German university degrees, at least in some countries, offer students only German literature courses in addition to language courses. Linguistics is often not a core component of German degree programmes. As a result, students who are not familiar with basic linguistic terminology do not know how languages work, including their mother tongue, or…

In the last decade, Language MOOCs have attracted a lot of interest for their potential to enhance language learning. However, how learners engage with MOOC environments and realise their benefits, remains unclear. The current study adopts activity theory (Engeström in J Educ Work 14:133-156, 2001) as a lens to comprehend the affordances and…

This study aimed to explore the effectiveness of learning the Chinese Proficiency Test (HSK) 1 reading course through the Udemy platform and assess the learner's satisfaction with learning the Chinese course on the Udemy platform. The participants were 30 zero-foundation learners with minimal exposure to basic Chinese expressions and were randomly…

Responding to Donato and Brooks's (2004) call for undergraduate students to have more opportunities to engage in discourse at the advanced proficiency level, collaborative dialogues provide students with a situation conducive to language production and learning (Swain, 1997). As most of the research on collaborative dialogues has focused on the…

This study's goal was to determine if appropriately designed, completely virtual formats of language courses are able to engender in students speaking ability progress comparable to that fostered within traditional face-to-face (F2F) classrooms. The study further sought to clarify language learners' perceptions of online Japanese courses. The…

We closely replicated Wu and Ortega (2013), who found that an elicited imitation test (EIT) reliably distinguished low-level from high-level language abilities among instructed second language (L2) learners of Mandarin Chinese. The original study sampled learners: (1) from second-level courses to represent low-level language abilities; and (2)…

Foreign languages have been studied since the beginning of civilization; in the past few decades, there has been increased interest in understanding the role of motivation in learning a foreign language. Less than a quarter of studies on learning languages other than English (LOTE) have studied motivation. The purpose of this quantitative…

Post-communicative methodologies nowadays provide instructors with multiple curricular models to reimagine their syllabi, design creative assignments, and prepare their lessons. Yet, challenging topics are still often avoided, fearing students' limited language proficiency. Conversely, compelling content--carefully presented and pedagogically…

This article is the first large-scale study to document the speaking proficiency outcomes of intensive programs in less commonly taught languages in US higher education. Speaking proficiency was measured by pre- and postprogram ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interviews (N = 484) in 14 languages: Arabic, Bengali, Brazilian Portuguese, Hindi, Indonesian,…

English-medium instruction (EMI) is gaining popularity in higher education (HE) worldwide, with the aim of enhancing students' English proficiency and professional abilities. However, many students still struggle with learning various subjects in English. While the challenges in EMI are widely discussed in many studies, it is necessary to look…

The present project is a research-based and practice-tested online synchronous curriculum for English language learners with the Russian language mother tongue. The curriculum's theoretical component is grounded in Vygotsky's, Leont'ev', and Engestrom's "Cultural Historical Activity Theory" as well as in scholarly papers on the influence…

In December 2019, the University of Oxford Language Centre started to offer online courses in French, Spanish, and German at an advanced level. This not only enabled the Language Centre to pilot a new way of Modern Foreign Language (MFL) teaching ahead of the unprecedented 2020 health crisis, but also to open and expand 'Oxford to the world'. The…

Foreign language (FL) acquisition requires not only the development of target language skills, but also a cultural understanding of the region and its people. While this article addresses the development of an advanced Chinese language and culture course using film, the principles illustrated can be adapted for use in other advanced-level FL…

Given the acknowledged and undeniable advantages of literature in language education, it has been integrated into EFL curricula for undergraduate students as an essential subject. In the Algerian English departments before the reform introduced in the last two decades (the Licence, Master, doctorate system), literature used to have a privileged…

To help ESP college instructors improve the English curriculum taught at polytechnic institutes, colleges and universities, the current study proposes a model for designing English for Polytechnic Purposes (EPP) courses for undergraduate students majoring in mechanical engineering, chemistry, technology, economics, textile industry and other…