This research was inspired by the phenomenon of binge-watching Korean television drama series (K-dramas) among Taiwanese university students. K-drama fever may provide an impetus for sustained English-subtitled K-dramas viewing, which may serve as an alternative to extensive reading of graded readers that English teachers often encourage their…

This study examined image-text relations in English-as-a-foreign-language textbooks focusing on moving-image animations that accompany verbal dialogues. It also explores how animations support verbal dialogues in the textbooks. Data sources include three major versions of junior high school textbooks locally-produced in Taiwan, each consisting of…

The purposes of this paper are to investigate Taiwanese undergraduate students' responses to a selected fictional text, and to propose a critical intercultural pedagogical approach of reading global literature in the EFL educational context based on the insights from the research findings. The authors first critically analysed Xiaolu Guo's third…

Indigenous populations have historically been marginalized in the language curriculum in Taiwan. As education reform in the 1990s ensued, textbooks became democratized and aimed to include more local diverse cultures. However, the portrayal of Indigenous cultures in the new current language textbooks has not been adequately studied in past…

The worldwide expansion of globalization contributes to the dominant status of the English language and furthers the expansion of linguistic imperialism. Underpinned by the concept of globalization, this study situates in the context of online English private tutoring (EPT) and aims to explore the image of the English language and examine what it…

University level second language (L2) creative writing courses are widespread around the world. However, little empirical research has been done to document teachers and students' experiences with courses whose main focus is to develop students' creativity. In response, this case study was conducted to explore how an English native-speaking (NS)…

International students have continued to be the focus of simplistic stereotyping in media discourse where they are frequently identified as one of the forces behind declining academic standards in Australian universities. Their English language skills, in particular, have continued to be the focus of debate both in the mainstream media and in…

This study incorporated the problem-based learning (PBL) approach into a web-based English reading course. The purpose of the study was to examine the impact of PBL on the participants' English reading comprehension (RC) and to explore the participants' perceptions of PBL. The present study conducted a comparison of two teaching methods. Two…

Successful oral presentation effectually involves multi-faceted training of listening, writing, and nonverbal delivery besides speaking orally, which calls for a systematic holistic/multimodal approach. However, a multimodal learning environment for fostering EFL learners' presentation development remains virtually unexplored. This study employed…

Internationalisation policies introducing English as a lingua franca (ELF) have been initiated by the Taiwan Ministry of Education and executed from a top-down level without taking into consideration the competence and needs of administrative staff. This article begins by describing the ideology of ELF within the macro context of Taiwanese…

This paper reports on an exploratory study that investigated the effect of extensive speaking practice on the development of L2 speaking complexity, accuracy, and fluency in voice blogging. The participants were 30 college EFL (English as a foreign language) learners in Taiwan. As a supplement to the insufficient speaking practice in class, each…

The purpose of this study is to evaluate linguistic and cultural issues around the status of English as a lingua franca and intercultural understanding as presented in one set of Taiwan's (English as a Foreign Language (EFL) high school textbooks. The methodology centres on the analysis of textbook content as categorized in three central themes:…

A previous study (Ke, I. 2012. From EFL to English as an international and scientific language: analysing Taiwan's high-school English textbooks in the period 1952-2009. "Language, Culture and Curriculum," 25(2), 173-187) on the trend of English textbooks in Taiwanese high schools showed that the proportion of the lessons embedded in…

Extensive reading for second language learners have been widely documented over the past few decades. However, few studies, if any, have used a corpus analysis approach to analyze the vocabulary coverage within a single-author story series, its repetition of vocabulary, and the incidental and intentional vocabulary learning opportunities therein.…

The effective use of reading strategies has been recognized as an important way to increase reading comprehension in hypermedia environments. The purpose of the study was to explore whether metacognitive strategy use and access to hypermedia annotations facilitated reading comprehension based on English as a foreign language students' proficiency…