Contemporary pedagogical experts have stressed the importance of context in education as a critical determinant of the success of learning outcomes. These recent arguments stem from earlier scholars who claimed that the context of education is often taken for granted, although its influence on teaching and learning is crucial. Perhaps the main…

This article contains an autobiographical literacy journey from primary school to college, focusing on the author's affection for reading, her dislike of writing, and the development of other literacy skills. Early childhood reading and writing practices are often regarded as merely a bloom rather than a development of writing abilities, which…

This conceptual paper presents a multidimensional framework for applying affordance theory to language education, moving beyond traditional, linear models. Drawing on ecological and rhizomatic perspectives, the framework views affordances as context-sensitive opportunities for action, shaped and enacted by learners, and analyzed across five key…

The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) is one of the most widely consulted reference works that define international standards for the learning, teaching, and assessment of languages. Since its appearance in 2001, the CEFR has been translated into more than 40 languages, including Turkish, making it the second…

In this paper, as two TESOL practitioners, our purpose is to capture our reflections on how conceptual approaches to teacher learning have evolved over the years to highlight the interplay between teacher cognition and teacher identity. We also seek to decrease the distance between ourselves and our academic writing, essentially emerging from…

The landscape of English Language Teaching (ELT) has evolved significantly over the past 75 years, marked by major shifts in theoretical, technological, and sociocultural approaches to language teaching and learning. From the dominance of behaviorist methods in the mid-20th century to today's innovations in digital, tech-mediated language…

As a result of the ongoing war in Ukraine, two million children have been forced to flee their homes in order to seek safety in other countries. In addition to having a safe place to live, every child must be able to access education in order to gain the knowledge they need to meet their full potential. This is the belief at the "Let's Shake…

This study aims to motivate researchers, teachers and learners to utilize critical social research methodology in the field of second language learning and teaching in which neoliberalism and neocolonialism have been profoundly embedded and overwhelmingly dominant. Therefore, critical reflection (CR), participatory action (PAR) and emancipatory…

Evaluating students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (i.e., emergent bilinguals) presents challenges to evaluation teams, as distinguishing between a language disorder and typical second language development is more complex. The skills and knowledge required to do this task often exceed the level of training that evaluators…

Goals are central to understanding how students learn a second language. Much of the existing research on goals in the field of language learning has focused exclusively on achievement goals, particularly mastery and performance goals. However, exclusively focusing on achievement goals precludes language researchers from exploring other important…

Social aspects of second language acquisition (SLA) and the contexts in which people attempt to learn and use languages and seek to become integrated within new and changing cultures have been examined for decades from various theoretical perspectives. In this article, I present some of the ways in which 'social' experience is being theorized in…

The Philadelphia Mural Movement is internationally known; admittedly, it is one of its most sought attractions when visiting the city. Using this form of art as the backdrop, a telecollaborative task-based project between two universities located in two different countries, in two different continents, was designed in fall 2015. Universidad…

This paper addresses 'distractions' in the way English language education is discussed and practiced in one of the most debated systems of education in the world today: Finnish primary education. Distractions are considered as 'makers of disturbance' in educational ideologies by the authors. Examining the 2014 National Core Curriculum and…

This article discusses the author's belief that the notion of a foreign language (FL) "disability" started with the a priori assumption that there is a unique disability for FL learning and an intimate connection between FL learning and learning disabilities (LD). Educators, clinicians, and researchers were largely uninterested in…

This book clarifies the fundamental difference between North America-based instrumental motivation and Korea (and East Asia)-specific competitive motivation by which the EFL learners' excessive competition to be admitted to famous universities and to be hired at a large-scale conglomerate is the main source of L2 motivation. It enables readers to…