This article describes a narrative study exploring the challenges that international teaching assistants (ITAs) encounter when using humor in North American university classrooms. Twenty participants were recruited from twelve teaching fields. Each ITA participated in two interviews and a videotaped teaching observation. The participants talked…

This study investigated the first-person accounts of eight international counseling graduates (ICGs) upon re-entry to their home country to work after earning a university counseling degree from a program accredited by the Counsel for Accreditation and Counseling Related Educational Programs (CACREP) in the United States. An assumption of the…

This article examines a selection of responses about identity and belonging among students in an international school in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, who must often move from one continent to another because of the nature of their parents' work. A review of the literature highlights some of the issues these students face within an international school…

Language exchange refers to a learning partnership between two learners with different native languages who collaborate to help each other improve their proficiency in the other's language. The purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which language-exchange participants activate learner agency to construct opportunities for learning in…

As China and the United States become the top two carbon emitters in the world, it is crucial for citizens in both countries to construct a sophisticated understanding of energy consumption issues. This interview study examines how U.S. and Chinese students compare in explaining and arguing about two critical energy consumption issues: burning…

International teaching assistants face challenges in learning the norms for teaching in American universities. In order to address this learning curve this article describes a qualitative study of twenty international teaching assistants that examined how these participants viewed observations as part of their professional development. The study…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was: (1) to document the design and implementation process of an online video-based pre-arrival course that was intended to cultivate Asian students' willingness to communicate in American Classrooms; (2) to assess the effectiveness of the course by measuring students' oral proficiency and willingness to…

Using academic capitalism as a theoretical foundation, this phenomenological study examined the new study abroad experiences of Chinese college students in six popular English-speaking study destination countries--the U.S., the U.K., Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and Singapore. Qualitative data collected from 20 interviews indicate some…

This case study examines the classroom participation of a Korean queer (transgender) learner of English as a second language at a language institute for international adult students in the United States. To understand the dynamics of this learner's participation, we focus on how she constructed gender identity and learner identity in interaction.…

The old adage, "a picture is worth a thousand words", has special meaning in the world of research with international students as research participants. The incorporation of photos taken by the research participants to generate thoughts and ease communication is invaluable and can often result in rich, highly detailed interviews that…

This dissertation study focused on a feature of emergent interactions in the L2 classroom called unanticipated student utterances (USUs), which is defined as utterances spoken by the student that the teacher has not anticipated as part of the discussion at hand. The purpose of the study was to demonstrate why USUs are significant in the L2…

In 2014, the University of Aizu was accepted for participation in Japan's national TOP Global University (TGU) initiative. In this paper, we describe our use of video interviewing to prepare Japanese students for our Global Experience Gateway study abroad TGU project. Our university specializes in computer science education at undergraduate and…

The present study integrates service learning into English as a Foreign Language (EFL) speaking class using Web 2.0 tools--YouTube and Facebook--as platforms. Fourteen undergraduate students participated in the study. The purpose of the service-learning project was to link service learning with oral communication training in an EFL speaking class…

This study examined the range of instructional technology use in international teaching assistant (ITA) programs in U.S. universities and the perceptions ITA professionals have of this use. It consisted of two phases of data collection: telephone interviews and a web-based survey. The study identified and rank ordered 15 technology practices; the…

In this article, we set out to assess QuADEM (Quality Assessment of Digital Educational Material), one of the latest methods for evaluating online language learning courseware. What is special about QuADEM is that the evaluation is based on observing the actual usage of the online courseware and that, from a checklist of 12 different components,…