The teaching of critical thinking (CT) has become an important requirement in many English language classrooms at different educational levels, yet little is known about how teachers promote the learning of CT. This article reports on a qualitative study examining the ways in which two university English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers in…

The outbreak of COVID-19 witnesses a sudden surge of fully online classes globally. Scholarly attention has promptly shifted to explore the personal experiences and perceived challenges of students and teachers. For English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instructors around the world, many are required to teach online for the first time, yet studies…

This study investigates the effects of three word-focused exercise conditions on vocabulary learning. The exercises were developed based on the involvement load hypothesis. This study also explores how individual differences (e.g. second-language English proficiency level and working memory) affect vocabulary learning outcomes. A total of 180…

This article introduces the use of Internet-mediated joint construction (JC) to engage second language (L2) writers to participate in virtual classroom activities in an online teaching environment. Affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, schools and universities in the People's Republic of China were required to rapidly transit to remote…

Growing a large vocabulary is one of the most important tasks of language learners and yet research reports on low levels of lexical knowledge for English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. In EFL contexts, textbooks are a vital source of exposure to English and the words that are worth learning. The New Concept English textbook series is…

Many scholars and teachers in EFL education should agree that compared with reading and writing, listening has received much less attention. This brief article discusses important gaps existing in EFL listening and overall proficiency development. It presents the case for a greater focus on sounds and actual listening in the classroom and spoken…

This study explores students' participation in English for Academic Purposes classrooms from both teachers' and students' perspectives. Data were collected from videotaping of 11 English for academic purposes classes, semi-structured interviews with 12 teachers and stimulated-recall interviews with 33 students. The results indicate that three…

Translanguaging as pedagogical practice and a theory of language has gained increasing importance in recent years. However, little research has reported Chinese English-as-a-foreign-language students' perceptions of translanguaging; neither has research examined the predictive effects of the factors contributing to the amount of student…

Two types of corrective feedback, recasts and prompts, have sparked much research in second language (L2) learning and teaching. However, it is still unclear how these two types of feedback draw learners' attention to the erroneous forms in L2 classes. This study used an open questionnaire to investigate Chinese learners' perceptions of recasts…

With the largest number of English learners in the world, the influence of the English language teaching (ELT) reform in China cannot be underestimated. This article explores the implications of the actual use of English in China's workplace for ELT reform in the context of English as a lingua franca (ELF). On the basis of cross-validated data…

While there is a growing research interest in English as a medium of instruction (EMI) teaching and learning in university contexts, relatively limited attention has been paid to EMI teacher development. Drawing on my past and ongoing teaching and research practice as an EMI teacher educator, this Viewpoint article considers the emotional,…

Developing students' communicative competence became the primary goal of the current College English Curriculum Requirements in 2004 in China. There has been increasing concern, however, that this goal has yet to be realized, particularly in relation to the teaching of writing. This study investigated the potential of a Systemic Functional…

This article describes an innovative approach to introducing translanguaging in an English for academic purposes (EAP) course at a young Sino-US joint-venture university in China. To promote the use of Chinese students' full linguistic and communicative repertoires in an English-medium-of-instruction university, I intentionally incorporated…

With the globalization and internationalization of education, many teachers from Asian countries pursue their professional development in English-speaking settings. However, there seems to be scarce research on these teachers' expectations, lived experiences and identities in these contexts, and how their personal experiences influence their views…

This article investigates the relationships between test takers' strategy use and test performance on an EFL reading test. For this study 209 Chinese college students were invited to participate in a reading comprehension test and answer a 30-item strategy use questionnaire. Results showed that two factors underlay test takers' reading test…