Language tests, including international high-stakes English proficiency tests widely used around the world, are to be viewed as ideological constructs connected with power relations and center-periphery demarcations at different social levels. In this paper, we examine the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) as an instance of…

This study investigates washback effects of IELTS test on university teachers' adoption of teaching materials in the classroom in China and see how a high-stake language exam affects their teaching practices and how they and their students perceive the effectiveness of the pedagogic adjustments. To this end, individual interview to five teacher…

The steady increase in content courses being taught through the medium of English in non-Anglophone countries has been matched by a rapidly growing output of research and commentary on the topic. There are also a number of providers now offering professional development for English Medium Instruction (EMI) teachers. We carried out a systematic…

The present article addressed the issue of university teachers' working experience in the field of class-oriented online teaching English in higher educational institutions. The central aim of this study was a detailed description of the system for assessing reading skills utilized in English proficiency tests (CAE (C1), TOEFL, IELTS), as well as…

Many overseas students in Higher Education in the UK struggle to understand the compulsory texts for their course, and obtain lower scores for their modules than their monolingual peers. While the existence of this achievement gap is well established in the literature, little is known about the ways in which overseas students in HE with limited…

John Read is about to retire as Professor in Applied Language Studies at the University of Auckland. He previously taught applied linguistics, Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at Victoria University of Wellington, the SEAMEO Regional Language Centre, the University of Texas El Paso,…

Background: Higher education in field of Nursing in the United Arab Emirates faces many challenges regarding the increasing number of nursing students at the Baccalaureate level in nursing programs, which in fact, is a similar situation in all parts of the world (Saifan et al., 2021; Wollin & Fairweather, 2012 & Torregosa et al., 2015).…

The pressure to publish in scholarly journals has been increasingly pervading doctoral education worldwide and has become a high-stakes activity for any novice writer who wishes to pursue an academic career. In this manuscript, we explore how doctoral students of management from Eastern Europe identify and evaluate authorial voice and compare…

The development of English as Medium of Instruction (EMI) at the tertiary level has been accelerated by the ever-increasing degree of higher education internationalisation. The study, based on a survey with 112 students and semi-structured interviews with 16 instructors collected at a Sino-foreign cooperative education institution in China,…

This study examined the influence of demographic variables on adult language learners' English proficiency development. Specifically, it tried to ascertain the level of English proficiency of the respondents when grouped according to demographic variables such as gender, age, civil status, length of work experience, highest educational attainment,…

Recent literature on the use of exemplars in the context of higher education has shown that exemplar-based instruction is implemented in various disciplines; nevertheless, how exemplar-based instruction can be implemented in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) writing classrooms in higher education institutions remains under-explored. In this…

Language tests are increasingly being used as gatekeeping tools in a globalised world. This article examines the processes of linguistic gatekeeping by the use of language tests in the context of migration. We draw on half a dozen cases of test-takers of the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) test who applied for entry into…

This viewpoint article provides a critical reflection on the gatekeeping and academic language practices of Anglophone universities, evaluating these in light of the promotional claims universities make about internationalization and global reach. I then consider the arguments put forward in each of the main articles in this special issue from…

The challenge for many teachers teaching in academic English programs is, on the one hand, to actualize the objectives of their course and on the other hand, prepare their students for the important international tests such as IELTS and TOEFL. The current study seeks to reconcile this challenge by drawing on the relationship between the IELTS…

Past research into the relationship between English proficiency test (EPT) scores and score profiles, such as the IELTS and the TOEFL, has shown that there is not always a clear relationship between those scores and students' subsequent academic achievement. Information about students' academic self-concept (ASC) may provide additional information…