This brief is part of a series that highlights key features of high-quality instruction for English learners and the role formative assessment plays in their success. Formative assessment supports teachers to enact these features by providing them with tools to gauge and react to student learning in real-time. These practices also support students…

An increasing body of research has explored patterns of interaction and peer support among young learners. Although some studies suggest that young learners can engage in collaboration when interacting on tasks, other studies indicate the opposite. Moreover, despite the claims that peer collaboration is conducive to learning, studies have not paid…

Spanish is the second most common language among US children aged 5-17, with 26.8% speaking it at home. To foster cultural understanding and promote positive relationships, it's crucial to introduce young children to different languages and cultures. Preschool language education can cultivate respect and empathy, building more inclusive…

Purpose: This paper aims to present a lesson that showcases how artificial intelligence (AI) tools may be chiefly used in L2 language classrooms to design culture-focussed telecollaboration tasks and aid their completion by students. Design/methodology/approach: The paper begins by reviewing traditional approaches and guidance for developing…

Peer collaboration benefits second language (L2) learning and is a cornerstone of effective classroom instruction. It is, therefore, essential for teachers to consider how tasks work to promote peer collaboration and thus maximize learning. These considerations concern the task type, a task's inherent characteristics, and possible ways of task…

The teaching and learning of Chinese remains a fragile undertaking across all stages of Australian schooling. This paper reports on a practitioner inquiry into pedagogic practices and student engagement with disadvantaged primary school students in a Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) classroom in Sydney, Australia. Drawing upon studies of affect…

Second language teaching approaches that were originally proposed for classroom context are used for blended learning context as well as distance learning contexts regardless of their fundamental differences in terms of applicability, accessibility, objectives, designs and theoretical bases. Such theoretical and practical incompatibilities served…

This article presents an international telecollaboration programme called UniLingua, which was carried out between eight universities and university language centres during the 2020/2021 academic year. By promoting language exchanges, UniLingua aims to satisfy one of the most immediate academic needs of university students, which is to improve…

The article presents a blended dialogic socio-constructivist pedagogy for language learning, emphasizing the importance of both individual and social aspects of learning. It argues that technology alone does not transform pedagogy; rather, it is the approach to technology that matters. The pedagogy combines personal freedom for reflection and…

This practice article examines the design, implementation and impacts of a collaborative German language learning (LL) field trip in the United States through the conceptual framework of LL and teaching beyond the classroom. We explore the affordances of semi-structured out-of-class experiences in supporting world language students' target…

This article describes the implementation of project-based learning in an upper-level German as a Foreign Language writing course at a North American university. This pedagogical approach focuses on active learning, learner autonomy, collaboration among peers, tangible products, and developing transferable skills with meaningful, real-world tasks…

This article articulates how the instructor of a French for the Professions course at the U.S. Air Force Academy designed her course by using students' inputs, in particular in the area of assessment. It highlights students' perspectives and contributions, as well as the instructor's deliberate actions to incorporate their voices as expressed in…

This paper explores ways to integrate social justice issues pertaining to decolonization and anti-racism into the world language classroom at all levels of instruction. It describes tasks designed to introduce language learners briefly to German colonialism, raise awareness of colonial legacies in contemporary German-speaking societies, and…

When a Year 7 student physically reacted to a prompt of another student by anxiously drumming the desk with his ruler, exclaiming "uuuuhh", the initial thought of the observing researcher, Laura, was: "this is an interesting account". This started a reflective journey of first applying robust research methodologies to the…

We are two women international students from the Global South, situated in Turkey and the U.S. respectively. In this article, we utilize autoethnography to critically reflect on our intellectual, emotional, linguistic, and cultural growth during a virtual exchange program that we participated in during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through this…