Research on Portuguese language exams in the language assessment field remains scarce. To bridge this gap, this study examined washback from the large-scale, high-stakes Portuguese proficiency tests created by the Center of Evaluation of Portuguese as a Foreign Language ("Centro de Avaliação de Português Língua Estrangeira," or CAPLE as…

There now exists an established body of work outlining the challenges international students can face as part of the acculturation process, including a range of academic and non-academic pressures to overcome. For many students, writing essays in academic English for the first time is problematic. This article considers pedagogical approaches for…

This study examines the relationship between English Language Learners' (ELLs) English proficiency and standardized test performance. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, it incorporates quantitative data from test scores and qualitative data from teacher surveys and interviews. Findings indicate a significant correlation between ELLs' proficiency…

Moving from one educational setting to another is often accompanied by various psychological and emotional stressors. In the case of English education in Japan this is exacerbated further by an enduring ideological division in the field between English for test-taking and the use of English as a communicative tool. In order to explore potential…

Over the decades, extensive research efforts have been directed towards classifying and evaluating motivational teaching behaviours. Recent calls in motivational research, however, have emphasised the need to investigate teachers' perspectives on how they develop effective motivational strategies so that implications for motivational teaching are…

English language teaching is one of the requirements for many Bachelor of Education programmes in Taiwanese education colleges and universities. In Taiwan, English language is considered one of the general education requirements (usually eight credits) for all undergraduate students. Although additional English language courses are not required…

Though revising the existing syllabus is part of the Ethiopian education system, the study of the implementations of the notions of the syllabus attracts a few researchers' interests. Therefore, this study investigates teachers' practices of teaching speaking and compares them with the principles of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), the…

The study examined challenges EFL teachers in Burkina Faso face in teaching listening and speaking to grade 10 students in centralized education systems and how they address these issues. The primary obstacle is the focus on national exam formats, which prioritize grammar, vocabulary, and reading comprehension, sidelining communicative language…

Literature has long been used as a tool for language teaching and learning. In the New Academic Structure in Hong Kong, it has become an important element in the senior secondary English language curriculum to promote communicative language teaching (CLT) with a process-oriented approach. However, as in many other English as a second or foreign…

Admission in English-medium universities or institutions of higher education depends on the results obtained by candidates in large-scale proficiency tests including Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) internet-based test (iBT). The structure and administration procedure of the TOEFL iBT speaking test leaves no room for carrying out…

This ethnography examines how teachers interpret and enact language-in-education policies in an adult ESL classroom in the United States, where students simultaneously received job training as Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). We draw on postmodern and interpretive lenses from the ethnography of communication, considering how workforce-oriented…

Based on the comprehensive comparison of the principles of communicative language teaching (CLT) and the pedagogic ideas of Confucian heritage culture (CHC), this study discusses the conceptual common ground, where both principles can be reconciled, and considers practical, negotiated pedagogic forms with the suggestion of some cases of…

Recent technology advancements have increased the prospects for automated spoken language technology to provide feedback on speaking performance. In this study we examined user perceptions of using an automated feedback system for preparing for the TOEFL iBT® test. Test takers and language teachers evaluated three types of machine-generated…

The writing module of the IELTS has proven to be a challenging section for test takers. Part of this difficulty may stem from the divergence between what test takers expect to learn in such courses and what is delivered by instructors. To address this issue, a 24-item questionnaire (Student Questionnaire A) relating to IELTS writing preparation…

The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore Iranian IELTS candidates' strengths and weaknesses in IELTS Speaking Test in terms of IELTS's four speaking assessment criteria, namely Fluency and Coherence (FlC), Lexical Resource (LR), Grammar Range and Accuracy (GRA), and Pronunciation (Pro). It also aimed to examine the discourse features…