Few studies investigate ELT with young learners in China, although conservative estimates suggest 60-million primary school children are studying English; even fewer studies investigate Chinese young learners' L2 motivation. This article reports on a study of English learning motivation among Chinese primary school pupils through analysing…

This article investigates the effects of blogging as an approach to journal writing in the EFL writing classroom by means of a 16-week comparative experiment involving two groups of EFL college students. The experimental group (EG) was required to blog daily while the control group (CG) was asked to do so using traditional pen-and-paper methods.…

Out-of-class study time is essential in students' language learning, but few studies in ELT measure out-of-class study time or investigate how teachers can encourage, rather than demand it. In Japan, out-of-class study time is lower than might be expected, ranging from zero to an hour per week. This study therefore sets out to establish those…

Learners' and teachers' evaluation of what constitutes useful, appropriate, and goal-relevant English may well shift in view of the globalization of English and its dominance in non-native contexts, business, and new media. Against this background, this study explores the extent to which a specific Business English university programme meets…

This study utilizes a pre-test/post-test assessment to investigate the instructional efficacy of a genre-based approach to teaching summary writing. Forty-one EFL university students in Taiwan were asked before and after the instruction to summarize a simplified version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in a maximum of 500 words. All the students'…

A limitation of extensive reading programmes is the time required for progress in vocabulary acquisition. This paper reports on a qualitative exploration of student perceptions of the value of non-compulsory comic books in ESL elementary and upper-intermediate level courses at a tertiary institution. We aimed to develop supplementary materials…

Motivation is a well-researched construct; however, few studies have investigated how teachers perceive and make sense of situations in which learners are not motivated to learn. Thirty-two EFL teachers working in Japanese universities were surveyed and interviews with three of these teachers were conducted to reveal their perceptions of student…

On the premise that the learning of a second or foreign language should contribute to, rather than subtract from, the cultural and linguistic resources which a learner already possesses, this paper documents an individual teacher's pedagogically centred challenge to a politically driven and potentially exclusive English-only language policy within…

The appearance of interactive whiteboards (IWBs) in schools in Britain and other parts of the world has been accompanied by research that attempts to analyse their effects on teaching and learning processes. The majority of studies to date have been carried out in schools in England in mainstream numeracy and literacy classes. The present paper…

This article examines the findings of a longitudinal study of the learning and use of English at an English-medium university in Hong Kong. The aim of the investigation was to track the learning experiences of a group of 28 undergraduates and to identify the challenges they faced when studying for their degrees in a second language. This article…

Since 2001, the Education Bureau (EDB) in Hong Kong has been promoting a shift from traditional assessment of learning to assessment for learning, where classroom-based assessment is linked to teaching and learning, with students taking an active role in the assessment process. In particular, secondary school students are encouraged to assess…

In this study, 94 university freshmen undertook an authentic, experientially driven media production project at a Japanese university which promotes a target language (TL)-only classroom language policy. The project was staged across six 90-minute lessons and sought to promote culturally and socially relevant task-based activities grounded in the…

Reticence is a common problem faced by ESL/EFL teachers in classrooms, especially in those with mainly Asian students. The willingness to communicate model of MacIntyre, Clement, Dornyei, and Noels (1998. "Conceptualizing willingness to communicate in a L2: a situational model of L2 confidence and affiliation". "The Modern Language Journal" 82/4:…

This article explores the role of the psychological construct of "implicit theories" or "mindsets" in the context of foreign language learning. It considers psychology-based research of the construct in respect to the EFL context and reports on a small exploratory study using interviews carried out with tertiary-level learners in Austria and…

Learner attributions, perceived causes of success and failure, have received little attention in EFL research. Attributions are categorized as either internal (for example effort) or external (for example luck) and may affect how students learn about and impose order on their world. We investigated the attributions of 505 university students in…