This paper investigates the phenomenon of greeting in English, which can be surprisingly challenging for speakers of other languages, such as Chinese. By 'greeting' we mean the seemingly 'simple' act of choosing conventionalized expressions at the opening of an encounter. Following pilot interviews with Chinese learners of English who reported…

Online crowdsourcing sites/platforms have become popular in recent years. This study aims to uncover when, where, and how language learners in Turkey (TUR), Poland (POL), Macedonia (MAC), and Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) make use of the available crowdsourcing websites/games to learn foreign languages. To ensure parallelism among the data…

Performative refers to a type of action that is performed under the sentence having been uttered. Knowing a language entails understanding how to construct correct sentences and how to use those sentences to construct appropriate utterances. As a result, they frequently employ a variety of linguistic forms. An utterance is, however, only a…

International students experience unique challenges that place them at risk for academic misconduct violations, including language, academic expectations, cultural differences, academic preparedness, and policy understanding. Academic misconduct issues can significantly risk student success, leaving international students especially susceptible to…

While there are many studies on speaking anxiety in English, speaking anxiety in Turkish learned in target context remains under-examined. This qualitative study was intended to investigate the sources of speaking anxiety for foreign learners of Turkish as a second language and their coping strategies with these challenges. The data collected…

The present study investigated the production of the speech act of disagreement among Tunisian non-native students of English and American native speakers of English. Discourse completion test (DCT) was used to elicit disagreement strategies by the informants. Non-native informants produced a total of 376 acts and native informants produced 395…

Teacher educators wonder how to prepare student teachers for urban teaching. Beginning teachers in urban environments experience multiple challenges, such as responding appropriately to language differences and cultural diversity. This study aims to provide insight into how Dutch teachers are prepared for teaching in urban schools. A multiple case…

English teachers must be prepared to attend to the intercultural aspects of language learning. In Indonesia, this challenge is compounded by education policies that also require teachers to sustain Indonesian cultural values. Without explicit preparation or guidance, these two expectations could be quite challenging to novice teachers. The…

The current study investigated the influence of context-external variables; social power (High, Equal and Low) and social distance (Familiar and Unfamiliar) on the perception of Jordanian and English speech act of apology. Discourse Completion Test (DCT) and Scaled Response Questionnaire (SRQ) were used to elicit data from three groups: 40…

Studies on second language (L2) learners' strategies tended to characterize strategies as individual learners' cognitive predispositions or personality traits, leaving a critical question unanswered: Why do learners use different strategies in different contexts? From a sociocultural perspective, this article pursued this question by focusing on…

Drawing from social identity theory and its categorization process, the present study crossexamines Japanese students' contrastively different attitudes toward Asians and European (-looking) people in two different contexts: (1) Japanese students in the overseas English language school context who perceive a sense of solidarity with other Asian,…

These proceedings contain the papers and posters of the 11th International Conference on Mobile Learning 2015, which was organised by the International Association for Development of the Information Society, in Madeira, Portugal, March 14-16, 2015. The Mobile Learning 2015 Conference seeks to provide a forum for the presentation and discussion of…

The purpose of this study is to examine a refugee boy's experiences with literacy in and out of school in the US. Within these contexts, I explore this youth's literacy development in light of his identity as a poor Yezidi Kurdish refugee from Iraq. Central to the article are two main themes. The first, life as a scorpion sting, explicates the…

Adult native speakers of English and German were asked to give subjective reactions to common conversational routines presented in context (such as "Oh, I'm very sorry"), using new adaptation of Osgood's Differential Scale called the Pragmatic Differential. Analysis of ratings showed similarities and differences in how the two groups react to…

How Chinese students and their teachers see the context and content of their learning is explored in the essays in this collection. Seeing these students in their own cultural backgrounds helps in the exploration of Western educational theory and practice as well. The contributions are: (1) "Learning Theories and Approaches to Research: A…