At the end of the first semester of the 2017/18 academic year, we conducted research in the form of focus groups on the attitudes of disadvantaged primary school students toward language learning and school. The students were asked about their thoughts relating to school, their self-perceived academic efficiency and their experiences related to…

English language teaching (ELT) in Vietnam has been influenced mostly by the native speaker model through the communicative language approach (Pham, 2005). With the spread of globalisation, however, English as an international language has undergone major demographic, geographic, and structural changes. The current roles and status of English…

The settlement in Australia of people fleeing from war and persecution is claimed as proof of its humanitarian credentials. Australia's identity as a settler colony draws attention to a darker history, featuring colonial practices that remain in the background of educational debates. The paper begins with two examples of harsh and punitive…

The paper reports on the availability and use of mobile resources by newly arrived Arabic migrants in Sweden, and how the resources meet migrants' integration needs. Analysis of websites and applications (hereafter apps) in combination with focus group interviews is used. Results show that though a variety of resources are available, translation…

The work presented here is a qualitative study of socio-cultural approaches to literary texts in a selection of upper secondary English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms in Norway. The article explores opportunities and challenges related to the fostering of competent "intercultural readers" in foreign language (FL) educational…

The aim of this article is to analyze the current teaching practices utilized with undergraduate students at a private university in Ibagué-Tolima, who are required to complete Reading Comprehension coursework to obtain their professional degree. Two different methods for Critical Literacy proposed by Clarke and Whitney, and McLaughlin and…

This paper describes a study to investigate the challenges and obstacles to speaking Arabic faced by good and poor Malay speakers of Arabic. The study used individual and focus group interviews with 14 participants to elicit data. The findings revealed 2 types of obstacles, namely, internal and external obstacles. Internal obstacles refer to the…

This research study investigates the cognitive, psychological and personal factors affecting the accuracy and fluency of English language usage among Arab learners. Early research led by Chomsky (1965) and Krashen (1981) suggested that an individual's Language Acquisition Device once triggered at the appropriate time and supported with adequate…

This paper draws on a case study conducted in a Chinese university in the context of national College English reform. The aim is to investigate the policy enactment of the latest College English reform in China and the interaction between national policies, institutional policy, and teacher agency in responding to this educational reform from an…

This study investigates the level of pragmatic competence for ESL writing skills among Nigerian undergraduates. Methodologically, it adopts descriptive research design within the explanatory framework of the QUAN-Qual model. The instruments used are descriptive essay text and focus group interview questions. In writing the descriptive essays, a…

The purpose of this study is to examine how English as a foreign language pre-service teachers develop their identities through the process of learning to teach in a university microteaching class and a student teaching practicum within a multilingual Indonesian context. A sociocultural theoretical lens incorporating activity theory as well as a…

This paper presents a classroom experience regarding the use of wikis in L2 collaborative writing settings. Framed in the current post-positivist educational climate in higher education, the adoption of wikis as a Technology-Enhanced Language Learning (TELL) platform complements and enriches the classroom-based interaction of L2 learners. While…

E- Dictionaries have the potential to be a useful instrument in English Language classes, at the same time; it can be seen as a waste of time and a hindrance tool in the English Language classroom. This paper reports on students' use of e-dictionary in two of "Educational Readings in the English Language" course sections through in-depth…

While existing research has shown the importance of the three interrelated domains of the wider policy, the school and home/community environments in the development of quality education for learners, this literature does not fully capture the experiences of the refugee population. In this article we focus on a group of Syrian refugees who came as…

Language instruction is conducted by utilizing the data provided by contemporary educational sciences and based on the fact that learning is both a cognitive and affective process. Instruction of reading skills, one of the four basic language skills in Turkish as a foreign language instruction, is a complex process that range from the introduction…