Purpose: This qualitative study interrogates the barriers that historically disadvantaged higher education students in South Africa face when it comes to access and success. It specifically explores the challenges black students encounter in gaining epistemic access within the South African higher education system. Design/methodology/approach:…

This study examines the relationship between academic performance (GPA), Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCA), and English proficiency (IELTS scores) among Saudi international students in the United States while considering demographic factors such as gender, age, college major, and length of U.S. residency. Data from 551 students, collected…

Previous research on English Medium Instruction classrooms has almost exclusively documented the interaction between a teacher and students where the teacher is able to understand and use the first language (L1) of the students. We present data obtained from science classrooms in English-medium-instruction (EMI) high-school programs in China where…

English, as a lingua franca, is the common language of science, education, industry, business, and many other fields, and has become a prominent research interest. In Türkiye, English is taught as a foreign language, including K12 and tertiary levels to prepare individuals for international work life. However, the English First English Proficiency…

As international student enrollments surge in U.S. higher education, understanding their experiences is crucial for fostering an inclusive and successful environment. This study used a hermeneutic phenomenological approach to explore the challenges and coping strategies of international students during acculturation. Data were collected through…

The promotion of English medium instruction (EMI) in higher education has been a widely adopted institutional response to the forces of globalization in the 21st century. However, while EMI has received much enthusiasm in policy discourse, little research has been conducted to explore whether it effectively addresses the new demands of an…

The present study, based on data concerning 2328 immigrant children attending a representative sample of 561 schools, investigates the impact of various group, family and individual characteristics as well as proficiency in the national language on acceptance and friendship among classmates, while controlling for measurement errors by means of a…

We introduce a short answer scoring engine made up of an ensemble of deep neural networks and a Latent Semantic Analysis-based model to score short constructed responses for a large suite of questions from a national assessment program. We evaluate the performance of the engine and show that the engine achieves above-human-level performance on a…

This study examines the learning experience of Chinese international undergraduate students taking a large core first-year anthropological science course (ANT101) by distance learning during the Winter of 2021 at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM). We review the general learning experiences of Chinese international students (n=30)…

The main aim of this study was to investigate how oral fluency is assessed across different levels of proficiency in the Test of English for Educational Purposes (TEEP). Working with data from 56 test-takers performing a monologic task at a range of proficiency levels (equivalent to approximately levels 5.0, 5.5, 6.5, and 7.5 in the IELTS scoring…

The present study aimed to explore the potential moderating effect of foreign language anxiety (FLA) on the relationship between second language (L2) competence and willingness to communicate (WTC) in 129 Chinese study-abroad English learners in Belgium. Descriptive analyses revealed fairly low levels of FLA and high levels of WTC of the…

Proficiency with sentence-level features of language is essential for reading comprehension of academic texts, especially for early adolescents who face increasingly complex, discipline-specific texts as they enter upper elementary and middle school. However, little research has been done to explore instruction in sentence-level features. This…

Language difficulties can be a problem for foreign students studying in Hungary: they see as Hungarians do not speak foreign languages, which hinders the well-being of foreigners. At the same time, students studying at Hungarian universities also have different cultural expectations: it is important for them to gain cultural experiences, expand…

Attaining Advanced proficiency and beyond has been a principal goal for second language learners, practitioners, and researchers. Achieving this level in writing requires producing connected discourse of paragraph-level length and nurturing the ability to arrange various linguistic units to form a unified and cohesive whole. This ability, known as…

There is an interdependent relationship between academic proficiency and English language proficiency. This quantitative, correlational study examined the threshold hypothesis in relation to two required summative assessments for third--eighth-grade multilingual learners in South Carolina. Third-grade multilingual learners from a large school…