This special issue has as its focus the agency of young children in relation to language policy and practice in bi- and multilingual preschools in Finland and Sweden. Studies of language policy in practice in early childhood education and care (ECEC) in these two countries can be particularly relevant even to those in other contexts, because they…

This regional dossier aims to provide a concise description of the European minority language, German in South Tyrol, in education. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects such as the number of schools,…

High quality and timely assessment feedback is central to student learning in higher education; however, written feedback has many limitations. One of the innovative approaches to delivering feedback to EFL learners is individualized audio-visual feedback (AVF) using screencast technology. Previous research on AVF has been extensively descriptive…

The academic year 2012/13 marked a major milestone in the history of Hong Kong higher education as it witnessed the admission of two markedly different cohorts of Cantonese-speaking freshmen to the city's English-medium universities: those embarking for the last time upon the traditional 3-year programme modelled on the British system of initial…

Background: In the intermediate phase of schooling, learners' academic success is largely dependent on their ability to read and write academic texts. Teachers need to teach academic language intentionally and explicitly. In order for teachers to do this, they themselves need knowledge of academic language and its features. Teacher education…

English is an access to a global society (Normark, 2013), which implies studying a specific subject area through English is crucial in today's educational arena. The reason behind this is that English is a motive for universities to gain a global status as Coleman (2006) argued. Thus, the focal point of this study is to reveal motivational…

In Turkey, as in much of the rest of the non-Anglophone world, universities are offering an increasing number of courses through English Medium Instruction (EMI) rather than through the medium of the first language (L1) of the majority of the population. Previous research has explored teacher and student perceptions and attitudes towards EMI and…

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Russia experienced a considerable lack of teachers. In this situation, foreign migrants became Russia's preferred teachers for more than a century. Foreigners were particularly welcome to teach languages and a whole range of other subjects such as history, geography, and mathematics. All teaching…

In content and language integrated learning (CLIL) contexts, online communication technologies have great potential for supporting the development of students' foreign language skills and intercultural competence, and for increasing understanding of subject matter. One effective way of engaging CLIL students in motivating and innovative online…

The Malaysian Education Act in 1996 states that the national language which is the Malay language becomes the main medium of instruction in educational institutions and English is accorded the status of a second language. In Malaysian schools, teachers are given the freedom to use their own teaching and assessment methods in assessing their…

This article presents a constructive criticism and also a prospectus about the suggested curriculum and the process of indisciplining the curriculum. It considers that through a process of indisciplining the English curriculum it would be possible to achieve the goals stated by the National Ministry of Education in terms of bilingualism and…

Portuguese is the mother tongue for many Angolans yet a majority continue to use African languages in everyday interactions and schools struggle to provide equal educational opportunities for students whose first language is not Portuguese. Recognizing this challenge, the Angolan government has created a language policy that will introduce six…

The purpose of this study is threefold: (a) to investigate to what extent EFL teachers use L1 for teaching EFL classrooms (TU), (b) to investigate the attitudes of EFL teachers towards using L1 in EFL classrooms (TA), and (c) the correlation between (TA) and (TA), if any. Finally, the Arabic literature does not have valid and reliable scales to…

This study identified knowledge, motivation and organizational influences preventing the consistent implementation of differentiated instruction via Guided Reading in English classes at a Middle-eastern public primary school in Abu Dhabi. English medium teachers, most of whom hail from native English-speaking countries, were the target stakeholder…

With global attention currently focused on the challenge of providing Education for All (UNESCO 2000), we must ensure that the language of teaching and learning remains a topic on the agenda towards making sure that the education being provided is effective. This is therefore a critical time to review medium of instruction debates, and to reassess…