Training of immigrant teachers offers ample opportunities for intercultural interactions, yet it also requires unique sensitivities. On the one hand, immigrant teachers are often qualified and experienced. At the same time, immigration forces them out of their comfort zone, entailing some loss of professional status and self-esteem. The essay…

This article describes how to help students connect what they learn in the language classroom to the outside world as they learn to understand, produce, and analyze spoken, written, visual, and cultural information in their second language (L2). As learners make connections between course material and the physical and virtual spaces where the L2…

This paper describes a joint programme developed in 2018 by the University of Parma Language Centre (Italy) and the Humanities and Arts Department of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. The aim of the project was to involve students of English for General Academic Purposes in delivering presentations to an unfamiliar foreign audience on a…

Contextualised mobile assisted language learning (MALL) has been known for its potential in language learning rooted in social constructivism theories. However, a consistent approach to constituents of contextualised MALL, in addition to a quantitative tool to evaluate it, is missing in reported case studies. The present research, drawing upon…

Increasingly, professionally-oriented tertiary institutions are concerned with equipping their students with the English language skills needed in today's global professional world. The recently extended 2018 Common European Framework (CEFR) provides useful guidance to help institutions develop curricula to achieve this goal. This paper describes…

Global awareness is discussed through the experiential learning of six teacher candidates and six teachers on a Fulbright-Hays study abroad program to Israel. The participants focused their learning on four key aspects of global education; multilingual communication -- to enhance a world view, historical layering -- to understand the peripheries…

The aim of this chapter is to point to the complexities of the English language in Israel from a critical perspective, its global language status, and the manners in which it affects and interacts with a variety of local issues. The main focus is on how the presence of a global language, like English, affects a given sociolinguistic reality,…

Affectivity is an important dimension in humans' social and individual lives. It is either a stimulating or hindering aspect of language learning. This article aims to draw attention to material culture as a powerful, but mostly neglected source of data on the use and acquisition of languages, and demonstrates the close and intricate links between…

While much of the work in language testing is concerned with constructing quality tests in order to measure language knowledge in reliable and valid ways, there has been a significant movement in language testing research that examines tests in the context of their use in education and society. This line of research exits from the notion that…

Professor Elana Shohamy was born in New York and moved to Israel at a young age. It was an interesting time for the country and the Hebrew language. In this article, Professor Shohamy shares her keen insights into her experiences growing up in Israel. She obtained her teacher's certificate from David Yelin Teacher's College in Jerusalem,…

The goal of this article is to make research on English language teaching and learning published locally in Israel more widely available. Given that so many Israeli researchers are internationally trained and maintain wide connections, it necessarily omits much important work that appears in European and US journals. It focuses on shorter studies,…

These are exciting and challenging times for English language curriculum development for school-age learners. The global reach of English has spurred a rethinking of its role in education and, consequently, a rethinking of how to teach it. The accounts in this volume represent differences in educational systems, language teaching traditions,…

In this article, the author discusses an online youth magazine that his Palestinian students developed. In April of 2006, they launched the inaugural edition of their teen e-zine, "Behind the Wall." With the help of his brother-in-law, students, along with a computer programmer, the "Behind the Wall" website was constructed.…

Describes and gives example of use of national radio broadcast to administer English as a second language test in Israel. Purpose of program is to test listening as distinct from speaking. Results have been encouraging. (BK)

Colleges and universities across the country are seeing an overwhelming interest among students in learning about the Middle East and Arabic languages. The most popular courses, professors say, are Arabic language, Middle Eastern politics and the dynamics of the Israeli and Arab relationship. Also in demand are courses on comparative religions and…