English has experienced grave transformations recently in terms of socio-demographic and geographical characteristics. While such transformations have resulted in diverse types of English uses and various English users, the existing ELT materials still fail to represent the global varieties and dynamic uses and users of English. Moving from a…

Advanced grammar courses often present standardized grammar rules to students without considering sociolinguistic variation. As a result, many native/heritage students feel that they speak "incorrectly," and many second language learners do not get an accurate picture of the target language's real-world grammar. This article describes…

Language echoes cultural values, norms and many other features of a society, and is regarded as an inseparable part of such characteristics. Despite the fact that values and features of a society may be kept apart from language in language education, this though would be an incomplete process of language instruction. With this study, we aim to…

This current study reports the findings of sociolinguistic research investigating the place of the "voseo" in the Spanish language curriculum in the United States. The study describes the results of questionnaire responses from 177 US Spanish teachers and survey responses from 560 US college students of Spanish. Both instruments sought…

The present study aimed at investigating the influence of social power, as a social hierarchy, on perception of speech act of apology by 40 Jordanian second language speakers (JL2Ss) compared to that of 40 Jordanian non-English speakers, those whose English proficiency is low (JNESs) and 40 English native speakers (ENSs). Discourse Completion Test…

Despite the global spread of English, it seems that voices from nonnative English teachers concerning English as an international language (EIL) are under-represented. To address the issue, this study sought to investigate the nonnative teachers' perceptions of idealized native-speaker linguistic and pragmatic norms in the EIL context.…

This study examines Hong Kong major stakeholders' (secondary students, university students, teachers and professionals) perceptions of language variation, English language teaching (ELT) and language use in their everyday communication via a large-scale questionnaire survey (N = 1893). Based on principal components analysis of the questionnaire…

Pragmatic competence is an indispensable aspect of language ability in order for second and foreign language (L2/FL) learners to understand and be understood in their interactions with both native and nonnative speakers of the target language. Without a proper understanding of the pragmatic rules in the target language, learners may run the risk…

This paper addresses the process of transcribing and annotating spontaneous non-native speech with the aim of compiling a training corpus for the development of Computer Assisted Pronunciation Training (CAPT) applications, enhanced with Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology. To better adapt ASR technology to CAPT tools, the recognition…

"Although" is a frequently used subordinating conjunction in English. However, non-nativeness is often observed in Chinese EFL learners' "although" output during pedagogical practice. This paper aims at exploring the characteristics of Chinese EFL learners' "although" employment in Chinese EFL learners' writing. The…

The present study investigates the collocational profiles of (1) three series of graded textbooks for English as a foreign language (EFL) commonly used in Taiwan, (2) the written productions of EFL learners, and (3) the written productions of native speakers (NS) of English. These texts were examined against a purpose-built collocation list. Based…

Students' learning is assumed to be promoted through peer-group discussion. Most studies show the presence of qualitative improvements in either oral or written reasoning as a result of such interactions. However, knowledge on the relationship between talk qualities and text qualities is scarce. We adopt an explorative design using statistical…

Teacher education represents an essential step to raise awareness of the sociolinguistic changes brought about by the current pluralization of English and by its lingua franca role. Within the pre-service teacher education programs run at the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Verona, Italy, part of the English language…

The current study examines English-speaking learners of Spanish and their pragmatic development of request forms during a six-week immersion program in Madrid, Spain. Elicited production and intuition data were analyzed, focusing on personal deictic orientation, directness evidenced by clause type, and the use of "por favor"…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a mobile-assisted dialect awareness programme on the dialect attitudes of pre-service English language teachers in Turkey. The study adopted a pre-test and a post-test design including 58 first-grade pre-service English language teachers in two different classes. The experimental group…