German fairy tales have an established history of appropriation in popular media, from oral traditions to mobile media. The mimetic quality of fairy-tale motifs and tropes provides ideal conditions for intertextual adaptation. In this article, I demonstrate that German fairy-tale themed music videos are powerful vehicles for culture, parody, and…

Digital literacy skills are crucial twenty-first-century skills that are required for the successful use of technology and active engagement in today's world. However, there is a lack of effective resources and guidelines for developing English as a second language (ESL) learners' digital literacy skills. Due to their increasingly important and…

Play is a universal human experience. Often regarded as the unique purview of children, an emerging body of research points to the importance of playfulness in adulthood. This article reports on the research and observations of two teaching artists working in Connected, a Sydney Theatre Company adult-literacy-through-drama programme. This article…

When it comes to teaching vocabulary in foreign language classes words are often taught in isolation, without regard to the context in which they appear. The paper draws attention to the importance of teaching words in context so that the meaning of a word often results from the meaning of a larger construction it is part of. After presenting the…

Becoming a professional worker involves a wide range of cognitive, social, and cultural processes that have received extensive attention over the past decades amongst various disciplines. It is also not external to language use and communication. Novices in any occupation have to learn technical terms and are expected to master specific discourse…

Satirical news is a type of humorous media that mixes parody and satire to critique contemporary figures, events, and situations (Ermida, 2012; McClennen & Maisel, 2014; Peters, 2013). In addition to satirical television news programs like The Daily Show, satirical news websites such as "The Daily Mash," "The Onion," and…

The role of the teacher's personality can be placed amongst many factors that play a role in learning English as a second/foreign language. A teacher with a humorous character inevitably aids in reducing any potential fear that may be experienced by students in relation to the learning of a second language in the classroom (Bell, 2009; Chee,…

For many students learning English as a second/foreign language is an uninteresting, dull experience. Quite often teachers present words, sentence patterns, and grammar rules in a very mechanical manner. As a result, people come to think of the teaching of grammar and vocabulary as a monotonous job. But a resourceful, imaginative and creative…

"TEFL/TESOL Methodology 2: Advanced Language Teaching/Learning Strategies (2nd Edition)" is a language methodology course with a modern touch. In other words, it is a combination of the most commonly used language teaching approaches, strategies and/or techniques in modern schools nowadays. In particular, it is intended to be used both…

Students feel more comfortable in a new language when they understand its jokes. And when the jokes are puns, they build metalinguistic awareness. This article describes four categories of English puns--soundalike puns, lookalike puns, close-sounding puns, and texting puns--and suggests how they can be incorporated into English language…

This article intends to show how situation comedies may be used in the English language classroom to develop awareness-raising activities aimed at soliciting an understanding of essentially pragmatic and cultural aspects of everyday language. After a brief overview of studies on pragmatic teachability (Rose and Kasper 2001, 2002) and learnability…

Native speakers of a language learn word play as part of the language acquisition process, but learners of a new language rarely get that opportunity. English has an unusually large number of opportunities for humorous puns, based on the complex system of spellings, pronunciations, and meanings of English words. There are three main categories of…

Teaching in a monolingual/monocultural, non-English speaking environment can at times be frustrating. Teachers want their students to genuinely communicate with each other in socially acceptable ways, and at the same time become more aware of cultural traits. What is needed in a classroom is a reaction that is real because it is spontaneous. This…

The authors take a critical language pedagogy approach to examining a 2011 controversy over disparaging comments towards Mexicans made by commentators of the British Broadcasting Corporation's automotive show Top Gear. In particular, they focus on the characterization of groups and individuals according to their nationality and examine the…

According to the U.S. Department of Education (2004), more than 40% of approximately three million learners in the federally-funded adult education programs are in the area of English as a second language (ESL). These learners, the majority of whom are immigrants and refugees, represent a huge diversity of cultural backgrounds and nationalities,…