The importance of design and technology (D&T) education has been advocated by numerous researchers over the last three decades. For instance, Nigel Cross suggests that in design education, there are ill-defined problems and "designerly ways of knowing" (2006). Today D&T in school education is employed globally and the common…

This paper describes teachers' practices and their perceptions regarding the teaching and learning of oral language in Catalan schools. We used the Assessment Scale for Oral Language Teaching in School Settings (EVALOE) instrument, created and validated with the aim of assessing teachers' practices for promoting the development of language skills…

Four organizations were brought together by a common desire to create a unique community service program that focused on increasing the language and literacy skills of children born to teenage parents. This article explains the process of creating this project from conception through workshop design, implementation, and outcomes.

Mixed methods surveys using multilingual assistants in areas without clear pre-defined sampling units are often difficult to manage and unpredictable, thereby threatening data quality. More so when such surveys are executed in unfamiliar territories where cultural and language barriers prevent direct communication between the principal researcher…

When it comes to language learning and teaching, one of the major issues that needs to be tackled is the large differences between students in terms of school performance, especially socially disadvantaged children who tend to lag behind their peers. Research on language teaching tends to focus on the average learner, thus leaving little room for…

A short review of first- and second-year German instructional material in the U.S. shows that, by design, cultural competence is either frequently conveyed in isolation from other language skills, or culture topics are approached merely in a utilitarian way to test comprehension or practice grammar. The contribution at hand presents a multi-modal,…

English as a second language teachers often find themselves teaching classes of heterogeneous students who have very divergent English language skills, abilities, and learning needs. One effective approach to address some of the challenges teachers face when teaching heterogeneous, mixed-level classes is task-based language teaching (TBLT). TBLT…

The purpose of this article is to persuade teachers of English at all levels to allow for more student movement, even if just a little. Kevin McCaughey calls this approach to a dynamic classroom space a Movable Class. The first part of this article looks at how lack of movement, especially prolonged sitting, has serious health consequences. The…

Most of the world's English language teachers speak English as a second or third language rather than as their first language. For many, their level of proficiency in English may not reach benchmarks established by their employers, raising the issue that is the focus of this article, namely, what kind of proficiency in English is necessary to be…

Words matter--the more clearly teachers articulate what is to be learned and the instructional practices to be used--the better they teach and their students are more likely to develop knowledge and skills. How can teachers recognize and address the multiple meanings of words in their planning and reflection process? These authors present four…

This paper outlines the iterative stages involved in designing and developing a blended course of English for General Academic Purposes (EGAP) at Osaka University. First, the basic Successive Approximation Model (SAM 1) is introduced as the guiding instructional design model upon which the course was created. Afterward, the stages of design and…

Language is at the heart of the learning process. We learn through language. Our knowledge about the world is constructed in language-the worlds of home and the community, the worlds of school subjects, the worlds of literature, the worlds of the workplace, and so on. It is through language that we interact with others and build our identities.…

Little by little, (or, simply, MALL) is taking force in the field of education, as it supports language blended learning and language learning ubiquity. The study presented here belongs in the Social Ontology-based Cognitively Augmented Language Learning Mobile Environment (SO-CALL-ME) research project, whose final aim is to design and create…

Guided by the principles of the Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, and Evaluation (ADDIE) instructional design (ID) model, this creative instructional product presents a learning/teaching approach that is fundamentally constructivist. For the purposes of designing effective instruction in an academic preparation course, a…

This paper explores a pedagocial approach to teaching oral English---Conversation Analysis. First, features of spoken language is described in comparison to written language. Second, Conversation Analysis theory is elaborated in terms of adjacency pairs, turn-taking, repairs, sequences, openings and closings, and feedback. Third, under the…