The purpose of the paper is to shed light on potential driving forces that guide principals' decisions on how to implement language policies in their schools in Kazan, Russia. Kazan is the capital of Tatarstan and home for the second biggest ethnic group in Russia, called Tatars, whose native language proficiency is gradually declining. After…

The ability to express oneself clearly in both a mother tongue and a foreign language is a foundation principle of the new national curriculum in Estonia. Therefore, research was conducted to determine whether there was a possible relationship between English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers' perceptions of effective teaching and the…

One of the key topics on any Modern Languages Postgraduate Certificate of Education (PGCE) course in the United Kingdom is the hotly debated issue of target language (TL) use. When and why do teachers use the TL in delivering lessons and when and why do they code switch into the learners' language? Does their practice change over time? Does it…

This study examines the English vocabulary development of 43 very young child English as a foreign language (FL) learners (age 3.2-6.2) in China. They were tested twice for vocabulary breadth (reception and production) and semantic depth (paradigmatic and syntagmatic vocabulary knowledge). The development of the English vocabulary knowledge…

A growing number of bilingual and multilingual national and international students are enrolling in graduate programs in the United States, creating an urgent need to understand how these writers build knowledge of unfamiliar academic genres and become part of their disciplinary academic communities (Selony, 2014). Such students struggle with…

Despite the increasing volume of studies on classroom language use research, scant attention has been paid to the relationship between learners' attitudes towards classroom language choice and classroom variables that they perceive to motivate their target language learning. This study examines this issue with Korean undergraduate English as a…

This study explored the experiences and language gains of Chinese-background English language learners living in homestays during a short-term study abroad (SA) programme in Australia. Forty-one learners took part in listening dictation pre- and post-tests to assess their acquisition of idiomatic phrasal verbs, and also completed weekly journals…

This study investigates how university students in the US and Hong Kong perceive themselves as literate and biliterate beings. All the participants in Hong Kong are biliterate in at least two languages (including Cantonese, Mandarin, and English), whereas only 40% of the U.S. participants are biliterate in at least two languages (including…

This study endeavoured to awaken mainstream teachers' awareness of language, specifically related to teaching emergent bilingual children who are learning English as an additional language (EAL) in the Republic of Ireland. Because EAL learners spend the majority of the day in the mainstream classroom, mainstream teachers' language awareness may…

In this article, we report on our development of a translanguaged French/English listening task as part of the revision of a test for professors in a bilingual Canadian university. The primary objective in revising the test was to more authentically represent the target language use domain, which regularly includes translanguaging. We describe the…

The strength of English learners' second language reading is closely associated with academic success. Using qualitative research methods and verbal protocols, this study examines four elementary-level English learners' uses of reading strategies and describes how each English learner employs these strategies while reading both culturally relevant…

In many societies, single-sex education is embedded in a culture that maintains women subordination with possible ramifications to their language performance and role in society. This paper seeks to explain the cultural grounds for Palestinian female direct refusals in their L1 culture and the consequences for their linguistic behaviour in…

Language learners' language experience is predicted to display a significant effect on their accurate perception of foreign language sounds (Flege, 1995). At the superasegmental level, there is still a debate regarding whether tone language speakers are better able to perceive foreign lexical tones than non-tone language speakers (i.e Lee et al.,…

In literature on bilingual teaching, different perspectives exist for and against the use of first language (L1) in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. There is a continuing matter of debate on whether L1 contributes to or precludes the learning of a second language (L2). Numerous studies have been conducted on this topic, but no clear…

The identity-language link has been widely recognised. In Heritage Language research, the complex entanglement between Chinese ethnic identity and Chinese Heritage Language has gained increasing attention in recent decades. Both social psychological and poststructural schools have offered meaningful insights into this field, but have also received…