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Over the past two decades, multiple empirical studies have examined how teacher audio feedback works in EFL/ESL writing courses. This review explores instructor audio feedback studies in higher education writing contexts. Seventy empirical studies were identified in literature searches published between 2000 and 2022 in several academic databases. Then, based on exclusion and inclusion criteria, thirteen relevant studies were reviewed. The results indicate that interest in instructor audio feedback research has risen since 2000. This overview presents what empirical studies on teacher audio feedback in L2 writing courses aimed to find out, how they were conducted, and what they found. As many research designs and findings were underexplored, more studies are required to investigate this feedback type to benefit L2 writing learning and teaching and enrich studies on audio feedback practices. The gaps identified in the selected studies offer ideas for future explorations of teacher audio feedback in L2 writing contexts.

This study uses Panadero et al.'s (2021) Deep Learning Strategies Questionnaire to discover EFL learners' strategies from a new perspective. The questionnaire is a newly designed self-report instrument with ground-breaking features constructed with validity and reliability to measure students' actual strategies in real situations. The current study is the first in an EFL context to use this innovative tool. It investigates self-regulation strategies for learning English as a foreign language (EFL) among 430 male EFL college students in Saudi Arabia. The questionnaire enabled us to adopt a micro-level inspection of strategy functions based on an innovative model that can help identify possible avenues for strategy interventions. The results mostly showed a high use of deep language learning strategies in all four questionnaire categories: basic learning, visual elaboration and summarizing, deep information processing, and social learning. Consequently, all the categories had a strong, positive, and significant correlation. In addition, the most used strategies were basic learning strategies, whereas the least used were visual elaboration and summarizing. Our findings provide useful pedagogical implications for promoting EFL learning strategies and strategy instruction. Successfully replicating the Deep Learning Strategies Questionnaire scrutinizes this methodological instrument's validity and reliability and encourages other researchers to use it.

By investigating Vietnamese English learners' perspectives on influential cultural factors and barriers these factors bring to the development of learner autonomy, this study seeks to draw attention to proper consideration of the host cultural values in importing and implementing Western educational theories. A phenomenological approach was employed, and qualitative data were collected from in-depth interviews with 15 English majored students from a public university in the Mekong Delta. Using Hofstede et al.'s (2010) six-dimensional model of cultural differences as a theoretical framework, the study reveals that all the six dimensions, at different levels, hinder the development of learner autonomy. The study also uncovers cultural assimilation - a state in which individuals perceive a certain cultural characteristic as their personality traits without any adjustment, corresponding to the Restraint factor. These results emphasize the significance of cultural analysis and imply the need for constructing a culturally appropriate pedagogy to promote learner autonomy. The paper concludes by discussing some possible directions for further research in the field.

Despite the increased adoption of online learning in higher education, there was limited knowledge about how the combination of online English synchronous learning with gamified applications and active learning impacted student self-regulation. This study used a sequential explanatory research design to investigate this integration in an English for Academic Communication course at a southern Thai university over a 12-week period. Data, including a Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) strategy survey, reflective essays, and course grades, were analyzed using descriptive statistics for quantitative data and thematic analysis for qualitative data. The findings showed that students heavily utilized SRL strategies, especially in Time Management and Environment Structuring, but there were differences in Goal Setting between the quantitative and qualitative results. Although there were strong positive correlations among SRL constructs, none of them were statistically significant in relation to course grades. Students expressed their desire for feedback, interactive learning, and a balanced workload in their ideal online English learning experience. This study provided insights into the integration of online English synchronous learning with gamification and active learning in higher education.

Writing is hard for students who are learning English; they often find it challenging to transform what is on their mind in writing. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between the writing test and assessment writing through argumentative writing. Data was analyzed using the correlation test to determine the close relationship between independent and dependent variables. This study involved 100 students from the Department of English Education at the University of Riau, Indonesia. The results showed that the writing test and assessment writing was closely related, as evidenced by the influence and significance between the writing test and assessment writing, which was tested through argumentative writing. The results revealed that the writing test and assessment writing have similar results. Overall, both variables are equally important and related.

Purpose: Art forms such as music and drama are among some recognised tools used by educators. This has sparked interest in how art can be used in education, making it a fertile field for educational research. However, there is a missing connection in how drawing can be used as a tool for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students to learn about literature. Methodology: This paper will incorporate an Arts-Based Research (ABR) method to determine how visual art, particularly drawing, can be used as a tool to advance EFL students' understanding of a selected literary text, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" (2015) This qualitative study, viewed through the lens of Richard Mayer's Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning (CTML), involved 10 EFL participants and revealed strategies for integrating drawing that are absent in traditional approaches. Additionally, Hameed's (2022) elements of art, Yenawine's (2014) Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), and Showalter's (2003) concepts of literature learning will be included to ground the framework of the intervention. Findings: This study can be regarded as a method to liberate traditional teaching practices into contemporary approaches, serving as a tool to merge cultural knowledge while improving confidence, higher-order thinking skills, and expression. It also allows educators to be flexible and provoke more reflection and participation. The data discusses three main strategies in exploring how integrating drawing can help EFL students learn about literature: mining to trigger thoughts, engaging with the senses, and giving permission to wonder. Visual art allows individuals to create their responses by exploring new ideas and representing emotions, confirming plans, and comprehending the deeper level of literary texts. Significance: The study will offer insight and work as an alternate strategy for educators and learners alike to utilise visual art as a tool in teaching and learning literature. The findings will also ease the alarming condition where literature teaching and learning are stereotyped as daunting. [This paper was presented at the 12th Malaysian International Conference of Languages, Literature, and Culture (MICOLLAC) held in Penang, Malaysia, in August 2023.]

Idioms are highly conventionalized expressions that allow users to express beyond literal meanings. Despite the language difference, counterparts of idioms may overlap cross-culturally due to similar origin, social habits, and experiences. It is therefore interesting to probe whether L2 learners may benefit from deliberate instructions built on shared counterparts existing in both L1 and L2, known as cross-language overlaps. Although the phenomenon of cross-language overlap has been reported by lexical and collocation processing research (e.g., Carrol & Conklin, 2017; Hubers et al., 2020), it is yet uncertain whether its impact is influential for L2 idiom learning with the absence of semantic or syntactical similarity. To address this gap, the current study attempted to investigate whether raising English as a foreign language learners' awareness of cross-language overlap may facilitate L2 idiom teaching and how such overlap-enhancement instruction may change over different congruence conditions (congruence-available and incongruence conditions) and time. The study collected L2 idiom learning data from forty-five Chinese English learners, following a pretest-posttest design. While the experimental group (n=26) learned twenty-eight target L2 idioms with an enhancement instruction emphasizing the overlaps, the control group (n=28) learned these idioms with a conventional instruction method. Findings of this study revealed that participants were able to benefit from cross-language overlaps from both conditions, and the enhancement instruction on the semantic overlaps would result in significant learning improvement. It is therefore pedagogically advisable for language teachers to marry up L1-L2 idiom phrases containing similar counterparts and deliberately focus on the semantic congruency.

Scaffolding is a contributing factor to the effectiveness of pragmatic instruction. Although there is a large body of research on the means of scaffolding in second language teaching, research on scaffolding in L2 pragmatic instruction, especially in online teaching, is still in its infancy. To bridge the gap, this study investigated the means of scaffolding (feedback, giving hints, instructing, explaining, modeling, and questioning) utilized by teachers to aid learners in producing pragmatically appropriate speech acts of request and refusal. The data from 18 hours of online pragmatic instruction to 21 intermediate EFL learners via the Skyroom platform showed that the most frequent means of scaffolding used by three teachers participating in this study were questioning and explaining. Employing questioning, teachers used display questions to guide learners toward the appropriate production of request and refusal. Moreover, explaining, as a means of scaffolding, helped learners establish connections between new pragmatic knowledge and their prior knowledge of the speech act. The other three means of scaffolding, including feedback, giving hints, and modeling, were characterized by almost the same rate of frequency. The least frequent means of scaffolding was found to be instructing. It can be concluded that teachers tend to use questioning as a means of scaffolding more frequently because pragmatic knowledge needs to be improved through interaction. The findings can help teacher educators heighten the teachers' knowledge of various means of scaffolding to enable them to employ different means of scaffolding instead of overusing questioning and explaining.

This study examined experiences and viewpoints of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' regarding the integration of QR codes into writing and speaking practices at the tertiary-level L2 learning. Employing an action research design, researchers collected qualitative data through online interviews, a survey of open-ended questions, and learners' written reflections during class hours and brief field notes. Inductive thematic analysis was used for data analysis to form codes and themes. As a result, the learners identified QR codes as time-saving, useful, and enjoyable pedagogical tools for writing and speaking practices. The facilitative role of QR codes was centered on increasing motivation and interaction with classmates during different phases of productive skill-based activities, particularly in the idea-generation steps. The learners reported that QR code-based mobile learning practices make learning environments more participatory, safe, inclusive, and cooperative. The study presents instructional implications for transforming conventional student-teacher interaction into a peer-learning-oriented and autonomous atmosphere in higher education.

This research investigates the intercultural usability factor of e-learning products designed for the instruction of Turkish as a foreign language. The subject of study, "Ana Dil Turkce," refers to a freely accessible and distant education platform developed by Anadolu University with the purpose of instructing non-native speakers in the Turkish language. This study employed a concurrent mixed methods research design to investigate the intercultural usability of the "Ana Dil Turkce" e-learning system. The study incorporated a qualitative component through the utilization of a case study methodology, while a cross-sectional survey design was employed to address the quantitative part. The quantitative portion of the study employed descriptive methods, whereas the qualitative portion utilized content analysis methods. The qualitative component of the study involved the participation of 25 individuals who were active and registered users in the system during the period from 2020 to 2022. Additionally, the quantitative component of the study included the participation of 211 users. The quantitative portion of the study employed a questionnaire as a method of data collection, while the qualitative component utilized a semi-structured interview format. The study's conclusions were analyzed through the integration and juxtaposition of qualitative and quantitative data. The study yielded findings regarding the cultural appropriateness of the Ana Dil Turkce e-learning objects. The findings indicate that the cultural learning objects inside the e-learning system are deemed adequate, albeit requiring further development and enrichment.

This multiple case study analysis investigates the culturally engaging nature of a US campus for international students using the Culturally Engaging Campus Environments (CECE) model. Semi-structured interviews and professional development workshop observations were conducted with six faculty and administrative leaders who work closely with international students with the aim of answering the overarching question: how do university faculty and student/academic affairs professionals working with international students perceive the institutional support systems for international students through the lens of the Culturally Engaging Campus Environments conceptual model? Salient findings indicated that change is most needed in the areas of opportunities for meaningful cross-cultural engagement, culturally validating environments, proactive philosophies, and availability of holistic support in within the study's campus context. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed in light of the CECE model.

Study abroad comes with challenges, yet it is not clear how language proficiency may longitudinally predict students' social engagement and well-being. Recent changes in international student demographics, including age decreases and increased international school backgrounds, may also affect students' well-being. This study views language as a culturally specific symbolic tool that serves cognitive, social, and emotional interactions, both interpersonal and intrapersonal. By surveying 387 international students from 14 U.S. universities over 1.5 years, this study explored the role of English proficiency in facilitating students' adaptability to psychosocial challenges and well-being. The findings suggested that both English proficiency and prior-to-admission second language educational experience predict well-being, while the latter may have afforded more nonacademic adjustment to international students' continuous social engagement. In addition, the onset of social engagement and sense of belonging showed a likely importance which highlights the value of pre-study-abroad programming for facilitating international students' continuous social engagement.

Multilingual learners face significant challenges when navigating the linguistic complexities of chemistry assessments. This study, employing the Equitable Framework for Classroom Assessment, identified these specific challenging features in general chemistry assessment items on the topics of limiting reactant and percent yield. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with multilingual students, we discovered critical barriers to comprehension: lack of metacognitive support, complex vocabulary and syntax, dense text layout, and extraneous information. These findings emphasize the need to better understand and alleviate these types of linguistic features in assessment items to more accurately measure chemistry knowledge, rather than linguistic proficiency. By addressing these challenges, instructors can design more accessible assessment items for a diverse group of students. The results also offer valuable insights and practical guidance for writing equitable assessment items.

Traditional approaches to language assessment have been criticized for their inadequacy in taking account of language learners' potential for development. To obviate this pitfall in traditional assessment, language teachers and researchers have been paying increasing attention to dynamic assessment (DA), which is rooted in Vygotsky's (1978) sociocultural theory (SCT). This study investigated the potential of the interventionist approach to DA in facilitating vocabulary learning and retention among Iranian English-as-a-Foreign-Language (EFL) learners. To this end, adopting a quantitative quasi-experimental pretest-posttest-delayed posttest control group design, 80 pre-intermediate learners from two intact classes from a university in South Iran were randomly divided into two conditions: an experimental group (EG), which received DA-based treatment with appropriate scaffolding and zone of proximal development (ZPD)-sensitive instruction; and a control group (CG), which, in contrast to the EG, received traditional vocabulary instruction with the teacher merely providing direct translation of the target vocabulary. Pretests, posttests, and delayed posttests were administered to measure the knowledge of the target vocabulary across the three time occasions. The conduct of an inferential multivariate test of significance demonstrated that the learners in both conditions had very limited baseline knowledge of the target words. However, the test of significance revealed that the ZPD-sensitive instruction significantly boosted the learners' vocabulary learning and retention. This suggests that the interventionist approach to DA not only has short-term effects on vocabulary learning, but also facilitates vocabulary retention among Iranian university-level EFL learners. The implications of the study for various stakeholders in language pedagogy are discussed.

University classrooms are increasingly populated by students with diverse nationalities and native languages (L1). The growing number of students in English-led classrooms who speak English as a second or lower language (L2) may face added difficulties in understanding the specific task objectives or directions, as explained by native- English-speaking instructors. Emerging generative AI (genAI) technology offers new opportunities for native-English instructors to provide clear task setup in their students' L1. This single-class activity utilizes genAI software to translate English-language task setup into student L1 and enable L2 students to perform a complex and unfamiliar English comprehension task. The post-activity appraisal compares one cohort of students who performed the task with the genAI translated instructions to a cohort who performed the same task with English-language instructions. Courses: English as Second Language (ESL), English Conversation, English Comprehension, and any courses in which groups of L2 students are present. Objectives: L2 students will be able to perform complex, unfamiliar ESL comprehension tasks with confidence and clarity of direction. Instructors will be able to transfer this strategy to other tasks and communicate objectives and directions to their L2 students more clearly in the students' L1. This strategy may be transferred to any course with L2 learners.

Holistic assessment is an evaluative approach in which assessors work backwards from an overall appraisal of work to determine the criteria relevant to individual student responses. One of the strongest proponents of this approach in higher education is Royce Sadler, whose theoretical contributions over recent decades provide a strong conceptual rationale for holistic assessment. While Sadler's contributions are well renowned, few explicit accounts are available of Sadlerian theory in practice. The purpose of this reflective paper, as such, is to explain how we have attempted to synthesise and apply a Sadlerian theory of holistic assessment design in one of our own courses. Our intended contribution is to provide a relatively concrete interpretation of holistic assessment design which may serve as a point of reference for assessment design in higher education coursework.

Bilingual students can take notes in their first language (L1) or their second language (L2). Higher note-taking quality, which might differ between the L1 and L2, has been associated with better memory of new content. In this study, we examined how language of note taking within bilinguals affects note quality and memory of new content. One hundred bilinguals watched three videos while typing notes in L2-English, their L1, or while using their languages freely. One week later they completed a memory test. Memory test scores did not differ between the L1, L2-English, and free note-taking conditions. Note-taking quality was higher in the L2 and free language conditions than in the L1, likely because the video content was presented in the L2. However, note-taking quality was only significantly related to memory test performance in the free note-taking condition and not in the L1 or L2 conditions. Across all conditions, L2-English proficiency was positively related to both note-taking quality and test performance. Together, these results suggest that, when learning content in an L2, the note-taking language can influence note quality but does not strongly impact how well new information is remembered.

This article presents the findings from a study that explored how the language practices and management to which 156 students from universities in China reported being exposed at home, alongside their language beliefs, use of their entire linguistic repertoire when reading, listening, speaking, and writing at university, and emotions related to being multilingual predicted the language practices and management they envisioned for their own families. Data were gathered through a comprehensive questionnaire administered on campus. The results revealed that the more participants reported exposure to multilingual language practices at home and the stronger their beliefs in the benefits of a multilingual upbringing, the more determined they were to implement multilingual language practices with their own families. Moreover, using languages fluidly at university correlated positively with participants' desire to adopt a more conscious approach to language management in their future families.

Self-development is a crucial aspect of language teaching as it fosters various dimensions of language teacher cognition, affect, and identity, ultimately contributing to better learning outcomes. Most studies on language teacher self-development have examined language teachers' cognitive, affective, and identity-related reactions to particular programmes, often exploring variables in isolation. They have also rarely investigated the self-development practices teachers undertake to support their language teaching ability (LTA). This article reports the findings from a quantitative study on the self-development practices implemented by 113 foreign language teachers of English, French, German, and Spanish in tertiary education to sustain and augment their LTA. Adopting a complex dynamic systems approach, the study employed an online questionnaire to ascertain how variables such as participants' anxiety, beliefs about the status enjoyed by their taught languages among the university administration, colleagues, and society, multilingualism, study and teaching abroad experiences, education level, and interaction mindsets influenced their LTA-related self-development practices. The findings revealed that only participants' interaction mindsets statistically significantly predicted such practices. The article discusses the implications of these results for teacher educators, researchers, and educational institutions, and provides recommendations for the way forward.

This study examines the testimonios of Mexican language teachers who experienced the violent and institutional imposition of neoliberal policies at the main university at the state of Puebla. Through the analysis of "testimonios," language teachers narrated their own trajectories to resist the implementation of the neoliberal policies, such as the restriction of teaching freedom for educators, the elimination of the right to free education for students, and the current subjugation educators experience at the site of study. Based on the Foucauldian concepts of sovereign and institutional power, along with governmentality, this article analyzes the activism of language teachers, and the oppression and re-signification that neoliberal elites have carried out to silence dissident voices. While current research regarding neoliberalism and language teaching has focused on pedagogic materials and neocolonial publishing houses, the creation of learners' subjectivities, and social-class perpetuation through language instruction, second language research has not extensively concentrated on way neoliberalism has impacted the professional development of language teachers. In this regard, the present article aims to raise awareness about the way neoliberalism has been normalized as a tool for suppression among language educators in Mexico.

This study was designed to understand the multi-layered aspects and conflicts that shaped the identity development of English language pre-service teachers in Chile. This longitudinal, multiple case study research investigated the identity trajectories of seven EFL Chilean pre-service teachers over an 18-month period. Data were drawn from a range of sources, including semi-structured interviews, analysis of recorded lessons, and pedagogical artefacts. Framed by a sociocultural perspective, student teachers' perezhivanie and lived experiences were examined. This work found that the transition to a developed English language teacher identity was a slow and recursive process and shaped by multiple interactions and situations of conflict in practice. Strong and conflicting emotions of joy, self-fulfilment and frustration, anxiety, and self-doubts were recurrent. These findings contribute to the understanding of how English language teacher identity is developed in the Global South.

This study explores language ideologies within a multilingual tutoring program. We analyze the perspectives of multilingual university-students (n = 49) who were trained as tutors and paired with high school-aged multilingual learners. The program was designed to reduce educational inequalities by providing students with what we describe as language access -- the opportunity to learn academic content in a student's preferred language. This access is consistently offered to English-dominant students in U.S. schools, yet is often denied to multilingual learners. Therefore, we documented tutors' beliefs about the purpose, successes, and challenges related to multilingual tutoring. Our results show that language ideologies played a key role in how tutoring was conceptualized and utilized, often in ways that reified monolingual orientations to education, even within a multilingually-oriented tutoring program. These results have implications for the design and implementation of multilingual tutoring, student language access, and language ideological research writ large.

This qualitative study investigates the effects of a publication limit policy on the research productivity and academic freedom of Vietnamese English as a Foreign Language (EFL) lecturers. Amidst growing concerns over research quality and output, the Vietnamese academic sector has implemented a policy restricting the number of publications an academic can produce annually. This study aims to explore the ramifications of this policy from the perspectives of those directly affected -- the lecturers themselves. Employing semi-structured interviews, the study engaged nine Vietnamese EFL lecturers from two institutions, representing three career stages: novice, mid-career, and near-retirement. The interpretivist paradigm guided the research, enabling an in-depth exploration of the participants' subjective experiences and perceptions. Key findings revealed diverse impacts across career stages. Themes such as the perception of academic freedom, impact on research productivity, professional growth, research quality, methodology, and personal well-being emerged. The study found that while the policy aimed at enhancing research quality, it also posed challenges such as narrowed research focus, heightened stress, and the need for strategic adaptation in research practices. This research contributes to the discourse on academic policies, highlighting the need for flexible, supportive approaches that consider the diverse needs of the academic community.

This article documents the reflections of six African second-year master's students on their international educational experiences in Kazakhstan with a special focus on their challenges, strategic learning efforts and identity development. It is guided by Norton's conceptualisation of investment in identity, language learning, and social change. The qualitative data collected from a written narrative and two subsequent rounds of individual semi-structured interviews suggest that participants pursued their studies at an English-medium instruction university in Kazakhstan mainly because of the fully-funded scholarships. However, their expectations regarding the university and Kazakhstan were unclear, as they received no pre-departure orientation. Despite being satisfied with the high-quality education in the host institution, they faced challenges such as difficulty securing part-time work due to a lack of proficiency in local languages (Kazakh and Russian), enduring prolonged cold weather, and limited opportunities for socialising with other students. Most participants described Kazakhstan as 'a peaceful and progressive country'; however, two participants experienced linguistic racism in the classroom. This study underlines the significance of addressing the issues of graduate employability and linguistic racism, along with implementing pedagogical interventions in all phases of study abroad and fostering a sense of intercultural citizenship among students.

In recent years, language portraits (LPs) have emerged as a valuable tool for visually representing multilingual learners' linguistic repertoires. However, previous studies have primarily relied on traditional methods of inviting participants to sketch their language portraits on paper using pens and crayons. In this paper, we propose the use of digital methods to collect and analyze data on language portraits to examine the translingual practices and negotiations of meaning among multilingual individuals. By utilizing Synchronic Computer-Mediated Communication platforms, participants can actively deploy and mobilize multi-linguistic and multi-semiotic resources in lived experiences, engaging in interactive translanguaging practices. In this particular case study, data were collected through a biographic survey and a sketch of the language portraits in digital form, which were then further supported by follow-up interviews. Four participants' LPs and oral narratives during the interviews were then subjected to qualitative multimodal analysis and discourse analysis. The results revealed that these digital language portraits (DLPs) possess significant features such as digital affordance and multimodality. They tap into the translanguaging spaces that emerge from the creative and critical meaning-making process, enabling multilingual individuals to visualize their linguistic repertoires through digital visual strategies. Furthermore, it was discovered that DLPs can foster creative performance and discursive negotiations, thereby enhancing participants' expressive abilities in developing their language perceptions.

While English medium instruction (EMI) programs proliferate around the globe, research on students' motivation and engagement (ME) in EMI remains underrepresented. Informed by a multidimensional conceptualization of ME as interconnected, this study employed an adapted Motivation and Engagement Scale to examine university students' ME in EMI classes in the Chinese higher education context. The study involved 696 students from 34 Chinese universities. Results show that students were diversely motivated and engaged in EMI classes. Individual variations in student EMI ME across gender, region, grade, major, colleges' prestige, and colleges' profession were also identified. A latent profile analysis reveals four distinct profiles of EMI learners: the 'Demotivated and Moderately Engaged', the 'Moderately Motivated and Engaged', the 'Contradictorily Motivated and Engaged', and the 'Motivated and Engaged'. The findings yield new light on the characteristics of Chinese university students' ME in EMI curricular contexts.

In line with China's vision for international education, English medium instruction (EMI) is booming in Chinese higher education, which positions Chinese students in circumstances where they need to negotiate among different commitments, roles, identities, and desires involving individual, national and international agendas. This paper draws on the investment theory and model developed by Norton and Darvin to explore Chinese students' EMI experience in respect of their investment goals, capital, and future identities underpinning their engagement. Informed by the concepts of English as a lingua franca and translanguaging, the paper deconstructs the notion of language in EMI and draws on the data retrieved in one of the top universities based in Beijing that offers EMI courses to Chinese students to examine their investments revolving around the issue of language. The findings show that Chinese students focus on disciplinary identities and national identities that EMI courses facilitate but refrain from imagining their engagement in the international work environment due to low esteems about translingualism as linguistic resources and admirations for English monolingualism as capital that would enable them to embrace international identities. The paper concludes by calling for developing critical language awareness in EMI implementation.

We investigated whether learning and retaining vocabulary in a second language (L2) can be improved by leveraging a combination of memory enhancement techniques. Specifically, we tested whether combining retrieval practice, spacing, and related manipulations in a 'multidomain' pedagogical approach enhances vocabulary acquisition as compared to a typical learning approach. In a classroom-laboratory design, 48 Turkish university students studying L2 English were trained on 64 English words over 17 days. They were assigned to either a 'typical' study regimen of (re)studying the words on the first day (initial study) and last day (cramming) of training, or an 'optimized' regimen of retrieval practice (retrieving the words), moreover with feedback, spaced throughout the period, moreover with expanding gaps. The target words were tested before training (pre-test) and one and 11 days afterwards (post-tests). Mixed-effects modeling revealed a training-group by test-session interaction, due to greater improvements from optimized training (a striking 18 percentage-point accuracy increase from pre-test to both post-tests) than typical training (an 8 percentage-point increase). Further analyses showed that the optimized training advantages were mainly driven by high (rather than low) frequency words. Overall, the results suggest that a multidomain approach of combining different memory enhancement techniques can lead to substantial gains in both the learning and retention of L2 words, as compared to a typical study pattern. The findings have implications for L2 learning and pedagogy.

English-medium instruction (EMI) has burgeoned alongside two decades of L2 self-regulated learning research. In both areas, listening remains under-researched, longitudinal designs are under-employed, and in-depth studies are necessary to unpack learner development. In a context believed to initiate self-regulated learning, the current study employed a longitudinal qualitative design to explore the out-of-class, self-regulated listening practice of 34 Chinese students across their first term transitioning from Chinese-medium high schools to an EMI transnational university in China. Guided by Zimmerman's social-cognitive model of self-regulated learning, 102 transcripts generated from interviewing students at the beginning, middle, and end of their transition term were analyzed using thematic analysis and narrative analysis. The findings are presented chronologically as a synthesis of the students' narrative trajectories. They highlight the students' initial enthusiasm for self-regulated listening practice to 'survive' EMI lectures and a watershed moment at the midterm, when many 'dropouts' stopped practicing as they perceived their proficiency had reached an abstract threshold. The 'continuers' developed sustainable practices informed by the pursuit of long-term, future-oriented goals that outreached the immediate EMI context, guided by metacognitive awareness and emotion regulation strategies. Pedagogical implications to support future cohorts of students to thrive during transition and beyond are provided.

This article describes how a group of language undergraduates in a local university in the periphery in the Global South conceptualised and enacted the notion of the 'ecological university'. Theoretically grounded in critical and post-humanist perspectives on education, and language education in particular, and notions of the ecological and the measured university, this qualitative study was conducted in 2018-19. Students created artistic multimodal works to portray their visions of the ecological university prompted by a language course syllabus and an arts-based methodology. They complemented their creations with concrete activism in their social milieu to contribute to making their university ecological. Combining discourse, content and post-qualitative analyses, findings show that the students envisioned three essential elements to enact the transformative role of their university: a) love for and commitment to others; b) a human rights education foundation; and c) a basis in local activism. Implications for pedagogy are considered, centred on the significance of arts-based pedagogies and methodologies to challenge predominant characterisations of the accountable university in the setting and foster student activism.

The current study examined the extent to which first language (L1) utterance fluency measures can predict second language (L2) fluency and how L2 proficiency moderates the relationship between L1 and L2 fluency. A total of 104 Japanese-speaking learners of English completed different argumentative speech tasks in their L1 and L2. Their speaking performance was analysed using measures of speed, breakdown, and repair fluency. L2 proficiency was operationalised as cognitive fluency. Two factor scores of cognitive fluency--linguistic resources and processing speed--were computed based on performance in a set of linguistic knowledge tests capturing vocabulary knowledge, morphosyntactic processing, and articulatory skills. A series of generalised linear mixed-effects models revealed small-to-moderate effect sizes for the predictive power of L1 utterance fluency measures on their L2 counterparts. Moderator effects of L2 proficiency were found only in speed fluency measures. The relationship between L1 and L2 speed fluency was weaker for L2 learners with wider L2 linguistic resources. Conversely, for those with faster L2 processing speed, the L1-L2 link tended to be stronger. These findings indicate that the L1-L2 fluency link is subject to the complex interplay of phonological differences between learners' L1 and L2 and their L2 proficiency, offering implications for diagnostic speaking assessment.

The recent decades have seen enthusiastic calls for reconceptualizing English as a foreign language (EFL) education, taking into account the current socio-lingual status of English and how it is used "genuinely" for communication interculturally and internationally. However, a wide gap still exists between promulgation such as intelligibility over nativelikeness in pronunciation instruction and realities in the EFL classroom. The study investigated pre- and in-service teachers' cognition about accents and the incorporation of different accents in their classrooms. One hundred and sixty-six EFL teachers (89 pre-service and 77 in-service) from Hong Kong and Guangdong (a province in China) completed a questionnaire. Contrary to expectations, the teachers' overall attitude was neutral rather than positive towards General American (GA)/Received Pronunciation (RP)1 associated with EFL teachers' accents and EFL education. Only two thirds of the teachers were certain about which accents to use and to teach in listening and pronunciation lessons (i.e. as many as one third were uncertain). Also, the participants were neutral about incorporating non-GA/RP accents into EFL lessons, with around one third objecting to doing so. Although no differences were found between pre- and in-service teachers' cognition, additional analysis revealed that teachers' individual background variables, namely teaching experience, self-rated language proficiency, and knowledge of sound systems (IPA for English; pinyin for Mandarin), have significant correlations with their cognition.

This study investigates the enhancement of spoken English proficiency among students at Taiwan's technological and vocational education (TVE) universities. The focus is on the significant impact of positive learning attitudes and effective methodologies, using questionnaires and in-depth interviews to assess students' confidence and perceptions of spoken English. The research employs the spoken English confidence scale, covering five dimensions: 1) attitude and aptitude for English learning; 2) confidence in English usage within classroom settings; 3) personality in the context of the native language; 4) belief in potential English capabilities; 5) faith in current English proficiency. Key findings reveal gaps in confidence and English-speaking skills, suggesting the need for immersive English-speaking environments, confidence-boosting classroom activities, and personalised feedback. Therefore, the results of this study suggest interventions aim to cultivate a student-centred approach, addressing proficiency gaps and enhancing confidence in English communication.

Collaborative writing (CW) involves two or more students writing a single text together. Previous studies mainly focused on students' cognitive engagement in CW and investigated their attention to various language-related problems during task interaction. However, little CW research to date has considered that engagement in language-related discussions can manifest from three dimensions: cognitive, social, and affective. Focusing on the multidimensional characteristics of engagement, this study investigated how Russian learners' social and affective reactions influence their focus on language use while they completed a CW task. Drawing on Svalberg's framework of engagement with language to identify the three dimensions of engagement, I conducted a mixed-method approach towards analysing the audio-recorded collaborative dialogues by three student pairs (n = 6), along with a qualitative analysis of their responses to a five-point Likert scale questionnaire. The analyses showed that when learners were interactive and viewed the activity as useful, they noticed many linguistic problems and elaborated on them. In contrast, when learners demonstrated social disengagement and perceived disadvantages from CW, they were likely to withdraw their attention from resolving the language issues they encountered. These findings indicate the complex and dynamic nature of task engagement. They can provide second language (L2) teachers with an in-depth understanding of how to fully engage students in instructional activities to better foster their L2 learning.

To avoid plagiarism, students have to learn the appropriate and effective ways of source text use, such as paraphrasing, summarizing, and citation. However, few studies have investigated how learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) employ copy and paraphrase as source text use strategies in completing writing tasks involving reading material, and how characteristics of the reading material, such as genre, affect such use. This article reports an empirical study that attempted to address the issue. Eighty students from an undergraduate program of a Chinese university wrote summaries for a narrative text and an expository text. Their drafts and the source texts are compared to identify instances of retention of strings of words from sources. Analysis of the summary scripts showed that participants heavily relied on the source texts when writing summaries. The expository text elicited a larger proportion of words than the narrative text in total text borrowed, and the former also led the participants to stronger reliance on its surface structure than the latter. The less proficient group used Exact Copy more but Paraphrase less than the more proficient group. Higher level of source use -- Major Paraphrase and Maximal Paraphrase -- seems to be immune to changes in terms of genre of source text and language proficiency. Implications of these findings are discussed with reference to the teaching, learning, and assessing appropriate source text use of university level EFL learners.

This study explored second language (L2) competence in discontinuous discursive formulaic sequences, namely Chinese correlative connectives (CCCs; e.g. yinwei . . . suy 'because . . . so'), in relation to the determinants of formulaic sequence acquisition by scrutinizing L2 Chinese learners' performance on two controlled tasks. Mixed-effects modeling showed that frequency exerted both positive and negative effects on the task performance of L2 learners on CCCs. Contingency (i.e. the co-occurrence of two constituent connectives) posed a tremendous challenge to the use of obligatory CCCs by L2 learners. In contrast, semantic transparency and first language congruency had a positive effect. The effects of these determinants on L2 performance were qualified by their interactions in different categories of CCCs. The results also indicated that learners were sensitive to frequency and contingency determinants at both construction and constituent word levels. This study enriches our understanding of L2 competence in formulaic language and provides unique insights into L2 learners' knowledge of CCCs.

Research in language learning indicates that process drama (PD), an educational approach where students and teachers work in and out of role to explore themes and issues, can be well suited to the Japanese higher education (HE) context. Despite the benefits highlighted in the literature, PD remains a niche approach to language teaching and learning, with a limited number of practitioners in Japan. This study seeks to uncover language teachers' experiences of becoming Process Drama Practitioners (PDPs) and using and sharing PD as an English language teaching approach in Japanese HE. Data were collected via in-depth interviews with six experienced PDPs. The findings indicate that prior positive experiences with drama was an encouraging factor of the adoption and self-directed initial use of PD in their teaching practices. Positive student outcomes and feedback were primary motivators for continued use of PD. Experiences of sharing PD led to a perceived need to distinguish PD from theatre-based approaches and establish connections to familiar approaches to language teaching.

This study investigated the relative effectiveness of immediate and delayed corrective feedback on the acquisition of -ing/-ed participial adjectives by Spanish English-as-a-foreign-language learners in video-based computer-mediated communication. Fifty-two participants took part in a communicative task in one of four groups (two experimental and two control). The immediate-feedback group received explicit corrective feedback during the task whereas the delayed-feedback group received the feedback 24 hours later by means of an edited video recording of the interaction. The effects of the feedback were measured through an oral production task and an untimed grammaticality judgment test. Although the results showed no differences between the two feedback timing groups and control participants on the grammaticality judgment test, both feedback groups outperformed the control group on the oral production task without showing statistically significant timing effects.

If maximal exposure were the key to success in language learning, then adult learners at the university level would be doomed to fail. Not only are they presumably too old to learn additional languages effectively, but target language (TL) input appears to be insufficient, especially when other languages are allowed in class. Nevertheless, learners were shown to build on knowledge of previously acquired languages, to rely on language learning experience and to develop metalinguistic awareness. This study explores the perceived usefulness of a plurilingual consciousness-raising task that aims at helping learners make and strengthen connections between the TL and other previously acquired languages. Two university-level language courses were targeted: Spanish in Quebec and French in Mexico. Two customized tasks were implemented and recorded in each course throughout the semester. Each task included an input-based (discovery) phase, a reflective (metalinguistic) phase during which participants were asked to make assumptions on underlying patterns and correspondences across languages, and a validation phase where they presented their assumptions until reaching a consensus as a group. While tasks were generally perceived as useful, analyses of post-task questionnaires also revealed mixed feelings regarding its inductive stance. However, the verbal data collected demonstrated that the collaborative and metalinguistic reflective nature of the task permitted learners to find correspondences between languages and to engage in knowledge construction. Moreover, the various reflections collected indicate that learners benefitted from the task as groups engaged in metalinguistic reflections, activated their plurilingual repertoire and were able to create accurate assumptions regarding the targeted structure.

Language learning activities involving time-pressured repetition of similar content have been shown to facilitate improvements in fluency. However, concerns have been voiced about whether these gains might be offset by reduced levels of grammatical accuracy. This descriptive study tracked the oral proficiency of 32 Japanese university students enrolled in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes over one academic semester during which they regularly completed 3/2/1 fluency development activities. Measures of complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) were analysed to investigate whether any developmental patterns could be identified. The results indicated that over the semester, the students made small, but significant gains in two fluency measures, the mean length of pause and the phonation/time ratio. Despite the relatively small size of the gains, expert ratings of perceived fluency suggested that these fluency improvements were detectable to the human ear. Furthermore, a significant relationship emerged between three of the four CAF measures over the semester. These results suggest that the activities moderately impacted students' speaking fluency without negatively affecting accuracy or complexity levels; however, further longitudinal research is needed to determine which factors might influence this development, as class performance measures did not account for any of the variation detected.

In this study, 118 native speakers of Japanese watched 48 separate video clips in which a teacher provided recasts on phonological or lexical errors to students in Portuguese, a language with which the participants were unfamiliar. In the video clips, six recast characteristics were manipulated: length, segmentation (segmented/whole), prosodic emphasis (stressed/non-stressed), intonation (declarative/interrogative), head movements (nodding/shaking), and gestures (beat/deictic/metaphoric). Participants judged whether or not the teacher had corrected errors and stated the reasons for their decisions. Multiple regressions extracted segmentation and gestures as being significant variables for both phonological and lexical errors. Precisely speaking, recasts were more likely to be accurately perceived as correction when they were provided in sentence-length discourse along with deictic gestures. Additionally, head-shaking and beat also contributed to improved accuracy of phonological errors. The analysis of their reasoning indicates that the participants actively compared errors with recasts when judging the presence of a recast. The overall results indicate that contrary to the common belief suggesting that shorter recasts are better than longer ones, when true beginners overhear recasts, they may find it easier to notice the corrections when they are provided in sentence-length discourse; as such recasts facilitate more accurate perceptions.

Language assessment is increasingly computermediated. This development presents opportunities with new task formats and equally a need for renewed scrutiny of established conventions. Recent recommendations to increase integrated skills assessment in lecture comprehension tests is premised on empirical research that demonstrates enhanced construct coverage over conventional selected response formats such as multiple-choice. However, the comparison between response formats is underexplored in computer-mediated assessment and does not consider test item presentation methods that this technology affords. To this end, the present study investigates performance in a computer-mediated lecture comprehension task by examining test taker accounts of task completion involving multiple-choice questions without question preview and integrated response formats. Findings demonstrate overlap between the formats in terms of several core processes but also point to important differences regarding the prioritization of aspects of the lecture, memory and test anxiety. In many respects, participant comments indicate the multiple-choice format measured a more comprehensive construct than the integrated format. The research will be relevant to individuals with interests in computer-mediated assessment and specifically with a responsibility for developing and validating lecture comprehension assessments.

Phonetic imitation is a ubiquitous process in speech production. Speakers have a strong tendency to imitate their interlocutors both in a native and a non-native language. It is especially important in acquiring non-native speech, because it allows forming new sound categories. In the current study we investigated whether and to what extent Polish learners of English are able to imitate t-glottalization observed especially in British English. A total of 25 Polish learners of English imitated English models' productions with t-glottalization that were subsequently compared to their default productions (pre-test) and post-exposure production (post-test). The results showed that the participants successfully imitated t-glottalization after the exposure to the model talker. The generalization effect was limited in its magnitude in that only some of the non-imitated words had traces of glottalization. The results are discussed in terms of the differences in the implementation of glottalization in Polish and English and of how phonetic imitation informs second-language speech acquisition.