In this "Distance Learning" Special Issue, Errol Craig Sull introduces the "Try This" series of articles to assist In The Classroom. Sull notes, where once the idea of offering ESL (English as a second language) assistance and courses was a minor afterthought in postsecondary education, it has become crucial, for it recognizes…

Every year, around 120 students of French at the University of Manchester (UoM) prepare to go on their compulsory Year Abroad (YA). They are free to choose between different options: studying in France and the French-speaking world, working in diverse sectors throughout the French-speaking world, or becoming a language assistant. This wealth of…

Concepts of second language proficiency and how proficiency may be assessed have changed considerably over the last 20 years. New notions of validity with respect to the interpretation and uses of test scores have begun to shape discussions about test validity and quality assurance in college world language departments, in government, and in…

This article describes a significant revision of an existing upper-division German course to include more global perspectives of the long 19th century. The revision was undertaken in collaboration with an advanced undergraduate student. The course provides an important opportunity to upend preconceptions students might have about German-speaking…

The ability to think critically is considered an important component of a college education, and postsecondary institutions typically include critical thinking in student learning outcomes, particularly in the general education curriculum. Foreign language has traditionally been a staple discipline in general education. However, college foreign…

English writing is one of the four indispensable skills that English learners need to master, but unfortunately, many Chinese college students have much difficulty composing clear, concise and coherent essays although they have studied English for at least over six years. To address the problem, the researchers and teachers in China have tried…

In this report, we present certain teaching activities employed at the University of Calabria and at the I.T.C. C. Mortati high school. The former were conducted within the English for Basic Academic Skills courses, the latter in the Spanish as a Foreign Language classes for students in the last two years of high school. The grammar and linguistic…

In 2016 the University of Padova and its Language Centre ("Centro Linguistico di Ateneo" -- CLA) became involved in the two-year "Cultura e accoglienza" Project (see Dalziel and Piazzoli in this volume), the aim of which was to encourage around 30 refugees and asylum seekers to pursue university studies by means of a…

The Intercultural Competency (ICC) Program is a structured program that has been developed at the University of Adelaide's English Language Centre (ELC) to create opportunities for students to connect in a global context. This stand-alone and easily transferable program aims to create meaningful opportunities for mixed-language-ability learners to…

Globalization and the digitalization of our lives have made it impossible to avoid (inter)cultural encounters. In the traditional classroom environment, students are expected to juggle a myriad of choices almost simultaneously. Factors like grammar, pronunciation, word choice, etc. are all important assessment factors to consider when looking at…

This paper identifies various challenges that a 1.5 generation immigrant faced in a mainstream college composition class and reports on how he constructed his social presence and became a successful multilingual writer. The findings of this study would help higher education institutions more effectively serve the growing population of ESL students…

In recent years increasing research attention has been devoted to the definition and development of presentation skills. As an interactive oral discourse type, the presentation is characterised by specific speech acts, of which cooperative acts have proved to be of a highly developmental nature (Sazdovska, 2009). The aim of the present paper is to…

The Applied Language Centre at University College Dublin offers foreign language modules to students in ten languages at CEFR [Common European Framework of Reference for Languages] levels ranging from A1 to B2. Efforts have been underway in the Centre to standardise the assessment components across languages to ensure parity between module credits…

In recent years, several initiatives relating to pedagogical innovation have been implemented at the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia (UPV), Spain, in order to integrate ICT into current teaching practices by means of combining the efforts made by teachers, students and the institution itself in terms of the support it provides. These three…

As part of a broad, campus-wide Writing Initiative designed to improve student-writing skills, Fairleigh Dickinson University opened a new campus writing center in fall 2006. Concurrently, a separate component of this initiative was launched to replace the English for General Purposes instruction offered in the traditional English as a Second…