The article focuses on written narratives of 51 Finnish university students who study German, Swedish or French as their major or one of their minors at an advanced level. The study aims to find what keeps these students motivated to study their L2. The data have been analyzed "using analysis of narratives" (Polkinghorne, 1995).…

As current computer-mediated communication (CMC) research is omnipresent in the foreign/second language (L2) writing process, a synthesis of the research in this realm is needed to better understand and inform the current pedagogical practices with technology in language classrooms. This article presents a review of 38 studies identifying the…

"Golden course", which is against frivolous course, has become a hot topic in Chinese higher education as new requirements are imposed on classroom teaching efficiency. Under this background, this paper takes the course "Comprehensive English 3" as an example to discuss how to design "golden course" and"gold…

Pedagogical agents in multimedia learning environments have frequently been designed to produce pointing gestures (deictic) to direct spatial awareness. Although this might be beneficial for native English-speaking students who possess high levels of comprehension, only using pointing gestures with foreign language students learning English is…

This article investigates the central role of topic in the IELTS Speaking Test (IST). Topic has developed a dual personality in this interactional setting: topic-as-script is the scripted statement of topic on the examiner's cards prior to the interaction, whereas topic-as-action is how topic is developed by the candidate during the course of the…

The article deals with the traditional game approaches that have well recommended themselves at the lessons of the Russian language, and their potential and ways of modifying into a single game space of the lesson is being discussed. Basing on personal experience, the authors of the article present the possibilities of organizing a Russian…

This study presents the first multifactorial corpus-based analysis of verb-particle constructions in a data sample comprising spoken and written productions by intermediate-level learners of English as a second language from 17 language backgrounds. We annotated 4,911 attestations retrieved from native speaker and language learner corpora for 14…

The paper outlines current advancements in dynamic assessment (DA), an approach that has much intuitive appeal for many second language acquisition practitioners, yet that has to date failed to take root in language classrooms. DA distinguishes itself from other approaches to assessment by insisting that "mediated assistance" of the…

Journal writing as a way of reflective instruction has now become popular in second/foreign language teacher education due to its contribution for educational development and instruction, yet little studies have been conducted about pre-service teachers' reflection while teaching in a foreign classroom. This article investigates the experiences of…

This article presents a new theoretical model of literary competences for use in the language classroom. The work has been both triggered by an unintended consequence of the introduction of the original CEFR in 2001, namely the marginalization of literature teaching, and inspired by the inclusion of literature in the 2018 Companion. It proposes…

Within instructed second language research, there is growing interest in research focusing on primary school vocabulary learning. Research has emphasized classroom-based learning of vocabulary knowledge, with growing focus on the potential for using captioned videos and increased word encounters. The present study investigated the effects of…

Second language (L2) learners often speak with a strong accent, which can make them difficult to understand. However, familiarity with an accent enhances intelligibility. We propose that L2 learners are even more familiar with their own accented speech patterns and may thus understand self-produced L2 words better than others' accented…

This paper describes an embodied conversational agent enhanced with specific conversational strategies aiming to foster learners' readiness towards communication in a second language (L2). Willingness to communicate (WTC) in a second language is believed to have a direct and sustained influence on learners' actual usage frequency of the target…

This study presents a case study of academic discourse socialization in a Japanese EFL student in a research seminar course to understand the content of a scholarly book in English. Drawn on theoretical perspectives of language socialization and community of practice, an 8-month case study investigated how the participant was socialized into the…

This study examines how two Korean adolescents, born in transnational marriage families, construct their identities in the context of globalization. The data used comes from a yearlong ethnographic research project that includes fieldnotes, interview transcripts, and additional artifacts. The findings reveal that Tayo and Sungho navigate through…