Purpose: To prepare Hong Kong students to face a rapidly changing twenty-first century, the Hong Kong Government implemented a major curriculum reform entitled Learning to Learn--The Way Forward in Curriculum Development. This reform has shaped the direction of Hong Kong's school education since 2001. The purpose of this paper is to examine the…

Although course assignments require English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher candidates to design activities, performance assessments, and lessons that balance the teaching of the English language and academic content, the ESL teacher candidates remain perplexed as to how to teach without a prescribed curriculum. The answer is challenging, given…

This article examines the challenges experienced by Arabic-speaking students and lecturers at meeting the proposed learning outcomes in English Literature (EL) at a residential university in Algeria. An overview of the history of foreign languages (French and English) in the curricula in Algerian schools and tertiary education institutions has…

In the present study, an attempt has been made to determine the demotives affecting EFL learning of Iranian Islamic seminary students and also to distinguish the motivated and demotivated EFL learners in terms of their EFL learning as the major focus of this study. Fifty Iranian EFL seminary students were investigated using two validated…

This article presents results of an investigation that documents teachers' perceptions of the contribution of technology use in classrooms of bilingual learners. Study questions asked how teachers perceive teacher-made digital movies impact learning, and what situational factors delimit technology infusion. Data gathered in focus groups and…

There is a growing awareness of the importance of academic vocabulary, and more generally, of academic language proficiency, for students' success in school. There is also a growing body of research on the nature of the demands that academic language places on readers and writers, and on interventions to help students meet these demands. In this…

Addressing the academic needs of a growing student population with culturally and linguistically diverse characteristics is one of the challenges facing educators. This study used data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study to test for differences in patterns of mathematics growth (e.g., high, middle, and low performance groups) in Latino…

This paper will present a brief overview of the recent shifts within English and EAL/D (English as an additional language/dialect) curriculum documents and their focus on critical literacy, using the Queensland context as a case in point. The English syllabus landscape in Queensland has continued to morph in recent years. From 2002 to 2009,…

Blended learning has been described as a pedagogical approach that combines effectiveness and socialization opportunities of the classroom with the technologically enhanced active learning possibilities of the online environment (Dziuban, Hartman, & Moskal, 2004). It has also been depicted as an approach that combines traditional learning with…

In this paper we present a comprehensive model of instruction for providing consistent, high quality teaching to L2 students. This model, the SIOP Model (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol), provides an explicit framework for organizing instructional practices to optimize the effectiveness of teaching second and foreign language learners.…

Given the emerging focus on the intercultural dimension in language teaching and learning, language educators have been exploring the use of information and communications technology ICT-mediated language learning environments to link learners in intercultural language learning communities around the globe. Despite the potential promise of…

This study responds to the Italian Ministry of Education mandate that, starting the 2013-2014 academic year, CLIL be implemented in the "final" year of high school, during content time, by content teachers with C1-level competence in English. This decision raises numerous concerns, at least in Calabria: most content teachers have, at…

The present study uses a questionnaire instrument to measure the importance that students from a Korean university place on a wide range of effective foreign language teacher attributes. Respondents to the present study placed high importance on rapport attributes such as friendliness, care, and patience; and delivery attributes which included the…

Discourse markers can clearly indicate the organization of discourse, remind the hearer of the preceding and the following contents, and express clearly the concrete speech acts. The aims of this study are to explore the relationship between the discourse-marker-based model and listening comprehension as well as the different effects of such a…

This study is an attempt to examine the effect of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) on reading comprehension in an Iranian English as a foreign language (EFL) context. It was hypothesized that CALL has an effect on reading comprehension. Forty female learners of English at intermediate level after administering a proficiency test were…