Drawing upon Kachru's concentric circles of English, the present study explores whether middle-class Japanese students who chose to study English solo at private language schools in Singapore diverge from many others who (wish to) study inner-circle English. The study is stimulated by the repeated interdisciplinary findings that, in spite of the…

This qualitative instrumental case study explores various factors that might influence upper-intermediate-level English as a second language (ESL) students' summarizing from a sociocultural perspective. The study was conducted in a formal classroom setting, during a reading and writing class in the English Language Institute at a university in the…

This paper joins growing interest in the concept of practice, and uses it to reconceptualise international student engagement with the demands of study at an Australian university. Practice foregrounds institutional structures and student agency and brings together psychologically- and socially-oriented perspectives on international student…

With more constructivist approaches to learning in higher education and more value on teamwork skills, students' oracy (speaking and listening) features more prominently in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. The paper reports on a study of two first-year Australian university courses in disciplines with explicit industry orientations and high…

In the school counselling literature, little focus is placed on international students who are learners of English as an Additional Language (EAL) and on school counselling support related to their language acquisition. Using the Critical Incident Technique, we analyzed transcripts of 21 international EAL students from China, Japan, and Korea who…

Late adolescence is a critical period of development during which individuals experience crucial changes in their social lives. Several developmental tasks appear during this transition to be accomplished by the late adolescents in order to achieve adulthood and to develop healthy psychological and social functioning. A significant task in this…

This article reports on interview-based research on Chinese students' perceptions of aspects of university study and their reasons for undertaking Australian programmes. In this cross-cultural setting, perceptions of "good" and "bad" subjects were elicited, and the need to standardise or adapt programmes to meet Chinese…

This article explores how Korean exchange students organized their studies during exchange programs in Swedish higher education. For most students, the programs became a disordered period in relation to their education. The value of exchange studies seems mainly to be extra-curricular. Drawing upon actor network theory, the article argues that the…

The aim of the study was to establish the Lakaev Academic Stress Response Scale (LASRS; Lakaev, 2006) as a valid and reliable measure of stress responses. The sample consisted of 375 Bond University students from several countries (142 Australia, 5 New Zealand, 68 United States, 8 Canada, 65 Asian, 66 Europe and 21 other) and from various levels…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify the features that international student users prefer for next generation OPACs. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 16 international students of the University of Sheffield were interviewed in July 2008 to explore their preferences among potential features in next generation OPACs. A…

Overseas study is an unparalleled method of promoting cross-cultural understanding, an appreciation of difference, and a relational sense of identity. However, U.S. colleges and universities increasingly employ the myth of strong globalization, which purportedly makes the world more uniform, integrated, and interdependent, in order to justify…

Higher education institutions in the United States commonly offer first-year seminars to assist students with their transition to college. Seminars are one of several types of first-year interventions based on findings from persistence research identifying variables affecting student success. Diverse student populations such as international…

Women's development needs to be constantly paid attention to by adult educators and practitioners. In particular, the experiences of international students' wives have been ignored and are worthy to be included in the exploration of women's developmental theories. Because of their visa status, these women are prohibited from working in the US. In…

One effect of the Bologna Declaration is that teaching staff and students are becoming more mobile, increasing linguistic diversity in the European Higher Education Area. This multilingual internationalisation is especially noticeable in bilingual universities such as the University of the Basque Country in Spain, where English-medium instruction…

The flow of international students to study in Australia increases each year. It is a challenge for students to study abroad in a different sociocultural environment, especially for postgraduate research students, as they experience numerous difficulties in an unfamiliar and vastly different study environment. A study aimed to investigate the…