Faced with a pressing demand for eldercare workers, Japan signed Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) to recruit workers from Southeast Asian countries. The EPA limits the employment period for migrant workers, unless they successfully pass the healthcare licensure examination in Japanese. Therefore, they receive on-the-job training and prepare…

Recent studies have revealed that the development of self-regulation and social skills in preschool children is important for later academic success, social acceptance and psychological wellbeing. Children who lack these skills are at risk for not being able to socialize and may face rejection behaviors among peers, show aggressive behaviors, or…

This research study analyzes the effect the implementation of language-driven CLIL has on senior learners from Manuel J. Calle High School in Cuenca, Ecuador in relation to the development of written production in terms of Syntax, Content, Communicative Achievement, Organization, and Language compared to a non-language-driven CLIL classroom. There…

The last decade has witnessed a strong impact of emerging technologies on language pedagogy due to the developments in the computer technologies. The use of authentic linguistic examples through corpora and concordance based activities is defined as data-driven learning and it exposes the students to examples of more realistic language than…

This article investigates the intercultural competence and identities of undergraduate heritage language learners (HLLs) studying abroad under the auspices of the U.S. Flagship Program. Based on survey responses and interviews with HLLs from Flagship Programs across the country, the article aims to assess the preparation of HLLs for study abroad…

The present study investigated the longitudinal effects of early exposure to L2-English on L1-Turkish language competence, narrative skills and executive functioning. We asked whether early immersion-like exposure to L2, starting around 3 years of age, would have reflections on L1 competence, L1 narrative skills and gains in cognitive flexibility.…

This study examines the relative contributions of linguistic and affective variables to writing performance among students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) in South Korea. In total, 270 middle school students completed four language tests assessing their reading comprehension, grammar knowledge, and descriptive and argumentative…

For the first time, PISA 2025 will assess foreign language skills on a global scale. This paper provides a framework for collecting policy and contextual information on foreign language learning from students, parents, teachers, school principals and government officials. The framework will be used to guide the PISA 2025 Foreign Language…

This paper first surveys three kinds of learner interview corpora (LINDSEI, NICT-JLE Corpus, and Trinity Lancaster Corpus), paying particular attention to their interview structures. Then, it explains the principles and features of the ICNALE Spoken Dialogue (ICNALE SD), which includes 425 videos and approximately 1.6-million-word transcripts of…

Task-based language assessment (TBLA) is a way of providing information about language learning in authentic settings. Not only does it present language learners with a meaningful and embedded context of assessment but also promotes communication in the target language. Within the framework of TBLA, this study aims to integrate the 4th grade…

Because English is widely used as a lingua franca, language testers have started to consider the introduction of non-native accents into English listening tests. This study investigates how accents influence test-takers' performance, and also elicits test-takers' subjective perception of accents. Eighty adolescent L1-Mandarin test takers were…

The present study examined the extent to which first language (L1) awareness can benefit second language (L2) grammatical learning of the French "Imparfait", a crosslinguistically complex target feature. Sixty-nine English-speaking learners of L2 French received different types of explicit information (EI) about L2 or L2 + L1…

The concept of the "native speaker" (NS) remains a constant interest in the field of language pedagogy due to the need the field has for models, goals and norms (Davies, 2003, p. 1). On the other hand, some other researchers such as Byram (1997) in his model of intercultural competence (ICC) and Cook (2012) in his model of…

This report presents findings from a follow-up exploratory study of the development of writing ability in an attempt to identify key component skills and competencies for elementary school literacy learners, grades 2nd, 4th and 6th. The first evaluation consisted in scoring first draft narrative texts for coherence, the second, an assessment of…

Listening has been widely characterised as a multifaceted process encompassing a range of linguistic and psycholinguistic components (see Rubin, 1994). However, for learners at different levels of L2 proficiency, there is uncertainty over the relative importance of the various sub-skills. To address this issue, a number of linguistic and…