International teaching assistants (ITAs) often encounter challenges, and with the popularization of English medium instruction (EMI) in international higher education contexts, these problems are no longer restricted to English-speaking countries. Against this backdrop and drawing on the concept of identity paradox, the author presents an…

Extensive evidence indicates that education is an integral part of the settling in process for refugee and asylum-seeking children. Furthermore, it has been suggested that positive teaching practice with refugee pupils should be asset-based and holistic in nature. The present study examines educators' positive practices with refugee pupils and…

Despite their centrality to undergraduate teaching in U.S. universities, few studies focus on ITA's and their experiences within ITA training classes. Through a multiple case study of two In-Service ITA's (China, Taiwan) investments (Darvin & Norton, 2015) in one such class, it became clear how idiosyncratic are perception of these courses:…

"Accent work" is a term used to describe the preparatory work that professional actors undergo to attain a speech accent for a role. However, this article presents international teaching assistants (ITAs) as another set of workers who engage in their own type of accent work. Since the accents of ITAs are constructed as…

This study investigated how the NAO robot as a teaching assistant affects the way university students learn vocabulary and their attitudes towards it. A mixed method approach was followed to gather both quantitative and qualitative data. A quasi-experimental design, including a pre-test and a post-test, was employed to explore the impact of the…

This qualitative study explores how native peers as teaching assistants can support language learning in Higher Education. The data of five semi-structured group interviews of 15 teaching assistants in total were analysed thematically. The results indicate that the assistants embraced multiple roles during the programme and within the lessons.…

Language assistants have become an important resource for teachers in bilingual schools in Spain, especially in the Madrid region. Most language assistants come from English-speaking countries, especially from the United States. In their role as language assistants, they are expected to bring and share their knowledge about the cultural aspects…

Recent policy reforms in Scotland mean that all primary teachers are expected to teach a foreign language (FL) to children from age 5, introducing a second language around age 9. This small-scale research study aimed to ascertain 38 primary teachers' perceptions of their confidence to teach an FL to primary learners and what they felt would be…

This study aimed at investigating the English language needs of teaching assistants at the University of Khartoum, Sudan. The study focused on identifying the teaching assistants' purposes for learning English, and discovering the most important skills, language areas, and academic sub-skills they needed. The study also attempted to determine the…

Language teacher identity has been studied in several contexts in English Language Teaching (ELT) field; however, looking at language teacher identity in a United States context in which teachers from other countries teach their native languages as a foreign language has been a rare topic so far. Therefore, this phenomenological qualitative study…

In this article, Libby reflects on her experiences as a teacher, wife and mother while working at a school in Far North Queensland. In sharing these aspects of her identity, she effectively demonstrated one of the ways in which non-Indigenous educators can begin to connect with and address the learning needs of Indigenous students.

This study employs longitudinal Conversation Analysis (CA) to examine one TA's follow-up contributions in a series of EFL group discussion tests. By tracking the TA's interactional practices across 18 groups, we observe how she adapts her turn design by increasingly aligning towards that of the novice English speakers. The TA initially attempts to…

The field of L2 pragmatics demonstrates the effect of instructional intervention on the development of L2 learners' pragmatic competence. Nevertheless, effective instruction requires knowledge of pragmatic performances of L2 learners in naturally occurring conversations, in comparison to those of the target community speakers. This study, using a…

This study is developmental research attempting to explore a practical model to teach English speaking in distance courses via videoconferencing technology. Therefore, the Dick and Carey instructional model design is used as guidelines in developing a proposed English Speaking Teaching Model (ESTM). The research was divided into four phases. The…

This article describes the process by which the authors created a Virtual Learning Community for cultural and linguistic exchange between college students of Portuguese in the United States and undergraduate and graduate students of English in Brazil. In addition to describing the way the so-called tandem model for telecollaboration was adapted to…