Most heritage language learners (HLLs) of Spanish cannot produce grammatical terminology, simple grammatical analysis, and/or simple grammatical items on demand. Possible causes are: the naturalistic manner in which language was acquired, lack of opportunities to learn basic concepts in beginning courses (because they were skipped), or the belief…

Multiliteracies pedagogy is an approach to literacy education emphasising the diverse ways in which people make meanings and communicate their understandings to others. Within this view of literacy teaching and learning, the construal and expression of meaning is considered a result of people engaging in various knowledge processes as they…

This study investigated changes in levels of anxiety about learning a foreign language (FL) and in the language beliefs of first-year Korean-as-a-foreign-language (KFL) students in a US university throughout a year. Twelve students who enrolled in both of the two semesters of the first-year Korean I and II classes participated in this study. The…

This paper reports on an exploratory inquiry into the perceptions of a group of second language (L2) learners of English with regard to their identities in English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) communication contexts. Drawing upon data gathered from two rounds of in-depth interviews with nine participants from a Hong Kong university, the study found…

The global textbook has an enormous influence upon what is taught in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. As Akbari has noted, our era is not simply "postmethod", but one of "textbook-defined practice". What happens, then, when a global EFL textbook is selected for use with Year 1 students at a Thai university? How…

This paper reports a study that investigated the motivations towards teaching of six pre-service English teachers enrolled on a teacher education course in Hong Kong. A qualitative case study approach was adopted, using data gathered from pre- and post-course interviews with individual participants, their dialogue journals with the teacher…

The study aims to highlight the representations that university students have about plurilingualism, in order to research how they can develop plurilingual competences in an essentially monolingual French academic setting. It is based on a survey of 684 students enrolled in two foreign language programmes across two year levels (first and fourth…

Previous studies revealed that isolated and integrated form-focused instruction (FFI) are two effective means of improving language proficiency of students, separately. However, few empirical studies have explored their complementarity in the context of English as a second language. This study, therefore, investigates the effects of combining…

Positioned against the background of the Council of Europe's interest in developing intercultural competence through education, the study presented in this paper investigates the impact on intercultural visual literacy of the Council of Europe's "Images of Others--An Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters through Visual…

How heritage learners successfully maintain their heritage language (HL) and literacy is a significant topic of discussion in the field of bilingual education. This study examines what factors are most closely associated with literacy competence by inspecting Korean heritage learners' language and literacy practice patterns and their literacy…

Influenced by contemporary research into the interconnectedness of language and culture, many Indonesian teacher education courses have introduced "new" subjects such as "Intercultural Communication" and "Cross-Cultural Understanding", hoping to unsettle their students' traditional assumptions that language is…

With the global spread and use of English, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) professionals have become increasingly interested in intercultural learning. Comparatively few studies have been published, however, on the use of films in intercultural learning within the context of English as a foreign language (EFL) curricula in…

This study examined the effects of a collaborative creative writing project on identity formation and overall language proficiency development among advanced Hebrew students. In an exercise called "The Zoning Committee", college students created the fictional Israeli-American town of Beit Shemesh, located in northern Michigan. Qualitative data…

Collaborative learning (CL) methods were evaluated by a group of 101 university students in a first-year ESL course on Communication and Study Skills. The principal objective of the new approach was to encourage students to work together, to express their ideas more freely and to learn from each other. Student opinions on a course project…

American Sign Language (ASL) is a visual-gestural language identified as the first or natural language of many persons who are deaf in the United States. For over 200 years, it has been the focal point of a heated controversy regarding optimal teaching methodologies for deaf children in the American elementary and secondary educational systems.…