This paper represents part of an ethnographic study conducted in a small college town in the northern United States. Based on Fairclough's conceptualization of language as a site of social meaning construction and power struggle, I conduct critical discourse analyses on data collected at broad, mid, and micro level contexts. I demonstrate how…

This article examines the importance of raising non-native English language teachers' awareness of different dimensions of culture in the teaching of English as an international language. The author believes that the more critical English language teachers become about the involvement of culture in their English language teaching, the more they…

This research focuses on the ability of book-based animated stories, when well designed and produced, to have positive effects on young viewers' narrative comprehension and language skills. Sixty 5-year-olds, learning Dutch as a 2nd language, were randomly assigned to 4 experimental and 2 control conditions. The children profited to some extent…

This paper analyses the language practices of a teacher in an Italian bilingual class. The children were learning Italian in Year One of elementary school. The teacher consistently spoke Italian with the children. The description of the teacher's talk shows how she used Italian for classroom management, for instructions, for teaching subject…

Through narratives taken from life history interviews with an indigenous Mexican male immigrant in California, this paper examines the connection between masculinities and the learning of dominant languages associated with access to economic opportunities. In portraying the teller's engagements with work and education in both countries, these life…

This paper examines the widespread practice of Chinese learners choosing (and sometimes refusing) to adopt English and Anglicised names. Data collected from questionnaires and interviews with both students and teachers are analysed in order to arrive at an understanding of why such a practice has arisen and continues to be perpetuated throughout…

Research conducted in the context of the IELTS Research Program indicates that there are recurrent features in the writing under test conditions of candidates from Chinese language backgrounds, particularly in terms of interpersonal tenor. These include a high level of interpersonal reference, combined with a heavily dialogic and hortatory style.…

With an increasing number of Chinese learners pursuing higher education in Western universities, the characteristics of Chinese students have raised many discussions and debates (e.g. Carson, 1992; Watkins & Biggs, 2001). Two contradictory views are commonly reflected in the existing literature: being passive, quiet, submissive, or disciplined…

This paper aims to shed light on the explicit-implicit paradigm contention in connection with the foreign language area of English spelling. To this end, it frames the subject against the backdrop of the prolonged dispute between implicit, whole language, top-down, or whole-to-part approaches and explicit, traditional, bottom-up, or part-to-whole…

This paper examines visual and affective factors involved in the reading of foreign language texts. It draws on the results of a pilot study among students of post-compulsory school stage studying French in England. Through a detailed analysis of students' reactions to texts, it demonstrates that the use of "authentic" documents under…

How are metalinguistic skills associated with vocabulary knowledge in languages with contrasting phonological and morphological properties? To address this question, tasks of phonological awareness and morphological awareness, other reasoning and literacy-related skills, and measures of vocabulary knowledge in Chinese and English, were…

This article presents selected findings from a qualitative practitioner study into the learning experiences of 30 immigrant ESL high school students in a 3-day innovative, Freirean-styled, antidiscrimination leadership program. This case study is grounded in a social identity theoretical framework which assumes that linguistic interactions are not…

There has been increasing recognition of the need to pursue critical research in the fields of ESL/EFL; however, the role that race plays in our research practices has not been frequently discussed. In-depth explorations of how a racialized identity shapes (and is shaped within) complex interactions between the researcher and researched can…

Previous research into teachers' questions has focused on what types of questions are more conducive for developing students' communicative language use. In this regard, "display questions," whose answers the teacher already knows, are considered less effective because they limit opportunities for students to use genuine language use (Long & Sato,…

This study investigated syllable duration as a measure of speech rhythm in the English spoken by Hong Kong Cantonese speakers. A computer dataset of Hong Kong English speech data amounting to 4,404 syllables was used. Measurements of syllable duration were taken, investigated statistically, and then compared with measurements of 1,847 syllables…