This paper presents findings from an exploratory study of foreign language planning in Saudi Arabia. In terms of official policy, the sole foreign language taught in Saudi public schools is English. Therefore, researching foreign languages there is often limited to researching the area of English as a Foreign Language. However, evidence shows that…

Cross-linguistic transfer studies began from linguistic aspects of language learning and moved to non-linguistic aspects. The intriguing question is whether students are aware of the nature of these cross-linguistic interactions in their minds. For this purpose, a semi-structured interview was conducted with four Iranian university students. It…

Drawing on qualitative interview and focus group data collected from Internationally Educated Teachers (IETs) in the context of two different research studies conducted in Ireland and Manitoba, Canada, this article critically examines how national/regional linguistic requirements and expectations of a hidden curriculum are experienced as barriers…

Language students in the UK undertake their "year abroad" with high hopes for a linguistic and social "immersion" experience. However, past research shows that language learning success, while real, can be uneven, and that many Erasmus exchange students form social relations largely with other international students. New…

The world is changing. Human mobility is at an all-time high, and globalization is a consequence of that mobility. Traditionally, a preservice teacher preparation program would require students to spend one to two semesters teaching in local schools under the guidance of an experienced teacher. Conversely, intercultural student teaching programs…

This study examines the role of the use of the L1 in EFL classes from the perspective of EFL learners. The triangulated data were collected using class observations, focus group semi-structured interviews and the learners' written reports of their perceptions and attitudes in a purpose-designed questionnaire. The participants consisted of sixty…

Since Italy's unification in 1861, the establishment and diffusion of the standard Italian language at the expense of all other linguistic varieties has dominated language and education policy discourses. Today, as Italy has transformed from a country of mass "emigration" to a country of mass "immigration," the language…

The present study attempted to identify the preferred learning styles of non-Arabic speaking EFL faculties hired to teach at the Saudi universities and those of Saudi EFL university students towards learning English and to use learning styles data to inform e-learning design for Saudi EFL university students. The study used a mixed-methods design…

Through ethnographic research, this paper explores narratives of failure constructed within a private Australian accounting college in China. The accounts provided by teachers and students are problematized in order to address how racialization is enacted through accounts of failure within the research site. Through an interpretive theoretical…

This study investigated EFL students' and teachers' perspectives and experiences of managing foreign language anxiety (FLA). Data were obtained from 49 student autobiographies, 18 student interviews, 8 teacher interviews and 351 student responses to an open-ended question. Content analysis was used to analyse the data with the use of NVivo. A…

This study looks at Student Teams-Achievement Division (STAD) implementation from a qualitative approach by observing and interviewing a teacher who successfully improved his EFL students' reading achievement with this technique. The procedures by Shaaban and Ghaith (2005) were the foundation for STAD implementation, and an interview was done to…

This paper addresses the phenomenon of Language Maintenance and Language Shift through a qualitative study of Tamil language in the family domain in Singapore. The influence of Singapore's bilingual policy and the institutional support offered for maintenance of Tamil language provide the context in which the central research problem of the status…

Little attention has been given to investigating the experiences of teacher researchers while undertaking their studies. In an attempt to explore what accounts for the stereotyped and imitative trends in the studies conducted by English language teachers in Egypt, the present study has explored how they select research topics and the factors…

This research set out to explore what the author interpreted as a interpreted as a pedagogical shortcoming in the intercultural understanding (IU) model of cultural awareness, which prevails in foreign language (FL) education. According to it, fostering intercultural competence (Byram and Gribkova 2002; Deardorff 2009) is often considered one of…

This article investigates the reading practices of 45 EFL Yemeni students using the "learning by design" framework. The framework organizes the teaching and learning of literacy into four processes: experiencing, conceptualising, analysing, and applying. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to collect data on a sample of…