Critical thinking is a key attribute for students in British higher education, but there has been little research on how Chinese students develop critical thinking during their studies at British universities. Based on interviews with sixteen Chinese students at a university in England, this paper reports their experiences of developing critical…

ePortfolios are a high-impact educational practice that helps students synthesize and reflect on their learning. They are a process and a product that both generates and documents learning. This qualitative study examined how students enrolled in in-person and remote synchronous English language workshops in an English as a Foreign Language…

The past few decades have seen a great amount of second language acquisition research on language learning strategies. Most of the research on strategy instruction had more practical goals than mere theoretical understanding. These practical goals are different ways of equipping learners with self-learning strategies. The latest developments in…

This quantitative and qualitative study explored students' perceptions of a flipped German course and its measurable impact on their critical-thinking skills. The instructional design of the course shifted grammar and vocabulary instruction outside of class so that students in the newly created collaborative in-class space could engage in more…

Critical thinking is believed to be an essential skill for 21st century survival and therefore has been widely promoted in education. In Hong Kong, critical thinking is one of nine generic skills to be developed across all subjects, including English. How students do critical thinking in ESL, which is seldom used outside school and yet holds high…

Teachers of English as a second language (ESL) are often on the frontline of working with adult ESL learners who are facing a difficult developmental pathway to academic and/or economic success. These learners come to the task of learning English with widely varying schooling experiences, degrees of first language literacy, and English language…

This action research project examines the impact of reading stories aloud on the development of children's reading and critical thinking strategies as well as on the improvement of English as a foreign language. Analysis of journal entries and transcriptions of recordings of the sessions were used to gather the information. Data collected revealed…

Based on a comprehensive language proficiency assessment project, this article reports on a four-level scale that assesses literary interpretation. The notional components are sequenced from the specific and concrete to the general and abstract, with focus on literary components that can be used to interpret any work. (Author/LB)

Research indicates that writing can be an important vehicle for integrating all the learning that occurs in a foreign language. However, a number of factors have conspired to displace foreign language writing as a critical skill: the push for oral proficiency, departmental fragmentation, larger class sizes, and heavier faculty loads. Second…

A study investigated the effectiveness of enrichment activities in developing the language proficiency, comprehension, and critical thinking skills of limited-English-proficient (LEP) children. Subjects were 19 LEP students (out of an original group of 21) in kindergarten through grade 5, who participated in enrichment activities including…