The purpose of this mixed-methods explanatory sequential design study is to better understand university-level foreign students' motivations for attending tutoring sessions. Forty-eight university students were selected based on their enrollment in a university's intensive English language learning program. This study involved two phases of data…

This study examines the impact of High-Immersion Virtual Reality (HiVR) as a tool for teaching English L2 pragmatics to international students enrolled in an Intensive English Program at a US university. This research focuses on integrating HiVR into explicit L2 pragmatics instructional treatments. A quasi-experimental design was employed to…

For this dissertation, I had the opportunity to investigate a well-established university-based intensive English program in the northeastern United States as it transitioned from an integrated-skills to a paired-skills approach. My goal as a researcher was to investigate in what ways "listening," the second language (L2) skill…

The aim of this study was to explore the experiences of international-student English language learners (ELLs), situated on a language learning plateau (L2P), who have been exposed to a Growth Mindset Pedagogy with Deliberate Practice. The researcher used a qualitative research design, to document the experiences of five adult English language…

In many U. S. universities, international students whose second language is English follow one of two admission paths: 1) the traditional admission path, where students apply directly to the university for full admission; or 2) the conditional admission path, where they can apply to the university's intensive English program (IEP) and be granted…

Despite some rises and falls in the numbers due to various reasons, including the political climate in the Trump era and the COVID-19 pandemic (Laws & Ammigan, 2020), each year universities in the United States host a large number of multilingual international students from different parts of the world. Based on their TOEFL scores, many are…

Internationalization at institutions of higher education in the United States results in greater linguistic diversity of the student body. Admission policies for international students include English proficiency standards which are meant to ensure that multilingual students for whom English is an additional language can function linguistically in…

"Service-learning" (SL) is an experiential pedagogy that engages students in working for, with, and in communities in need. While prior research has explored the effects of SL on second language (L2) users' (perceived) language development (e.g., Gaugler & Matheus, 2019), intercultural awareness (e.g., Sa´nchez-Naranjo, 2021), and…

Reading approaches in Japan and other EFL settings have typically focused on accuracy at the expense of fluency. However, reading rate and fluency are important components of reading that are currently being neglected. A review of the literature reveals growing interest in investigating the effectiveness of reading rate and fluency enhancement…

The U.S. economy receives consistent and increasing benefits from international students in higher education, an estimated $41 billion during the 2018-2019 academic year. However, the existing research literature has failed to determine whether Intensive English Language Programs (IELP) adequately prepare these students for college-level…

While the use of educational technology in online instruction has increased in higher education, it is still limited in intensive, academic English programs. Precipitated by COVID-19, U.S. Intensive English Programs (IEPs) quickly transitioned from face-to-face (F2F) instruction to the emergency remote teaching environment (ERTE) when the public…

International student enrollments in U.S. colleges and universities continue to increase. Entry into an undergraduate or graduate program requires that applicants demonstrate suitable English language proficiency by means of a standardized test score such as the Test of English (TOEFL) or the International English Language Tests (IELTS).…

This dissertation had a three-pronged approach by examining (1) the role and sustainability of university-based intensive English programs (IEPs), (2) the value of a master's in Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and (3) relevance of attending an IEP for international/English as a second language (ESL) students. IEPs face…

Responding to a gap in postmethod pedagogy in English-language teaching, this study details the implementation of a pedagogy of plausibility (PofP), a place-based ecopedagogy that privileges local knowledge and language practices. A PofP is informed by four pedagogic pillars: (a) teaching with particularity, (b) teaching with practicality, (c)…

Little is known about how experienced university instructors of ESOL in the United States construct their identities as teachers. Due to their administrative tasks and their de facto positions as a service provider to other academic departments (Auerbach, 1991; Breshears, 2004; Johnston, 1999), these instructors' professional role identities…