To facilitate second language learning, it has become increasingly popular to use a second language as the medium of instruction for content subjects for majority language students. Although numerous research studies have shown the advantages of such kind of programs in North America and Europe, those investigating English as the Medium of…

While much has been written about task-based language teaching (TBLT), research examining teachers' understandings of what TBLT means remains limited. This article explores the understandings of TBLT of three Chinese secondary school teachers of English and the implementation of TBLT in their lessons. Narrative accounts were constructed for each…

In recent years, school-based assessment (SBA) has been incorporated into the English Language subject of a traditional high-stakes public examination, the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination. As reactions from various stakeholder groups have been mixed, it was necessary to review this new practice. This paper reports on a study of 33…

This paper, based on some findings of a wider three-year study, sets forth the issue of languages used and taught in education as a dimension of inequality and highlights its implications for widening participation and access in the multilingual context of Pakistan. The paper takes secondary education in private and government schools in Pakistan…

Teaching cultural competency in the language classroom can be a challenge. This study explores the effectiveness of task-based instruction (Lee, 2000) on the learning of culture by students in college-level Spanish language courses. Students were required to record oral presentations, write essays, and make comparisons between the culture and…

IsiZulu is one of the 11 official languages of South Africa and has the highest number of speakers in the country. While the South African Language Policy for Higher Education (2002) emphasizes the need to use African languages at universities, not many universities' isiZulu-speaking students prefer to be taught in isiZulu. Research has revealed…

The heterogeneous backgrounds, languages and proficiencies students bring to the classroom have always been a key challenge facing schools that wish to implement heritage language programmes. In this article I describe the evolution of one high school's approach to heritage language education and some of the roadblocks they encountered in…

Test accommodations are changes to test administration, responses, or the test itself that are offered to emergent bilingual students for standardized tests and also for classroom assessments in some states in the USA. Currently there is a lack of research examining the use of test accommodations as a pedagogical practice. This paper presents a…

This study looks at how parents in one Spanish-English two-way immersion (TWI) charter school report their participation in various home language and literacy practices. Parent groups, based on a cluster analysis, highlight the heterogeneity of Latino parents at the school while acknowledging the commonalities as well. Four parent groups emerged…

Language and culture are informally integrated in many English as an Additional Language (EAL) programs, but cultural discussions are often regarded from the perspective of a particular dominant culture. Although this integration is crucial for the development of communicative competence, practical applications are still challenging as language…

This paper reports on an exploratory, descriptive, and interpretive study in which the roles of discussion boards, the students, the teacher, and the monitors were explored as they constructed a collaborative class project in a virtual environment. This research was conducted in the virtual program of a Colombian public university. Data were…

This article presents a case study research with aims to find out which activities, methodological and textual aspects used in a reading strategies course were causing a group of students difficulties when analyzing critically written information. We conducted the study at Universidad de Córdoba (Colombia) with seventh semester students from the…

With the development of the English as an Additional Language or Dialect (EAL/D) Teacher Resource, the educational needs and outcomes of refugee and immigrant children have been placed on the national mainstream teaching agenda. This new national resource sits alongside a plethora of other resources, known as scales and standards, which have been…

Teacher efficacy is a topic of significance in mainstream education and various instruments have been developed to measure this construct. The available instruments however, are general both in terms of their subject matter and context. To compensate for this generality, the present study aims to develop a new teacher efficacy instrument whose…

This mixed-method study assessed the nature of language brokering and the relationship between language brokering and prosocial capacities in a sample of 139 college students from ethnically diverse immigrant families. The prosocial capacities of interest were empathic concern and two forms of perspective-taking: general perspective-taking…