Neoliberal ideology attempts to make all spheres of social life play by the rules of the market (Gray, 2000), and foreign language teaching is not an exception. The hegemonic role of English in the neoliberal project breeds it as a commodity that can satisfy non-native speakers' need to access the globalized world. In the 1990s, neoliberalism…

Interactional repair usually involves one or two primary participants, meaning that either the speaker of a trouble source attempts to deal with it on his or her own or else a recipient initiates the repair and sometimes provides a candidate solution. However, occasionally a third person may also become involved in a form of repair that has been…

Discrimination against Non-Native Speakers (NNS) of English in the TESOL profession is wide-spread and well-documented, despite significant evidence of NNS contributions as TESOL educators and scholars. Several scholars have argued for the importance of aesthetic and autobiographic narratives to democratize the TESOL field and showcase varieties…

This article reports on the results of undergraduate students that studied abroad (SA) and primary underlying factors behind their successful language study. The 189 participants were undergraduate students that studied abroad (Spain, Peru, and Honduras) in one of three advanced Spanish language semester-long programs through a Midwest four-year…

Research on the age of learning effect on second language learners' foreign accents utilizes human judgments to determine speech production outcomes. Inferences drawn from analyses of these ratings are then used to inform theories. The present study focuses on rater differences in the age of learning effect research. Three groups of raters who…

Sixty English as a foreign language learners were divided into high-, intermediate-, and low-level groups based on their scores on pretests of target vocabulary and Vocabulary Levels Test scores. The participants read 10 Level 1 and 10 Level 2 graded readers over 37 weeks during two terms. Two sets of 100 target words were chosen from each set of…

Current thinking within education circles suggests that if students are not engaged in class discussions they might not be learning. And if they are not learning--students and teachers--are wasting their time. The Teacher Effectiveness in Language Learning (TELL) Project spells out within its planning domain that teachers should plan lessons…

Although research has investigated laughter in professional communication settings, fewer studies have explored laughter-talk in second language (L2) classrooms. This study examines L2 university students' use of laughter-talk in peer group conversation to understand the linguistics of affect and its interactional effects. The author draws upon…

Reaching the Advanced level of proficiency in speaking is a common goal of second language learners, but data on advanced learners of less commonly taught languages such as Arabic are scarce. This mixed-methods study reports words-per-minute and type-token ratios for three ACTFL levels--10 Intermediate Mid, 10 Advanced Mid, and 8…

Studies of incidental vocabulary acquisition in second language learning have got more and more attention both at home and abroad. By first introducing the definition and theoretical foundations of incidental vocabulary acquisition, this paper reviews empirical studies of effect of different tasks on incidental vocabulary acquisition and points…

This paper analyses the result of a survey on 238 undergraduate EFL students at a public university in Malaysia. The survey focused on their attitude towards English learning and causes that might have hindered their learning. For data collection, a 19 item questionnaire were designed and administered on 238 students. The objective of this study…

This paper aims to discuss how the emerging new language with its own developing socio-cultural foundation affects the existing L1-governed knowledge and pragmatic competence of "adult sequential bilinguals." It is assumed that these bilinguals already have an L1-governed pragmatic competence at place, which will be adjusted to…

This article proposes an approach to explicit grammar instruction that seeks to develop metalinguistic knowledge of the L2 and raise L2 learners' awareness of their L1, which is crucial for the success of second language acquisition (Ellis 1997, 2002). If explicit instruction is more effective than implicit instruction (Norris and Ortega 2000),…

This paper explains the situation of Mandarin, Suzhou dialect and English in Suzhou, the relation between language policy and language use, discusses the positive and negative consequences that multilingualism in Suzhou might have for the society, and focuses on the change of language use in Suzhou and provides suggestions for the maintenance of…

In the Malaysian education system, English has always played an important role. In acknowledging its importance, Malaysian University English Test (MUET) has been introduced to enable continued emphasis on this role. MUET has been made compulsory for those who wish to pursue a first degree programme in local universities. This study aims to…