In this chapter, I explore how the study of grammatical gender has been a prime example of the impact that boundary crossing can have on the understanding of a phenomenon by creating nuance through the incorporation and juxtaposition of multiple perspectives. In the first section, I start with a description of grammatical gender and its different…

Writing is one of the most important aspects in English language acquisition. Teaching writing has its own challenges since there are some steps and requirements that teachers should prepare to undertake in the classroom. This article is aimed to discuss teaching and learning writing in the classroom based on theoretical conceptualisation. In…

Idiom variation is a ubiquitous linguistic phenomenon which has raised a lot of research questions. The past approach was either formal or functional. Both of them did not pay much attention to cognitive factors of language users. By putting idiom variation in the framework of linguistic subjectivity, we have offered a new perspective in the…

Previous work in the field of interlanguage pragmatics suggests that learners of a second or foreign language benefit from metapragmatic instruction (e.g., Felix-Brasdefer 2008a; Kasper and Rose 2002; Koike and Pearson 2005). The most common approach taken in studies on instruction is to focus on a speech act and to develop a lesson that acts as a…

I examine how American students respond to foreign instructors, who teach English Composition and Research Writing. I discuss how minority teacher's cultural, lingual, and ethnic differences interfere with classroom dynamics in the United States. I rely on my experiences as a Turkish instructor of composition at the University of Wisconsin,…

Shakespeare was not known to the Chinese until Lin Zexu's (1785-1850) translation of Hugh Murray's (1789-1845) "Cyclopedia of Geography" (1836). Afterwards Shakespeare in China saw many complicated changes, from being regarded as a story-teller to being fully received as a seasoned playwright and poet, and his plays were rendered into…

The Korea Waseda Cross Cultural Distance Learning Project (KWCCDLP) is an endeavor to promote awareness of linguistic and cultural differences of speakers from different backgrounds through the medium of English. The project fully utilizes a student centered approach to learning where learners are the agents. This project aimed at university level…

This paper discusses one Chinese graduate student's experience with English writing. Through a literature review and personal interviews with other Chinese students, the paper explores the differences between Chinese and English writing. It summarizes the literature on differences between Chinese and English writing conventions in ideological and…

This "insider's guide" to American and Japanese communication and misunderstanding is based on the premise that Americans and Japanese have different goals in communication; the American goal is to make messages negotiated between individuals explicit, while the Japanese goal is to keep messages implicit and assumed within the group. In…

Describes the experience of preparing Venezuelan English-as-a-Foreign-Language students at lower intermediate level to perform a Trinidadian dialect play before an international audience during a short course. The exercise was used to teach local culture in relation to the native culture of the students and also to teach functional and grammatical…

This handbook is designed for native English speakers who are preparing to teach English in China. The contents of the handbook are selected based on the findings of face-to-face interviews and a questionnaire survey conducted by the author with experienced native English teachers to China as the partial fulfillment of her Master's in TESOL…