This study emerged as a result of insufficient knowledge and descriptions of the behavioural profiles of the near-synonym English verbs, "increase" and "rise," by non-corpus-based traditional reference sources used by students. We explored the behavioural characteristics of this group of near-synonym verbs using the British…

This study explores the ways in which master thesis writers position their research in the field of English language teaching in a context where academic literacies are still a developing field. From a social semiotic perspective, this paper aims to identify the resources writers use to represent their object of study and provide a context and…

This study explores gender representation in an international English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbook that has been specifically adapted for the Saudi Arabian context. It aims to investigate gender frequencies in conversations in three dimensions: gender relations, subject positions, and contents. The quantitative data were analysed using…

In this article, the authors discuss the importance of the skill of synthesis in university-level writing. They outline specific challenges faced by students of English as a second language with synthesis as a writing skill. They then describe a lesson that they created for an English for academic purposes class for graduate students in the field…

This study analyses teacher-led clarification sequences in a university second language classroom setting from a conversation-analytic perspective. In the literature, there are many studies of clarification requests, but the focus is on individual categories and quantification. No previous study has examined clarification, as reconceptualised in…

The objective of this study is to present what kind of refusal strategies Turkish university instructors of English use and thus aiming to contribute to the limited but growing body of research on Turkish people's refusals in English. With this goal in mind, 20 instructors in the English Language Teaching Department at a state university were…

This study presents the analysis of a translanguaging by design activity I conducted with students finishing an EFL program at a Costa Rican university, for which I showed them pictures of graffiti in Spanish and encouraged them to discuss these, using their entire linguistic repertoire. I recorded their discussions, selected instances of…

This article engages with diachronic analysis, an analysis of changes over time, as it relates to the field of language planning and policy (LPP) through a case study of a local language problem: the introduction of Chinese language into an established government school over a 10-year period. Using cultural-historical activity theory, expanding…

This study examines the effect of questions on fostering interaction in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. It also seeks to determine the characteristics of questions that promote increased classroom interaction. Data were collected through video recordings of EFL classrooms which were analyzed using Discourse Analysis techniques.…

This article examines the relationship between European language policy and funded language learning projects in the field of LSP. We look at why and how the objectives were expressed, how the overall directions have evolved over the past decade, and how the LSP landscape has been redefined through research and implementation. Our discursive and…

This study employs longitudinal Conversation Analysis (CA) to examine one TA's follow-up contributions in a series of EFL group discussion tests. By tracking the TA's interactional practices across 18 groups, we observe how she adapts her turn design by increasingly aligning towards that of the novice English speakers. The TA initially attempts to…

While current conceptualisations of the inextricable connection between language and culture in English language education are largely informed by complex sociocultural theories that view culture as constructed in and through social practices among people, classroom practices continue to be influenced by mainstream discourses of culture that…

University students who enrol in foreign language (FL) programmes are motivated by various needs, but in particular the need to achieve communicative fluency, which generally requires interaction with others. This study therefore explores the notion of 'interactivity,' as conceptualised in second language learning theories and how it might be…

The study presented in this paper focuses upon conceptualisations of language and identity in the institutionalised arena that emerged in the post-Second World War period with the specific intention of teaching Swedish to adult immigrants in the nation-state of Sweden. Our analysis focuses upon the development of the educational programme…

This article reports on a qualitative case study that explored the literacy and disciplinary experiences of 4 Taiwanese/Chinese students learning to write in a US graduate TESOL program. A combination of writing research methods was employed--case study techniques of interview and document collection, combined with discourse and text analysis of…