The adoption of English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) in Turkish universities has heightened the necessity for advanced English proficiency among students. Many intermediate-level English learners face stagnation, known as the intermediate plateau, hindering their progress and affecting academic performance. This study explores the use of…

Higher education institutions nowadays are eyeing the potential of cooperative & work-integrated education programs (CWIE) in increasing the English proficiency level of Thai students. Hence, this study aims to interlink English language teaching and learning vis-à-vis the various CWIE programs utilized by the College of Local Administration,…

Aspects that influences mathematics learning is widely studied and language factors have been identified as a key backer to difficulties in learning Mathematics. It is evidenced that not only cognitive factors but also affective factors have vital role in learning mathematics. Such affective beliefs sources from various aspects of mathematics…

The Center for English as a Lingua Franca (CELF), an initiative of a private university in Tokyo, was founded with serious consideration given to the pedagogical implications of the widespread use of English as a lingua franca (ELF). Such deliberation is not yet prevalent among academics and practitioners who should be most affected by ELF…

Thailand's Participation as a member of the ASEAN Community forces her government to accelerate improvement of her citizens' competency of the English language. The continuing wave by Thai governments to develop and modernize the quality of education has influenced Thai society. Within Thailand, English proficiency has been reported as being…

This paper reports on a study that investigated beliefs about second foreign language learning of Turkish EFL learners, compared their beliefs about learning German, Italian and French as a second foreign language and explored within-group variation in these learners' beliefs. The primary purpose of this study is to identify Turkish learners'…

In Malaysia, the issue of weak and non-proficient graduates is a pressing matter. This implies that they are not well-equipped to cope with academic literacy, which is closely related to their language proficiency, as the main medium of instruction at most higher institutions is the English language. At this level, reading is the essence of…

Pragmatics is included in one of four communicative competences (Canale, 1980). It is necessary and important to teach pragmatics at school in our globalized world in order to avoid as much as misunderstanding, which is likely to stem from cultural difference. As a result, greater importance should be attached to diverse customs and pragmatics.…

In this paper we present our study of the use of Mayan and Spanish in nine groups of pupils in bilingual elementary schools in the Mayan area of the Yucatan State, Mexico. Michael Cole's, as well as Guillermo Bonfil's, perspectives were used for the data analysis, in the sense of considering language as a cultural artifact, and an element of…

Mother tongue is the language that a person learns in the society he/she lives especially from his/her mother by imitating herself which begins from the period of infancy and also mother tongue is the language that he/she expresses him/herself best. Vardar (1980:20) defines mother tongue as, "[Mother tongue] is the language which is learned for…

Located at a meeting place between the West and the East, Hong Kong has been chosen in this comparative investigation to reconfirm a theoretical model of "reciprocal relationship" between mathematics achievement and self-concept using the 8th grade databases from TIMSS and TIMSS-R. During the time between these two projects, Hong Kong…

In the western literature, mathematics achievement and its related student self-concept are important education outcomes reciprocally linked and mutually reinforcing. The reciprocal relation model is examined in this study to assess its generalization in a cross-cultural setting. Hong Kong is the site of choice because of its exposure to…

There are at least 6,000--7,000 languages spoken in the world today, with over half of them endangered. And 61 percent of the endangered languages are within the Asia and Pacific Region. The publication is a report derived from the Regional (Asia and Pacific Region) Workshop on Mother Tongue/Bilingual Literacy Programs for Ethnic Minorities, held…

Positive self-concept and good understanding of science are important indicators of scientific literacy endorsed by professional organizations. The existing research literature suggests that these two indicators are reciprocally related and mutually reinforcing. Generalization of the reciprocal model demands empirical studies in different…

Findings of an exploratory study with a sample of students at the colleges of medicine, pharmacy, science, and computer science revealed that English is the medium of classroom instruction and most textbooks in most of the courses at those colleges. Students reported that they do not study the Arabic equivalents of English technical terms in their…