To sustain students' continuous learning in a COVID-19 pandemic context, schools and universities have shifted traditional classroom teaching to synchronous online teaching. However, there is limited understanding of acceptance and adoption of synchronous online teaching by university teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL). This study,…

During teacher-centred classroom interaction, teachers often fail to solicit volunteer turn-takers. Even if students display their unwillingness to take a turn at the moment, teachers sometimes have no choice but to allocate them the turn, to move forward with the ongoing pedagogical activity. In such a moment, there can be a conflict between the…

This review of the literature on incorporating culture into English language teaching aims not only to revisit the need for intercultural awareness, which focuses on understanding the differences between cultures and appreciating them, but also to highlight the importance of foregrounding and endorsing similarities and commonalities, which can be…

This study investigates beginning EFL teachers' emotional labor from the perspective of the Activity Theory. Emotional labor is defined as the process of controlling one's emotions and emotional expressions in accordance with the occupational standards for proper emotional expression. Two beginning EFL teachers at Korean junior high schools were…

From early in their learning experience, foreign language (FL) learners at American universities explore socio-cultural connotations that, it is argued, are signified by FL words. Textbook authors and teachers follow an implicit canon of difference, a list of iconic words that over time--and without the benefit of empirical evidence--have come to…

This study explored the expectations that Moroccan native speakers (n = 57) and beginning-level learners of Arabic (n = 38) held of one another regarding conformity to Moroccan cultural norms. Questionnaires and interviews were used to unpack two assumptions that shape pedagogical practices: (1) that native speakers (NSs) expect nonnative speakers…

Classrooms tend to be absolute spaces, places where fluidity is rejected and nearly everything--from people, to ideas, to practices and policies--is viewed and organized through binary logic. Because binary logic is implicitly accepted as the natural order in schools and the structures resulting from it are highly unmalleable, individuals who…