This two-cycle action research explores how Colombian students from rural and urban areas construct community knowledge by exploring funds of knowledge using dialogue journals. Thirty-three seventh graders from an urban school participated in the first phase and 19 sixth graders from a rural school and 18 eighth graders from an urban school in the…

This paper focuses on integrating multimodal communication into the English-as-a-foreign-language classroom to enhance the development of students' multimodal communicative competence, multiliteracies, and 21st-century skills. To do so, I compiled a corpus of authentic materials from Lady Whistledown's Society Papers in Julia Quinn's novel…

Social issues are believed to enrich English language teaching with meaningful topics. In this article we describe and reflect on an innovative practice which combined content and language integrated learning with comprehensive sexual education at a state secondary school in Argentina. By law, comprehensive sexual education must be included across…

This paper reports a qualitative action-research study on the use of cooperative learning through literature in two vulnerable English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms in Chile. The study aimed at bridging EFL inequality by exposing students to a different methodology using cooperative learning, and content-based instruction through…

The present study compares the pronunciation practices of three English instructors (two teaching in Australia and one in Japan) with the perceptions of their learners (n = 49). A student questionnaire, semi-structured teacher interviews, and classroom observations were used to collect data. The findings show that the learners strongly desire to…

In this qualitative study, we intend to discuss how adolescent students in a Brazilian public school classroom define their body image and personalize the themes "beauty standards" and "fatness." Grounded on a critical approach to language teaching, these two social themes were problematized in eight lessons of "Ensino…

This article reports on an action research study about the exploration of local communities to enact agency and value rural identity. Thirty-three students from a rural public school in Colombia participated in the study. Our aim was to examine ways in which students enacted agency as a result of participating in local community inquiry to realize…

Teacher education programs have evolved mostly from the scholarly world's perspective, which can eventually impact the work that practitioners face on an everyday basis, particularly in regard to dealing with their students. This article of reflection addresses aspects related to a Brazilian teacher's personal practical knowledge and the role of…

Current communication is increasingly computer-mediated, dynamic, dialogic, and global, so students should master new information, communication technologies, and digital genres, as well as acknowledge the global role of the English language. Thus, this paper aims to offer a teaching proposal, to be ideally implemented in the secondary education…

This research has the aim of highlighting the importance of motivation in the process of learning English as a foreign language. For that purpose, some factors that affect motivation are described, using as a starting point the answers obtained from a questionnaire given to students in their fourth year of compulsory secondary education. The main…

This research study examined how a group of ninth graders enhanced the speaking skill in an English as a foreign language classroom through project-based learning. Data about the experience were collected through field notes, transcripts of learners' oral performance, and one interview. Grounded theory was implemented for data analysis, out of…

The main objective of this study was to identify 6th to 11th grade students' beliefs about their English class in a public institution in Armenia, Colombia. By means of interviews, drawings, and focus groups with 30 students, four beliefs were established. It was found that students' beliefs are attached to the experiences they have lived in their…

This action research study examines the effect of self-evaluation on grammatical range and grammar accuracy on the English speaking performance of 27 foreign language university and pre-university students enrolled in three different language centers, in three different cities in Colombia. Participants were asked to record themselves answering…

This article focuses on Mexican students' perceptions of learning the history of Mexico in English through content-based instruction, which is one of many types of bilingual pedagogical approaches that are now considered established approaches in Mexico and around the globe. A phenomenological approach was chosen in order to understand and examine…

In this paper we reflect on the extent to which the learner-centred curriculum in English language teaching includes teachers and learners. We briefly describe the top-down nature of curriculum development in Argentina, then describe and discuss personal and collaborative explorations based on our identities as teachers of English in secondary…