The study investigates whether and how mock interviews, an instructional component of business Chinese courses, prepare students for real interviews. The study included 11 American undergraduate students who participated in a 10-week summer study abroad program in China. Participants underwent two rounds of mock interviews with their instructors…

This study investigates Taiwanese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' use of strategies in developing job interview skills in English. The participants were 40 EFL learners majoring in English at a private university in Taiwan. The study was part of a four-week job interview training program, during which they prepared for a mock…

Within the English language teaching (ELT) profession, Donald Freeman is well known for his research in teacher education, teacher knowledge, and teacher learning. He was an invited guest for the XI Seminar of Applied Linguistics at the University of Guanajuato in May 2020. This interview of Professor Freeman examines how he started out in the…

Jessica Wu is Research and Development Program Director at the Language Training and Testing Center (LTTC) in Taipei, Taiwan. Jessica has been deeply involved in the development and validation of the General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) in addition to a number of other foreign language testing programs. Her research focuses on speaking…

Language is inherently variable, and learner language is particularly variable. The variationist paradigm considers learner language a heterogeneously variable yet inherently rule-governed system. Specifically, learners' alternation between native-like and nonnative-like variants of a variable or invariable target native speaker (NS) form…

The increasing internationalization of education has brought diversification to university student populations. The demographic changes pose great challenges to interview practice as interviews are increasingly occurring in cross-cultural contexts and often involve participants from diverse cultural backgrounds. Recent research has demonstrated…

Suresh Canagarajah is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor and Director of the Migration Studies Project, Departments of Applied Linguistics and English, Pennsylvania State University, USA. Having a BA with a major in English from the University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, and a PhD in Applied Linguistics from the University of Texas at Austin, USA, Professor…

Intonation plays an important role in understanding the intended meaning of speech since neglecting the study of intonation in the discourse leads to a misunderstanding of some pragmatic meaning. This study attempts to answer these two questions: what is the pragmatic function of the information tone types that are employed in Obama's speech…

Vijay Kumar Bhatia retired from his role as a professor at the City University of Hong Kong and is now Visiting Professor at the Hellenic American University in Athens, and Adjunct Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has extensive experience of teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels over a period exceeding 50 years in…

Learning a new language after forced migration has hardly ever been studied from the perspective of children. Their viewpoint, however, gets even more important, if we want to understand the lifelong consequences of their early experiences. With this aim, we use autobiographical accounts of persons who were rescued from Nazi Germany and brought to…

The increasing number of migrants and refugees arriving in Europe places new demands on European education systems. In this context, the role that free digital learning (FDL) could play in fostering inclusion has attracted renewed interest. While the existing literature highlights some general design principles for developing FDL for migrants and…

Due to unsatisfactory number of researches investigating ELT post-graduate programs, and perceptions of academics and students in these programs regarding mediation theory of Feuerstein, this study attempted to investigate the aspects of this theory in doctorate and master programs in ELT department of a state university. Methodologically, this…

This article provides critical student perspectives on a set of instructor-created materials in which students ultimately delivered a spoken anecdote in a class presentation. The research was conducted qualitatively through the lens of narrative inquiry. Data were gathered from six participants, all undergraduate English majors at a Japanese…

Communication strategies (CS) have been generally used to overcome oral communication problems in delivering the intended messages. While studies on CS mostly involved simulated communication contexts, the current study deviates from the past studies on CS by identifying the types of CS employed by candidates of real job interviews and examining…

While theories of embodied cognition have been investigated in lab experiments with proficient readers, currently no studies have applied these theories to improving reading comprehension for low-proficiency readers. Using an embodied cognition approach, this study investigated producing comics as an embodied reading activity. To compare effects…