This study investigates Polish expatriates' stories of encounters with local personnel in a Chinese subsidiary of a Western multinational company. A narrative analysis of the stories produced important insights into Polish-Chinese communication in an intra-subsidiary context. Low proficiency in the host language was a serious obstacle to…

According to the Interface Hypothesis (IH) (e.g., Tsimpli & Sorace 2006; Sorace 2011), external interfaces are more challenging for L2 learners than internal interfaces. It is not clear, however, if linguistic phenomena associated with external interfaces are necessarily problematic and if internal interfaces are necessarily unproblematic. In…

Very few studies exist on the role of cross-language similarities in cognate word acquisition. Here we sought to explore, for the first time, the interplay of orthography (O) and phonology (P) during the early stages of cognate word acquisition, looking at children and adults with the same level of foreign language proficiency and by using two…

This study aims to understand the extent to which English as a foreign language learners use technology for their autonomous language learning beyond the classroom. With a cross-sectional survey design approach, the study focuses on learner characteristics. It first investigates the existing language learner profiles of 512 English major…

The aim of this article was twofold. First, it considered the effect of social networks (Telegram) on the vocabulary knowledge of the participants, then it compared the participants' responses in IRF (initiation, response, & feedback) pattern in two different settings (traditional class and the online one). A group of foreign language learners…

This paper analyses the impact of an evaluation-focused language teacher education program under Vietnam's National Foreign Languages 2020 project, run at Hanoi University in 2015 and 2017. Funded by The Ministry of Education and Training (MOET), this intensive 150-hour university-level program employed international experts to deliver content…

Twenty-six years after the 1994 founding of The Kalsom Movement, an independent and voluntary student-led charity specializing in tackling education inequality in Malaysia, much has changed in the world. Yet despite the rise of societal and governmental awareness on the importance of education--especially primary education--and the advancements in…

This study set to investigate the critical importance of integrating Student Team Achievement Division (STAD) and "WebQuest," STADIBTM for short, on developing the advanced-level argumentative writing skills of L2 English university students. The study employed a pre-posttest comparison of the experimental group (N=54) versus the control…

International students encounter academic and social adjustments different than those of their domestic peers. Of particular concern is language proficiency, specifically students' investment in continual language development throughout university study. In the current article, I present a comparative case study of two Chinese freshmen (Jenn,…

Recently, the field of instructed pragmatics has seen a shift of paradigm from the prevailing cognitive approaches to socially-oriented ones, revolving around the notions like collaborative dialogue and sociocultural theory. Drawing on the notion of collaborative dialogue, this study investigates the extent to which teacher's scaffolding and…

Although it remains controversial, machine translation (MT) has gained popularity both inside and outside of the classroom. Despite the growing number of students using MT, little is known about its use as a pedagogical tool in the EFL classroom. The present study investigated the role of MT as a CALL tool in EFL writing. Most studies on MT as a…

This study draws on Sociocultural Theory to explore how 12 adult EFL learners engaged in pair work, how their willingness to engage was demonstrated in pair activities, and what other factors influenced that willingness. Six pairs engaged in seven different activities and were interviewed after all activities were completed. Each pair's type of…

We report on a research project that develops and measures the efficacy of multilingual teaching approaches in the early English foreign language (FL) classroom in Germany. Although there is an abundance of programmatic calls for integrating minority and other languages the students speak in FL teaching, there are few materials and methods for…

The present research argues that the current segregation between the reading and writing skills courses in EFL classes is a hard obstacle in developing the reading ability and writing skills proficiency in Saudi students at the graduate level. The sample included 64 undergraduate female students of a Saudi University, divided equally into the…

The spread of English is so much an integral part of globalization that it has become an essential global literacy skill. In Asia, this poses immense challenges to governments and English language teaching and teacher education professions as they attempt to meet this demand from students for a high level of English proficiency. This volume…