Many college students set out on Study Abroad Programs to other countries in which the variant of the foreign language spoken in the region differs from the variant to which learners have been exposed. This study explores the perception of L2 Western Andalusian Spanish aspiration of word-final /s/ by L1 American English listeners, in relation to…

This study investigated the effects of different text difficulty levels on Iranian EFL learners' foreign language reading motivation and reading comprehension. To fulfil this objective, 40 Iranian participants were selected among 50 students based on the results of Interchange Placement Test (Richards et al, Placement and Evaluation Package…

The objective of the current study is to experimentally test the pedagogical conditions aimed at ensuring the efficient formation of sociocultural competence in foreign students by using local history texts in the lessons of Russian as a foreign language (RFL). The efficiency of the formation of sociocultural competence by including linguistic and…

Academic reading at college and university poses a real challenge for international students with English as a second language. Often the main hurdles are a lack of language proficiency, critical-reading skills, or background knowledge. Also, unfamiliarity with cultural and academic conventions plays a role. Even with intensive English-language…

This article aims to highlight how those who have migrated between both Mexico and the United States, and whom will be referred to as transnationals, arrive to an understanding of their professional identity developing as English teachers throughout central Mexico. A qualitative approach was selected to explore the lived epistemologies of the…

While a growing body of research has addressed the outcomes of K-12 foreign language (FL) study, relatively little is known about the relationship between teachers' practices and students' proficiency development (Hlas & Hlas, [Hlas, A. C., 2012]; Tschirner & Malone, [Tschirner, E., 2012]). To fill this gap, the current study, set in a…

This questionnaire study examined the beliefs, practices and constraints related to learner autonomy reported by 359 teachers (mainly expatriate) working on an English Preparatory Year Programme (PYP) at a university in Saudi Arabia. The teachers associated learner autonomy primarily with notions of independence and control and saw it as the…

This investigation aimed to provide insights into the controversial debate on the role that age at onset of bilingualism plays in human language capacity with a focus on what it entails for first language (L1) attrition. L1 performance of Turkish immigrants (n = 57) in the United Kingdom with age at onset ranging between 7 and 34 years was…

It has been a topic in psychiatry, it is referred to by translingual writers, and bilinguals report it frequently -- the feeling of becoming a different person when using a different language. The present study was set out to investigate the reasons behind this feeling. We looked at the effects of biculturalism and personality traits, as well as…

The intelligibility of everyday speech is built on the mastery and the use of appropriate intonation patterns. This makes intonation the music of everyday speech of which its appropriate use has been the final hurdle that the majority of the speakers of English as a Second Language have not crossed. This paper investigated the intonation patterns…

This study examines the structural relationships at work when embedding role-play games in a class for Japanese language proficiency. It does so by applying the Technology Acceptance Model, and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Usage of Technology as its guiding principles. The setting was a Malaysian public university and the subjects, 200…

Students' attitudes towards learning English as a second language is not a new issue, yet much is to be known about the factors that actually affect the students' attitudes, especially those who live in rural areas that are known to have poor perceptions towards as well as poor performance in learning the English language as compared to Malaysian…

This study was primarily aimed at developing an English-speaking proficiency test and analytic rubrics designed to measure speaking proficiency of Malaysian undergraduates. On the basis of Littlewood's Methodological Framework and Long's Interaction Hypothesis, the researchers derived three speaking tasks from four sources: (a) syllabus of the…

This investigation explores oral proficiency outcomes in short-term study abroad programs, as well as the interaction of those outcomes with the type of second language (L2) courses involved. For three years, speaking ability gains were measured in a study abroad setting among intermediate learners of Spanish under two different course conditions:…

This paper attempts to establish that there is a correlation between the sociolinguistic identities of high school students and their productive English-speaking abilities. The paper initially explains the basic concept of sociolinguistic identity and refers to various aspects of research into Japanese national identity to analyse how these may…