In this paper, we will examine the problematic concept of the native speaker, which is central to much linguistic theory, to studies of language acquisition, and to language teaching and assessment. It is a notion which can have ramifications when it comes to the recruitment of language teachers in schools and in university language centres.…

This article casts light on how one public school system in the United States minoritizes migrant students by perpetuating systemic class and racial biases. Migrant students are the children of migrant workers who migrate across the United States seasonally to work in agriculture or fisheries. Based on in-depth interviews with 20 educators, we…

Automated writing evaluation (AWE) programs have been widely utilized in writing classrooms and have been increasing gradually, yet teachers' and students' attitudes in relation to AWE, Grammarly, have still remained uncharted in Afghanistan. The current study explored teachers' and students' attitudes toward the efficacy and/or inefficacy of…

Events in 2020 sparked the need to continue a focus on ongoing inequities in the United States. This article addresses the preparation of ESOL teachers for antiracist work, acknowledging that racist beliefs and structures are pervasive in education and beyond, and how ESOL teachers can develop antiracist "conscientização." I address…

This paper covers the work in progress of an e-platform being developed for language enhancement at a tertiary institution in Hong Kong. There is an actual or perceived concern about the English and Chinese language ability of undergraduate students at certain universities in Hong Kong. One reason for this is that a significant proportion of…

Language is inherently variable, and learner language is particularly variable. The variationist paradigm considers learner language a heterogeneously variable yet inherently rule-governed system. Specifically, learners' alternation between native-like and nonnative-like variants of a variable or invariable target native speaker (NS) form…

Introduction: In the past decades, studies have been conducted to explore the role of anxiety in the learning of Western languages such as English, French, and Spanish. However, when it comes to the predictive relationship between anxiety, motivation, attitude, and Chinese achievement, the findings are inconclusive. This study aims to test a model…

This two-phased study explored a corpus-driven, curriculum-based approach to assessing proficiency development of Mandarin Chinese in US universities. In Phase I, we developed an elicited imitation (EI) test based on the Chinese curriculum at a large US university. This test demonstrated higher psychometric qualities to (1) place L2 learners into…

Internationally educated nurses' (IENs) English language proficiency is critical to professional licensure as communication is a key competency for safe practice. The Canadian English Language Benchmark Assessment for Nurses (CELBAN) is Canada's only Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB) referenced examination used in the context of healthcare…

Given the controversies surrounding the critical period hypothesis on second-language (L2) learning outcomes, this study focuses on the phonological aspect of language acquisition--the strength of the foreign accent in L2. Drawing on data from a large-scale representative data set on immigrant adolescents in Germany--CILS4EU-DE--we first…

This paper discusses the stage of second language acquisition known as attrition and what learners and teachers can do to prevent attrition and promote retention. Attrition is the stage at which a learner's attained proficiency declines due to a reduction of contact with the second language, whether from lack of contact with other speakers of the…

Perhentian Island is a renowned islands by the locals and the tourists around the world. The island receives a high number of tourists every year. The high number of tourism activities has influenced the English communication skills among the locals who are using their own local dialect as a medium of communication. Nevertheless, based on the…

The aim of this study was to understand adult learners' strategy use in foreign language learning. It also explored how such strategy use relates to learners' sense of self-efficacy, self-regulated learning, and language proficiency. Two questionnaires were administered to obtain data from 90 education majors in a Japanese university. Differences…

In the present study, we sought to advance the field of learner corpus research by tracking the development of phrasal vocabulary in essays produced at two different points in time. To this aim, we employed a large pool of second language (L2) learners (N = 175) from three proficiency levels--beginner, elementary, and intermediate--and focused on…

Mobile-learning (m-learning), or mobile-assisted language learning (MALL), has been the object of a great deal of research over the last twenty years. However, empirical work in this area has largely failed to produce generalizable conclusions due to variation in methodology, target feature, and task-type (Burston, 2014, 2015). As schools in Japan…