Integration is vital to student well-being in higher education but integrating new students from different countries can be challenging. To ascertain students' integration into their new environment, this mixed method study combined the data collected from weekly diary entries of home and international students at the start of one engineering…

In English for academic purposes courses, group oral presentations are quite common but essay writing tends to be seen as an individual endeavour, albeit with scope for peer review. This article discusses action research reflecting on student perceptions of a framework to support students through a semester-long collaborative essay assignment in…

The English language has become an essential means for communication and studies for international students globally. With the increasing number of international students trooping to China to study diverse courses which are taught in the English medium, there is a need to address challenges faced by international students from non native English…

Investigating the comparability of students' performance on TOEFL writing tasks and actual academic writing tasks is essential to provide backing for the extrapolation inference in the TOEFL validity argument (Chapelle, Enright, & Jamieson, 2008). This study compared 103 international non-native-English-speaking undergraduate students'…

The article discusses the features of methods of teaching the history of language in a foreign language classroom. With regard to the increase of the number of applicants who enroll in Russian universities directly on the basis of secondary education, bypassing the preparatory faculties, which arises the problem of an insufficiently prepared group…

This mixed-methods study aims to evaluate the English Preparatory Program (EPP) offered at the Department of Foreign Languages (DFL) at an English-medium foundation university in Turkey during 2017-18 academic year to discover the strengths and weaknesses of the program. Participants of the study were 241 students and 26 teachers. The data were…

Using the first language (L1) to solve problems in understanding the second language (L2) may be beneficial for L2 learning. However, the overuse of L1 may deprive L2 learners of exposure to the L2. It appears that the question is not whether to use L1 or L2; it is when and how each language can be used to support L2 learning. This study focuses…

We report on a case study of high Japanese student failure rates in an online MBA programme. Drawing on interviews, and reviews of exam and assignment scripts we frame the problems faced by these students in terms of a "language as social practice" approach and highlight the students' failure to understand the specific language games…

In recent decades, increasing numbers of EMI (English as Medium of Instructions) courses have been added to university course offerings in countries where English is not the first language, as a way of supporting university internalization and addressing the global status of English. However, some studies argue that EMI courses might affect the…

Students who study English as a Foreign Language (EFL) often already speak two or more languages. Knowing more than one language is a necessity for many people worldwide, whether it is because their parents come from different language backgrounds, because their home, regional, national, or school languages are different, or for a variety of other…

Organic chemistry is a traditionally difficult subject with high failure & withdrawal rates and many areas of conceptual difficulty for students. To promote student learning and success, four undergraduate organic chemistry and spectroscopy courses at the first to third year level (17-420 students) were "flipped" in 2013-2014. In the…

This article examines an established course on Popular Culture which is framed within the general educational model in an English-medium university. The article is organized into three parts: the underlining educational rationale for general educational courses, the course description, and the students' perspectives of their learning experience.…

More than two decades of debate since the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) adopted the term information literacy have been marked by ongoing criticism of its associated definitions and standards. Some scholars and practitioners have argued for a critical information literacy, which applies the precepts of critical pedagogy to…

This article looks at a teacher trainer development programme designed in response to the shift from Malay-medium to English-medium instruction in Malaysian secondary maths and science teaching. The programme presented a group of 25 Malaysian maths and science teachers with principles and methods from teaching English to speakers of other…

Some concepts to help teachers adhere to classroom instruction in the target language are presented and discussed. These include ideas related to the teacher's speech (visual cues, speed, and repetition and rephrasing), student speech (teacher-assisted and student-dominated communication), out-of-class assignments, and teacher assessment of…