Visualizing oneself joining imagined communities of target language (TL) use represents a potent motivation for language study. Given that rationales for the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme include fostering internationalization, a student-centered classroom, and communicative skills, teaching to promote learners envisioning themselves…

This study examined number marking comprehension among Japanese learners of second language (L2) English, whose first language (L1) does not have an obligatory number marking system. The study conducted an online sentence comprehension experiment with 96 L1-Japanese learners and 32 native speakers of English, wherein participants engaged in a…

Undertaking a Virtual Exchange (VE) project for the first time is supported by introductory online training and mentoring offered through the European Commission's Erasmus+ programme, and can be a source of teacher Professional Development (PD). This study based on Exploratory Practice (EP) describes aspects of the planning and implementation of…

Academic visitor programs aim to enhance university teachers' teaching and research capacity and intercultural competence. Its impact, however, has remained under-researched. Using the data collected from two rounds of in-depth interviews with 13 Chinese university English teachers over a year and a half, this study explored their experiences as…

Virtual exchange (VE) is an umbrella term used to refer to the engagement of groups of students in sustained online intercultural interaction and collaboration with international partners under the guidance of their teachers. In the computer-assisted language learning literature, telecollaboration and eTandem approaches to VE have been researched…

Interacting with native speakers in various types of virtual exchanges is becoming increasingly accessible for language learners and teachers around the world. The present study examined the experiences of beginning and intermediate level learners of Spanish in the United States as they interacted weekly with native Spanish speakers over the…

This paper reports on the narrative of Shannon, a Taiwanese Canadian female assistant language teacher (ALT) of the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme, one of the world's largest government-sponsored programmes for recruiting English language teachers to teach overseas [Nagatomo (2016). "Identity, gender and teaching English in…

This study aimed to explore critical cultural awareness improvement of prospective teachers with a transnational virtual exchange project. Within the scope of this study, prospective teachers of English studying at English Language Teaching (ELT) department in Turkey attended a virtual exchange project that was organized with other prospective…

This article draws on the Language Learning Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence Program 2012 thanks to which Dr. Suresh Canagarajah from Pennsylvania State University lectured at Universidad de La Plata in Argentina in May of that year. He delivered a talk open to language teachers, students and the community in general and also taught a…

This qualitative study explores how native peers as teaching assistants can support language learning in Higher Education. The data of five semi-structured group interviews of 15 teaching assistants in total were analysed thematically. The results indicate that the assistants embraced multiple roles during the programme and within the lessons.…

In the context of learning a second language, the passing on of cultural information as a means to further the development of intercultural competences is primarily viewed as being unidirectional--the "native-speaking culture" passing on information to the language learning student. However, in EFL (English as a foreign language)…

Japan has made developing global human resources ("gurobaru jinzai ikusei") a national priority. The government has invested billions of yen annually to double the number of Japanese students studying overseas, double the number of globally competitive Japanese universities, and improve Japanese students' English test scores. A broad,…

Short-term international experiential learning opportunities can foster language teachers' multidimensional development. Even though such experiences are considered beneficial for language teachers' development, educational reviews have scarcely concentrated on a comprehensive synthesis of the impact of such experiences on language teachers. This…

In this study, we examined the use of compliments, self-praise, and self-denigration, as exchanged among nonnative English users. This was part of participation in an online cross-cultural exchange project (Ibunka 2019), which involved learners from six countries (Algeria, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, and the Netherlands). The aim of the…

The involvement of a native English speaker teacher (NEST, henceforth) in teaching English is a new phenomenon in Sumbawa Besar. SMAN 2 Sumbawa Besar involved a NEST sent by the American Indonesian Exchange Foundation (AMINEF) through the Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETA) program. This study aims at describing the roles of a NEST on the…