In the UK, Latin is often seen as an elitist subject taught largely at fee-paying schools. Over the past generation, however, great strides have been made in opening up the subject to students from all backgrounds. A major hindrance to widening access to Latin at university level is that the language can often prove challenging for students. Data…

"The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment" (CEFR) (Council of Europe. 2001. "Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) has been widely accepted as a reference for aligning curricula, learning…

Given the prominence of online teaching over the last few years, mobile instant messaging (MIM) has grown in importance for students studying English outside of class. Applications like WhatsApp have the potential to provide language learners the opportunity to practise communicative strategies while receiving feedback from a teacher. To explore…

The pandemic-induced shift to online learning has increased the relevance of Online Intercultural Exchanges (OIE) as a means to navigate student mobility challenges. Our study investigates the role of OIE in the internationalisation of higher education, focusing on how students' perceptions of the benefits of internationalisation through OIE have…

According to research in pragmatics, gender represents an important factor in individuals' turn-taking behaviour, with results indicating overall male-dominated conversational patterns. Despite the significance of gender in the students' conversational styles in an academic setting, gender and turn-taking has yet to be investigated in the foreign…

This paper presents a case study of the cross-institutional arrangements for Japanese language education between two universities in Canberra, Australia (University of Canberra and The Australian National University), investigating the effects of replacing on-campus course delivery with cross-institutional arrangements. It closely follows the…

Traditionally, pronunciation is taught through recognition- or repetition-based mechanical drills. Upon the arrival of the communicative approach, pronunciation has been neglected in the ELT classroom because these types of activities are considered uncommunicative and form-focused. The teachers and coursebooks, however, have failed to replace…

This study looks at the effectiveness of an intervention to improve student retention on a distance language course. Of the six beginners' language courses offered by the UK's Open University, the beginners' Welsh course has consistently had the lowest retention rates since it was first presented in 2008. In order to address this, a project was…

This paper analyses teachers' engagement with collaborative and open educational practices to develop their pedagogical expertise in the field of modern language (ML) learning and specific learning difficulties (SpLD). The study analyses the findings of a staff development initiative at the Department of Languages, Open University, UK, in 2013,…

In this article, the authors examine the fourth stage of their research into diversity in the languages classroom, focusing specifically on the teacher perspective in planning for and managing diversity in adult student groups. The article discusses findings from a day with experienced Open University language teachers working together on lesson…

This article explores what the "intercultural turn" might mean in the case of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). The discussion is contextualised in what has been termed the "expanding circle" of English and focuses on an English as a foreign language (EFL) class in a Mexican university, a context where…

In this article, we outline the challenges facing French Studies in regional Australian universities resulting from an increasingly vocational curriculum and doubts about the cost-effectiveness of language learning in higher education. These pressures have resulted in a process of discipline restructuring and significant cuts in the numbers of…

This article problematises certain aspects of methodology used for speaking practice and commonly applied in contemporary language teaching classrooms. It examines these particularly with relevance to diversity in adult learning groups. The aspects under scrutiny include the use of personal information in tasks, pair and group work, target…

This article reports on a collaborative research project which involved first-year distance learners of Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Spanish at a New Zealand university. Drawing on the principles of Allwright's exploratory practice, the study aimed to gain an insight into the learners' experiences and conceptualisations in terms of their…

Normal practice in course and text book construction is to provide learners with pre-selected material chosen by the authors to illustrate a pre-determined grammar, content or teaching syllabus. This paper will discuss the effect of the reversal of this process at a pilot workshop session in which learners themselves were invited to select the…