The current study investigates how foreign language enjoyment (FLE), foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) and attitude/motivation (AM) of 360 learners of English, German, French and Spanish in a Kuwaiti university was shaped over the course of one semester by three teacher behaviours: frequency of using the foreign language (FL) in class,…

This study examined the use of humour in EFL classrooms in Islamic higher education in Indonesia. It intends to find out whether Indonesian EFL teacher educators used humour as pedagogy and how they used it. Using a narrative inquiry method, it involved 25 EFL students undertaking English Writing courses working in groups of two or three members…

The present study examined the effect of a pedagogical intervention about humorous verbal irony in Spanish with a mixed group of 40 second language (L2) and heritage speakers of Spanish. Unlike previous studies that have considered only irony comprehension, this project incorporated both comprehension and production of irony into instruction and…

Internet memes--usually taking the form of an image, GIF, or video with text--have become an important type of semiotic tool for meaning making. Due to the fact that memes can help learners leverage semiotic modes in social contexts, they hold great potential for language education. Integrating ecological social semiotic frameworks, this…

The interactional roles of smile and laughter have been widely explored in both institutional settings and mundane talk (e.g. Holt 2016; Potter and Hepburn 2010). However, the role of one specific kind of smile, what we call a 'squeezed-mouth smile' (SMS), remains unexamined. Using CA, this study explores one teacher's use of SMS in response to…

Teaching vocabulary is a big challenge for teachers, and also a huge difficulty for students is to remember the vocabulary items. The main purpose of this study is to create an enjoyable learning and teaching environment to help students revise certain vocabulary items and make students have fun by being creative. In that, memes are trendy…

Expressing emotions in a narrative requires a high degree of narrators' involvement in and reflection of personal experiences. An array of complex emotions is reflected in the narrators' use of a wide range of language and paralanguage tools when they share their feelings with their audience. This study attempted to investigate how female…

Although there is a body of research on the teacher first language (L1) use in English-medium-instruction (EMI) classrooms, very little research has probed into how international students perceive local teacher L1 use and their learning practices in the English as a lingua franca (ELF) context. To address the gap, the present case study explored a…

Based on interaction recorded in EFL classrooms, this study uses Conversation Analysis to document the post-first deployment of an absurd candidate formulation (ACF) to pursue recipient response at points of interactional delay. ACFs are a form of correction-invitation device in which the question initiator proffers a candidate response that is…

This paper investigates the use of laughter and smiling to manage (dis)affiliation during two types of disturbances in the interactional unfolding of classrooms: delayed and disaligning responses. The analysis reveals that the sequential position and embodied turn design are integral to understanding the (dis)affiliative work laughter and smiling…

Student mobility across national borders has been increasing at an extraordinary pace. Correspondingly, much research has been conducted into issues concerning learners that move internationally to pursue learning in a culturally different country. To a great extent, vigorous debate and research did promote cross-cultural diversity, understanding…

Humor is a fundamental pedagogical tool that EFL teachers can utilize in the classroom to maximize their effectiveness. Furthermore, humor in pedagogy is a basic tool that can help teachers to create a motivating atmosphere in class to enhance student learning. For years, educational researchers have tried to investigate humor implementation in…

In classrooms in India where the instructional language is to be English, speakers use reported speech in Indian regional languages for pedagogical purposes, renegotiating the roles and statuses among languages in the multilingual setting. Reported speech is a form of indirect speech used when a speaker quotes another in a way that they voice the…

This study explored the language practices of a small group of international Chinese students in an anglophone Higher Education context where English was the medium of instruction. The context was the first year of an early childhood education course at an Australian university. Building on findings from research in conversation analysis on…

Given the loss of heritage languages due to assimilation of the dominant English language in U.S. society within three generations of migration to the U.S. (Wiley & Valdes, 2000), it is of paramount importance to examine how we can maintain and enhance heritage languages. Humor is a pragmatic tool which one can utilize to increase…