Prompted by the poor state of mathematics education in South Africa and the shortage of competent mathematics teachers, this study sought to identify what factors influenced 40 Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) students at three universities in the Western Cape Province, with Mathematics as a major subject, to choose teaching as a…

Addressing the perceptions and the preferences of the upper-secondary school students, teachers, parents and administrators of the native speaking (NS) and non-native speaking (NNS) English teachers as well as investigating the variables affecting these preferences and perceptions, this study explores whether or not the native speaker myth is…

English is widely regarded as an essential skill for the globalized economy by governments around the world which devote considerable resources to its teaching in formal education, though often with limited success in terms of achievement levels. Thailand is a case in point. Set against the putative benefits of acquiring proficiency in English,…

This study explored the experiences and language gains of Chinese-background English language learners living in homestays during a short-term study abroad (SA) programme in Australia. Forty-one learners took part in listening dictation pre- and post-tests to assess their acquisition of idiomatic phrasal verbs, and also completed weekly journals…

Scholars have at various points discussed the needs of second language (L2) writers enrolled in "mainstream" composition courses where they are mixed with native (L1) English speakers. Other researchers have investigated the experiences of L2 writers in mainstream classes and the perceptions of their instructors about their abilities and…

Two main opposing approaches exist regarding the impact of first-language (L1) use in the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language: the monolingual and bilingual approaches. Some linguists assume that students' L1 should be banished from their English classes, whereas others assert that it facilitates the process of learning a target…

Has the "Strategy Inventory for Language Learning" (SILL) passed its expiry date? The SILL (Oxford, 1990) was designed as a self-evaluation tool to measure the frequency of language learning strategies used by foreign and second language (L2) learners. With simple mathematics, learners can analyze their strategy preferences overall and…

Language is a crucial factor for the academic achievement of minority people. Speaking the mother tongue in school increases self-confidence and thinking skills, and conveys freedom of speech. Mother tongue is an inseparable element of his or her culture and that everyone has the right to learn his or her mother tongue. The main objective of this…

We present findings of a project that investigated the potential of an online tandem program to enhance the foreign language learning of two groups of school-aged beginner learners, one learning English in Colombia and the other learning Spanish in New Zealand. We assessed the impact of the project on students' learning with a free writing…

Digital media play enormous roles in much of the learning, communication, socializing, and ways of working for "Net-Generation" learners who are growing up in a wired world. Living in this digital era may require different ways of communicating, thinking, approaching learning, prioritizing strategies, interpersonally communicating, and…

There is a growing interest in the quandary of literacy and proficiency amongst K-12 students in the United States. Similarly, because of uncharted research about biliteracy amongst African-American students in urban schools and benefits of Spanish fluency, communicative gaps are increased and fluency is breached. If advantages are properly…

Team-based learning (TBL) has been shown to improve many aspects of student learning, but no previous research has systematically examined the effects of group exams on English as an Additional Language (EAL) students in university classrooms. This study is a small-scale action research examining the role of students' English language status in…

This research report uses elements of autoethnography and mixed research to share the efforts of an academic to engage his students during classroom instruction. Participants included 28 science students from a regionally accredited university in Southern Africa, who were taking many sections of a research course. The researcher rearranged…

Currently there is a general uncertainty about what makes collocations (i.e., fixed word combinations with specific, not easily interpreted relations between their components) hard for ESL learners to master, and about how to improve collocation recognition and learning process. This study explored and designed a comparative classification of…

Grounded in the framework of second language socialization, this study explores the identity (re)construction of Erol, a Turkish doctoral student in the United States. Drawn from a larger corpus collected for a longitudinal, mixed-method research, the data for this study came from autobiographies, journal entries, and semistructured interviews.…