This paper is concerned with the integration of informal language learning into university language modules in a foreign language environment. It begins by exploring the evolving nature of formal and informal language learning. This is followed by analysis of a pedagogic innovation intended to integrate foreign language activities in an informal…

This paper reports on research in secondary schools in Brunei to investigate how teachers and learners view the English language learning classroom. The paper reviews the literature on learner perceptions, and comparisons with those of teachers, and argues that a "researcher's agenda" frequently imposes limitations on data gathered. A…

In order to teach a language effectively, teachers need to be both proficient users of the target language, and have an explicit understanding of its linguistic structures. This study reports on the linguistic knowledge of Irish of a group of student primary teachers (SPTs) (N = 75) preparing to teach in primary schools in the Republic of Ireland.…

The purpose of this study was to explore the reasons for low retention rates among students in the Chinese classes in upper secondary education in the Czech Republic. The principal research question was whether Chinese characters were the main reason why many students decided to stop attending their Chinese classes. Semi-structured interviews with…

Despite an increasing number of studies that explore language learning beyond the classroom (LBC), research examining LBC activities in relation to in-class learning is very limited. This paper investigates what kinds of LBC activities university students of Chinese and Japanese in Australia engage in and how they connect these activities to…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of reading tasks delivered through WhatsApp on students' achievements in English reading comprehension and explore students' views on the process. A mixed-method research model was used. The participants were 54 seventh grade students, aged 11-12, who were divided into experimental and control…

The present mixed-method study focuses on levels of foreign language enjoyment (FLE), foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) and foreign language boredom (FLB) among 168 Arab and Kurdish English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in both in-person and emergency remote teaching (ERT) classes. Statistical analyses revealed that learners…

This qualitative study explored the perceptions of EFL students at a Chinese university regarding collocation learning. The participating students were provided with a collocation instruction and practice component over ten weeks within a regular one-semester EFL course. The participants were 15 Chinese first-year non-English major students. The…

Given the significant role vocabulary plays in second language acquisition, how to help learners acquire vocabulary has always been a concern for educators. Despite the general consensus that beliefs influence learners' behaviour, limited research effort has been devoted to the exploration of English as a second language (ESL) learners' beliefs…

This paper presents the findings of a research project on UK school students' attitudes to the use of Free Online Machine Translation for L2 production and more specifically in preparing for assessment. Data were collected from a publicly available online forum to analyse students' spontaneous discussion of the use of Free Online Machine…

The aim of this study is to investigate how L2 learners develop their ways of expressing compliments in L2 as a result of a virtual exchange. Although compliments play an important role in the discourse of second language (L2) classrooms studies exploring production of this speech act among L2 learners are limited. This study explores how 18…

Foreign language learning is highly interactive and requires opportunities for academic speaking. The focus of this paper is how foreign language undergraduate students experienced this process in an online learning context. Through semi-structured interviews with seven undergraduate French, German and Spanish students, participants highlighted…

Despite the centrality of motivation for all learning, few studies have examined the effectiveness of online language teacher education (OLTE) programmes within a psychological framework. This explorative study seeks to address this gap by evaluating the effectiveness of a two semesters OLTE course for German teachers in the Norwegian context. The…

This study explores the dialogical nature of agency when two immigrant pupils, who are learning Finnish as their new target language, are authoring their selves. Bakhtin's dialogism was the inspiration for this examination of the discourses that surround the L2 pupils' agency and how they respond to discourses through their agency.…

The instrumental motivations of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) have been examined in detail, but there is a lack of studies exploring how they compare to those of learners of other languages (LOTEs). To address this gap, this study draws on a questionnaire (N = 312) and on semi-structured interviews (n = 20) and focuses on…