Drawing from the theory of planned behavior, we conducted a belief elicitation study to gain insights on what considerations guide Chinese English-as-foreign-language students' decision to participate in English during class. We used four semistructured focus groups (in Chinese) to explore salient beliefs from a total of 34 Chinese university…

This study investigates how pre-service English teachers interrupt extended wait-time in English as a foreign language classroom contexts. Utilizing extended wait-time is an indicator of Classroom Interactional Competence, and thus it is an essential skill for efficient language teachers. In the literature, there are quite a few studies on how…

While search engines are commonly used by children to find information, and in classroom-based activities, children are not adept in their information seeking or evaluation of information sources. Prior work has explored such activities in isolated, individual contexts, failing to account for the collaborative, discourse-mediated nature of search…

People's beliefs about math ability tend to fall along a spectrum, ranging from a fixed mindset, the belief that ability is innate and limited, to a growth mindset, the belief that ability is malleable and can be developed (Dweck, 2006). Despite evidence supporting the value of growth mindsets for student achievement, little is known about how…

Willingness to Communicate (WTC) is among the concepts that has received considerable attention in EFL/ESL research in recent years as it brings together a myriad of factors that explain why L2 learners do or do not engage in L2 communication. An EFL classroom provides an environment that promotes use of the target language, yet Thai learners are…

This paper reports on the findings of a qualitative narrative study. Its aim was to analyze what student-teachers' narratives unveiled about the construction of their identity as language learners, and the connections made with being future in-service teachers. This study, which was carried out with undergraduate students from a public university…

Drawing upon sociocultural theories of learning and social constructivist theories of identity development, this article defines learning and identity as outcomes of participation in order to investigate how an emergent bilingual in elementary school, Roselyn, has opportunities to participate in school-based activities and how these structured…

Learning language in the classroom often means interacting with peers in small groups. There is a growing body of empirical research highlighting the factors that have an impact on student interaction and an increasing focus on the social context. This article aims to broaden the focus of research by considering the influence of emergent…

Foreign language teaching highlights the cultivation of the learners' communicative competence, because the main purpose of learning a foreign language is to use the target language to communicate. However, many students in higher institutions in China cannot speak English fluently after having learned English for more than ten years, although…

This study describes multilingual students' authentic use of their first and second languages in a "translanguaging science classroom," from a sociocultural perspective. The study is ethnographic, and has followed some lessons each month in a translanguaging science classroom at a primary school for three years. The observed lessons were…

This research explores the types of questions teachers ask their students in CLIL classrooms and how they can optimize their use of these questions. It came about as a result of a slowdown detected in the learning capacity of students after the first two years of CLIL programmes in the region of Murcia, Spain. The first data collected demonstrated…

Language is the main resource for meaningful action, including the very formation of selves and psychosocial identities, shaped by practical norms, beliefs, and values. Thus, language education constitutes one of the most powerful means for both social reproduction and social production and ideological maintenance and utopian innovation. In this…

This professional development (PD) study examined the effect of feedback type on changing preschool teachers' use of language enhancement strategies and language outcomes for children. We included 21 Head Start teachers and 107 children. We randomized classrooms to PD feedback condition: (a) self-reported or (b) observed use of strategies. All…

Worldwide, scholars and policymakers have called for teacher education to link fieldwork and coursework. This article examines teacher candidates' opportunities to talk about field placement within their campus coursework as one way of doing so. It reports on survey data (n = 270) and observation data (n = 52 hours) from 3 teacher-education…

This edited volume brings together 10 cutting-edge empirical studies on the realities of English language learning, teaching and testing in a wide range of global contexts where English is an additional language. It covers three themes: learners' development of interactional competence, the organization of teaching and testing practices, and…