This study (a) conducted a feature analysis of the spoken data of Chinese university students in pronunciation, grammar, and discourse, (b) investigated the contributions of the discrete linguistic features to the perceptual ratings on foreign accent, comprehensibility, delivery, and general language use. Ten university learners were selected from…

The article furthers the study of urban multilingual (i.e. metrolingual) practices, in particular the study of customer interactions, by a focus on the use of gestures in these practices. The article focuses on fluent deaf signers and hearing non-signers in Mumbai who use gestures to communicate with each other, often combined with mouthing,…

This article explores the author's embodied experience of linguistic incompetence in the context of an interview-based, short, promotional film production about people's personal connections to their spoken languages in Glasgow, Scotland/UK. The article highlights that people's right to their spoken languages during film interviews and the…

This paper first surveys three kinds of learner interview corpora (LINDSEI, NICT-JLE Corpus, and Trinity Lancaster Corpus), paying particular attention to their interview structures. Then, it explains the principles and features of the ICNALE Spoken Dialogue (ICNALE SD), which includes 425 videos and approximately 1.6-million-word transcripts of…

Due to the fact that Germany and Poland are both members of the Schengen Treaty, the role of the political borders between these two states has been reduced to a minimum. On account of the four freedoms, debordering processes have enabled the creation of borderscapes--places of transition, where time and space interact and where cultures and…

Oral Proficiency Interviews (OPIs) are widely used to measure speaking ability in a second or foreign language. The Michigan English Language Assessment Battery (MELAB) Speaking Test is an OPI used for academic and professional purposes around the world. However, little research on this or other OPIs has quantitatively compared test takers' speech…

In this paper, we explore the extent to which a stay abroad in a Danish university in which English is a frequent medium of instruction can be a very suitable context for students to increase their language proficiency and to develop both awareness of their communicative skills and their confidence in them. The data analysed come from (i) a pre-…

This article presents part of a research project where the aim is to investigate six- to seven-year-old children's language use in storytelling. The children's oral texts are based on the picture book "Frog, Where Are You?" The book consists of a series of episodes that more or less directly point to the plot structure. However, it also…

This article explores the identities of a group of elementary teachers who participated in a professional development (PD) project on multilingual language learners. We study how the participating teachers drew on different aspects of their identities to respond to encouragement to increase their attention to students' diverse multilingual…

Young adults in South Korea are encouraged to constantly develop their skills and qualifications to meet the challenges posed by the job market in the country's neoliberal post-IMF crisis economy. This paper examines the ways in which changes in South Korea's labor market and corporate recruitment culture have affected the ideologies and practices…

The Pueblo People of the Southwest face numerous challenges with reference to language issues. A substantial number of Native American students are placed into special education possibly due to different linguistic abilities. The over-identification of Native American students for special education programs may be due to the lack of knowledge as a…

In the age of technology, educators are encouraged to incorporate online resources into their teaching, but the effectiveness of these resources on learning and the student perspective is rarely taken into consideration. A key aspect to the assessment of online resources for international students is the user's perspective. Culture has a…

This article reports on a study that investigated the role of metapragmatic awareness of L2 learners in Hong Kong, and the impact it has on language choices when addressing requests in English. Simulated open role-plays and retrospective interviews were used to explore the ways in which mainland Chinese undergraduates assess, plan and produce…

This article is framed by the notion of "educación" and how it influenced the narratives of resistance of 12 seasoned bilingual teachers (Solórzano &Yosso, 2002). Using an oral narrative approach, we share participants' descriptions of the connections between their "educación" within their families and communities and how…

Instructional influences on productive use of academic vocabulary were investigated among 460 mostly African American and Latina/o fifth graders from 36 classrooms in eight public schools serving low-income families. Students received a 6-week unit on wolf management involving collaborative group work (CG) or direct instruction (DI). The big…