With an increasing number of Chinese learners pursuing higher education in Western universities, the characteristics of Chinese students have raised many discussions and debates (e.g. Carson, 1992; Watkins & Biggs, 2001). Two contradictory views are commonly reflected in the existing literature: being passive, quiet, submissive, or disciplined vs.…

This paper analyses some changing aspects of learning and "cultures of learning" in China: these are related to meeting the needs of Chinese learners studying in higher education in the UK. We use the term "cultures of learning" to draw attention to the socio-cultural aspects of key practices, expectations and interpretations of learning and the…

The College English Test (CET), designed in accordance with the requirements of the National College English Teaching Syllabus and as a result of the need for China's reform and its open-door policy in the 1980s, is the world's largest language test administered nationwide. Owing to its scientific approach, consistent marking, rigorous…

The three voices presented here are those of women teachers affiliated with Hebrew-speaking and Arabic-speaking branches of the Israeli educational system at different levels. Brought together when a curriculum on multiculturalism oriented to narrative as a teaching tool was implemented and tested in an in-service programme, each of the three had…

The case of Israeli Circassian students is unique because they study four languages which they require for daily life: Arabic is for reading the Koran; Hebrew is the language of the dominant group; English is an international language and is needed for academic purposes; and Circassian is their mother tongue. This study investigated the attitudes…

The purpose of the study was to examine beliefs about teaching and teachers of Israeli-Bedouin students before and during their training period. The study is based on Kagan's (1992) theoretical model, which views teachers' professional development as taking place through reciprocity between students' personal school memories and the training…

Strategies are actions and behaviours used by the writer to solve problems in the writing process. These actions and behaviours reflect four clusters: meta-cognitive, cognitive, social, and affective processes. The goal of the overall study with 352 children was to check the effect of strategy usage on written output. Three research windows were…

The complex cultural mosaic of EFL teaching and teacher education in Israel calls for the need to explore how different ethnic and cultural backgrounds shape prospective EFL teachers' perspectives about their roles and practices as communicative teachers; an approach solidly entrenched in western, democratic views of teaching and learning.…

A two-year (1998-2000) School-Family Partnership for Coexistence (SFPC) programme was implemented in Acre, a mixed Jewish-Arab city in Israel, to promote parents' role as facilitators of their children literacy development and to empower parents to advance coexistence and inter-group relations. The SFPC program was part of a five-year (1995-2000)…

This paper explores issues of linguistic and cultural continuity in vernacular education in the south pacific state of Papua New Guinea (PNG). It draws from an ongoing ethnographic study of the introduction of vernacular teaching in elementary and lower primary schooling where English has recently been replaced as the medium of instruction making…

This paper describes the assessment and instructional strategies used in a migrant education programme that had positive academic outcomes for a group of 11 eight-to-12-year-old Spanish/English-speaking students of Mexican descent. Students attended this four-week summer programme, jointly sponsored by the University of Illinois and the local…

In recent decades, immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers have sought a new way of life in large numbers, often leaving their countries of origin behind in search of places that offer a better way of life. The purpose of this study was to investigate how elementary and middle school students in state schools in Reading, England (primarily…

This paper reports our findings and observations on the difficulties of university students learning Greek as a foreign language at the University of Thessaly. A group of medical students, whose native language was Arabic, answered two questionnaires concerning their use of and competence in Greek. The results showed that first and second year…

This paper reports the results of a brief investigation into what non-native English-speaking teachers (non-NESTs) perceive to be their difficulties with the English language. It was hypothesised that the confidence of such teachers, which affects the effectiveness with which they teach, would be low. Results from 15 randomly selected interviewees…

This paper addresses the issue of incorporating moral education in the English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL) classroom in light of the increasing calls for having teachers take on a more pro-active role in the moral development of their students. The moral education model recommended in this study includes the development of…