This qualitative study engaged five international graduate students from four different countries (the U.S., Colombia, Cape Verde Island, and Spain) who were studying at a Chinese university in Shanghai. The researcher investigated their personal and academic lives in China, their interaction with local people and integration into the local…

Theoretically, beliefs about English language learning have a psychological factor, such as predicting the rate of success or failure among learners in the classroom context. However, learners with different levels of language proficiency may perceive such beliefs in a different way, which may lead to the development of special needs, in terms of…

Research on self-determination theory (SDT) has shown that positive learning outcomes accrue in classrooms that support students' needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Studies on what need supportive teaching entails in practice are, however, scarce. In the present study, we aimed to gain in-depth understanding of typical manifestations…

The present article examines production and on-line processing of definite articles in Turkish-speaking sequential bilingual children acquiring English and Dutch as second languages (L2) in the UK and in the Netherlands, respectively. Thirty-nine 6-8-year-old L2 children and 48 monolingual (L1) age-matched children participated in two separate…

The assessment of university students' economic knowledge has become an increasingly important research area within and across countries. Particularly, the different influences of prior education, native language, and gender as some of the main prerequisites on students' economic knowledge have been highlighted since long. However, the findings…

Over the past decades content and language integrated learning (CLIL) research has predominantly focused on the language proficiency of CLIL learners. The results are very promising and show that working language skills in learners, especially reading and listening skills, can be improved through a CLIL programme. Studies focusing on subject…

In 2011, the Taiwanese Government began a campaign to encourage new immigrants to teach their native languages (heritage languages) to their children. However, these heritage languages are seldom used in cross-national families and the effectiveness of formal heritage language courses in Taiwan has yet to be explored. The present study examines…

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of Data-Driven Learning (DDL) teaching materials based on learner corpus data. The data analysed is made up of texts written by a group of Italian university students and collected as part of the Italian component of the "Longitudinal Database of Learner English" (LONGDALE) project:…

Exploring Longitudinal Outcomes and Trajectories of English Language Learners (ELOTE) is a Researcher-Practitioner Partnership between WestEd and the Fort Worth Independent School District (FWISD). ELOTE addresses a key gap in knowledge about the outcomes and trajectories of immigrant newcomers who enroll in the ninth grade. The purpose of the…

This article examines the subjective life experiences of racial minority Xhosa speakers and the factors that contribute to their continued poor academic performance in a previously Whites-only school in South Africa. Vygotskian sociocultural perspective in relation to creating a democratic educational system and Bronfenbrenner's biosystemic theory…

Most of the research on second language (L2) narratives has focused on whether or how L2 learners carry their L1 narrative styles into L2 narration; few studies have explored whether L2 learners' knowledge of the L2 also in turn affects their L1 narrative performance. The present study attempted to probe the issue of cultural transfer in narrative…

In this study, we investigated criterial discourse features in L2 writing through the use of recurrent word combinations, a.k.a. lexical bundles, taking a corpus-driven and expert-judged approach by examining L2 English data across various proficiency levels from L1 Chinese learners. Proficiency was determined by a robust rating procedure which is…

From a critical sociolinguistic perspective, this article investigates the written linguistic practices of 20 labor migrants from heterogeneous backgrounds who organized their life trajectories in an "ethnic" call shop in a marginal neighborhood near Barcelona. This was a late capitalist institution informally providing the undocumented…

The study focused on languages of education in Nigeria and extent of implementation in the (UBE) Schools in Ebonyi State. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. The population of the study constituted all the Universal Basic Education teachers in the 13 LGA of the State. A sample study of 555 respondents was selected using proportionate…

Peer feedback is widely used in second and foreign language writing contexts. While second language (L2) proficiency is likely to be an important factor in determining peers' ability to give and utilize feedback, its contribution has been relatively under-researched. In the present study, 54 undergraduates in a foreign language writing context…