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…

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…

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…

This article reports on the results of a questionnaire and interview survey on Cantonese ESL learners' preference for bilingualised dictionaries or monolingual dictionaries. The questionnaire survey was implemented with about 160 university English majors in Hong Kong and three focus group interviews were conducted with 14 of these participants.…

Since the last few decades of the twentieth century, increased independence and autonomy of local schools through the implementation of school-based management (SBM) have become widespread in Western education. SBM is designed to operate within a more general framework of decentralisation of the educational authority. This research set out to…

This paper explores the influence of Korean ethnic churches on the maintenance of heritage language (HL) and culture among Korean-Canadian students. The ethnographic and qualitative study on which it is based involved participant observation over a 4-month period, group discussions, interviews, and a questionnaire. Participants were 15 immigrant…

This paper discusses the conception, goals, highlights, and outcomes of a four-week study-abroad seminar in the Dominican Republic (DR) for pre- and in-service teachers of English language learners from the New York metropolitan area. The seminar was designed to have teachers experience first-hand the phases and challenges of second language…

The factors affecting the mastery of the host country's language by the children of immigrants are important in the study of immigration-related issues. This exploratory study analyses the possible link between parental socio-linguistic background factors (parent-child language choice, parental proficiency in L2, educational level, socio-economic…

This study investigated the influence of cultural bias in the teaching of English and in the books used to teach English in primary schools attended by Khoe students in eastern Botswana. The study also explored the link between cultural bias and the attitudes and motivation of Khoe students learning English. One hundred and thirty-seven students…

After the experience of many years of teaching in two or three languages, the Basque speech community needs to know not merely how much students achieve in each language and what level of proficiency they attain but also which language they use, how often they use each language, and the relationship between language use and other variables. This…

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…

This paper investigates a case of designing, implementing, and evaluating a semester-long culture portfolio project in a Korean culture class in an American university setting. The paper addresses the following four issues: (1) How does the project help the students gain insights into a particular aspect of Korean culture and encourage them to…

Many inadequacies of Nigeria's schools derived from their religious and colonial past. One in particular is studied in this paper, namely opposition to the use of the mother tongue as the medium of instruction. Questionnaires on the subject were administered to samples of 1000 primary school teachers and 1500 parents of primary school children.…

This study aimed at exploring motivational factors among American college and university students studying Japanese (as a second/foreign) language by examining their Peak Learning Experiences (Anderson et al., 2001; Bloom, 1982). In all, 128 students studying intermediate Japanese at five different schools returned their answers to this study's…

In this study, the author examines the results of questionnaire given to 92 teachers in community-based Chinese schools (CCSs) in Southern California. Information was sought from the teachers on their academic background and aspirations, the reasons for them to choose to teach in the CCSs, and their views on the quality of the education provided…