about the students' perspectives on bilingual sections in Compulsory Secondary Education (CSE) in the Community of Madrid, Spain. Its aim is to highlight the students' opinions and their level of satisfaction of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in this monolingual setting. The results…

This article reports on an action-research study which examined the impact of a radio program as a strategy to develop the speaking skills of a mixed course at a private institution in Colombia. Hence, data were collected from 18 students through tests, surveys, field notes, and interviews. The results indicate that there is an important…

Building on previous listening strategy research, the author aimed to explore the differences between Chinese high-proficiency listeners (HLs) and low-proficiency listeners (LLs) on their strategy use, problems, and motivation in native language (L1) listening. It involved 1,290 Grade 7 and 1,515 Grade 9 students. Both quantitative and qualitative…

This exploratory study focused on the factors that constitute second language (L2) learners' resilience, and how these factors are related to L2 learning by investigating what relation resilience may have to motivated behaviour and proficiency in English learning. A total of 1620 secondary school learners of English participated in a questionnaire…

The current longitudinal study examines the similarities and differences between primary and secondary foreign language curricula and pedagogy along with the development of motivation for language learning and second language proficiency. Data from 26 English learners of French (aged 10-11) were collected across three times points over a 12-month…

This article documents the findings of a study concerning the perspectives on Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in the monolingual context of Jaén. The research has involved the design, validation and administration of two sets of questionnaires to 745 informants (692 students and 53 teachers) within eight secondary schools with a…

This study examined the effectiveness of a Cyber Home Learning System (CHLS), an online learning system currently being employed in South Korea to improve the access and quality of public education as well as to reduce private tutoring expenditures. The quasi-experimental research design used experiment and survey methods to learn about the impact…