This article presents an argument for the inclusion of Shakespeare in the senior high school ESL (English as a Second Language) curriculum in Taiwan, to be taught through a physical, participatory pedagogy in line with the approaches of drama education in general and those currently being promoted by the education department of the UK-based Royal…

Among 262 Chinese children, syllable awareness and rapid automatized naming (RAN) at age 5 years and invented spelling of Pinyin at age 6 years independently predicted subsequent Chinese character recognition and English word reading at ages 8 years and 10 years, even with initial Chinese character reading ability statistically controlled. In…

A key role in the successful implementation of any learning approach is played by teachers, so how well blended learning works will depend largely on how well teachers make the transition from their traditional face-to-face classroom roles to the wider more complex role that blended learning requires. The additional skills and the forging of a new…

Families of culturally and linguistically diverse pupils often do not participate fully in their children's school-based education. The purpose of this article is to introduce taxonomies as a means to examine and improve school practices and levels of responsiveness to families whose home language is not English, so that families feel more…

Since 1995, the population of English language learners (ELLs) in the United States has increased by an astonishing 57% (Maxwell 2009). Though ELLs come from many different backgrounds, they share the common challenge of learning English while responding to academic content demands. Part I of this two-part article provides key strategies every…

This article critically examines the state (extent of provision) and status (public esteem) of modern language education in Scotland, which as a constituent part of the United Kingdom has its own independent education system. The notion of social capital, as conceptualized by Putnam and others, is used to show how attempts by language…

This paper reports on a study designed to investigate the acquisition of metalinguistic knowledge by L2 learners exposed to large doses of explicit grammar instruction, their facility with metalanguage, and the relationship between metalinguistic and metalingual knowledge. Seventy-six young adult Chinese learners of English as a foreign language…

This study investigated children's motivation for learning English as a foreign language (EFL) and intrinsic motivation for learning in general. The participants were 268 third-sixth graders in a public school in Japan. Data were collected using two questionnaires, one measuring motivation for learning EFL and the other investigating intrinsic…

This article discusses the validity of the incorporation of online communication in language education classes as a practice free of power politics. By examining blog activities in an advanced-level Japanese-as-a-Foreign-Language classroom at a university in the USA, we show that the blog's postings and readers' comments evoke certain modes of…

Using the Internet through a mobile phone for learning English as a foreign language (EFL) listening skills has significant potential, and language learners in South Korea hold clearly positive attitudes towards using this. However, the barriers discouraging language learners from using the Internet for EFL listening have not yet been thoroughly…

In this article, the authors describe how Jenae, a seventh-grade English language arts teacher, modified I-Charts (Hoffman, 1992; Randall, 1996) and I-Search papers (Macrorie, 1988) to support the needs of her adolescent English Language Learners (ELLs). They highlight how she improved upon two timeless instructional practices by integrating…

Research engagement has been widely considered crucial in transforming teachers into "expert knowers about their students and classrooms" (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 16). This article reports on a mixed-method study of the research engagement of a group of primary school teachers in China's Guangdong province, focusing…

This small-scale study investigates the effects of community service learning (CSL) projects or a cultural presentation on the development of the cultural understanding of low- and high-intermediate L2 students. Fifty-two learners in four sections of two Spanish classes in Canada participated in the study. The participants also completed pre- and…

This paper attempts to review second language acquisition theory and some of the methods practiced in language classes. The review substantiates that comprehensible input as the crucial determining factor for language acquisition and consciously learned linguistic knowledge can be used only to edit the output of the acquired language sometimes…

Based on the practice of college English teaching and learning in China, the paper reviews the phenomenon and causes of the temporary fossilization in second language acquisition and offers some corresponding strategies for preventing and surmounting the obstacles in the hope of promoting the reactivation of the next climax.