The evolving nature of intercultural education necessitates a shift from static to reflective pedagogies among teachers. This case study investigates the efficacy of a collaborative lesson study (LS) approach in enhancing Chinese university instructors' proficiency in participatory, non-essentialist intercultural teaching. Six English as a Foreign…

Language assessment literacy (LAL) has recently gained substantial attention among language educators and other stakeholders. However, existing models focus almost exclusively on teachers, test developers, and administrators, and lack students' perspectives in their conceptualizations. To address this gap, with this exploratory study we aimed to…

Drawing upon a collection of curriculum proposals and reflections and informed by a textual analysis approach, this study investigated how 234 university teachers planned to enact and reform their English-medium instruction courses (n = 66) in an English as a foreign language (EFL) university context. Results reveal that the teachers tend to adopt…

Vocabulary mastery is critical to English as Foreign Language students. Mobile technologies enable students to learn vocabulary without space and time limitations. However, existing mobile-assisted vocabulary learning research often employed teacher-directed activities that increased instructors' workload, undermined student motivation or targeted…

There is a rich body of studies on the implementation problems of curricular changes comprising more student-centred methodologies in English as a foreign language education around the world. Focusing on these global-wide studies within the context of the Ecological System Theory, this meta-synthesis aims to identify the common factors that hinder…

China's National English Curriculum Standard, launched in 2001, clearly reflects a philosophy and characteristics of learner-centeredness. However, limited evidence is available as to how far the learner-centred philosophy has, through interacting with the local contexts, influenced teachers' beliefs, which will translate into a core philosophy…

This paper presents the reflections of one of the authors, a junior faculty member, on teaching a master's level, English-medium instruction (EMI) course. The course was titled, "International Research on Teacher Education," and it took place in a Chinese research-intensive university. It was, in part, a response to the need for…

With a development history of more than half a century, the learner-centered approach has become a new teaching paradigm worldwide. The approach can produce effective and significant learning focusing on learners' development, learning, and learning outcomes. This study aimed to determine how a learner-centered approach can increase students'…

The educational potential of mobile and social media technologies in combination is becoming increasingly salient with the advance of modern technology. However, there is a dearth in the research on educational use of mobile social media for language learning. This study adopted a qualitative single case study approach to investigate a language…

Due to the growing status of English as the language of international communication, English immersion programs have been on the rise in China and the rest of the world. Though there has been much discussion on the theoretical and practical characteristics and features of immersion, current models are not adequate for explaining the…

The production-oriented approach (POA) has been developed over ten years to overcome the weaknesses in English instruction in tertiary education in Mainland China. The POA tries to integrate the strengths of Western instructional approaches with Chinese contextual features and consists of three components: (a) teaching principles; (b) teaching…

Assessments of new pedagogical practices usually rely on instructor oriented surveys and questionnaires to measure student perceptions of teaching methods; however, fixed response categories in structured questionnaires might bias results. This paper demonstrates a mixed methods approach using open and multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) for a…

Recent years, most universities and colleges have been reforming the English as a foreign language (EFL) curriculum system in China. Some reformed EFL curriculum into English for Specific Purposes (ESP) courses, for instance, while some conducted a graded teaching model in EFL teaching. However, the effect of this reform was not so good,…

This edited book documents practices of learning-oriented language assessment through practitioner research and research syntheses. Learning-oriented language assessment refers to language assessment strategies that capitalise on learner differences and their relationships with the learning environments. In other words, learners are placed at the…

For a long time, Australian English and culture have not been viewed in China as an equal to its American and British counterpart. This is reflected in teachers' choice of destination when it comes to English teaching and learning resources. This paper examines Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' perceptions of the contents and…