Identity serves as a valuable lens through which to investigate, understand and facilitate teacher learning during curriculum reform. Identity learning is the core process of educational change, with teacher emotion at the heart of professional learning processes. In this study, we traced the 1-year journeys of four Chinese EFL teachers during a…

Drawing upon a collection of curriculum proposals and reflections and informed by a textual analysis approach, this study investigated how 234 university teachers planned to enact and reform their English-medium instruction courses (n = 66) in an English as a foreign language (EFL) university context. Results reveal that the teachers tend to adopt…

Curriculum material use is an agentive, reciprocal and innovative practice, involving multiple stakeholders such as teacher, students and assessments that mutually shape one another. While it is generally acknowledged that teachers' knowledge and skills deeply shape the way they use materials, little is known about how material use can possibly…

As the education for sustainable development (ESD) has been advocated in diverse educational contexts, increasingly more attention has been paid to facilitate teachers as the promoters of such educational practice in higher education. Yet, less sufficient research has focused on the ESP (English for Specific Purposes) teachers, who are regarded as…

This case study examines an under-explored domain of teaching, namely, teachers' use of curriculum materials to enact instructions. It focuses on English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) teachers' enactment of instructions through utilising prescribed textbooks in Higher Education (HE) in China. Drawing on interviews and lesson observations from two…

This study explores how teachers construct and enact agency in professional learning from an activity theory perspective. Through a qualitative case study of three language teachers' experiences within a professional development (PD) program focusing on China's Standards of English Language Ability (CSE), this research identifies agency…

Digital games are increasingly used in education to boost engagement and reduce stress. Digital game-based learning (DGBL) has improved the learning experience. However, further investigation is needed to determine the specific impact of commercially available, off-the-shelf (COTS) video games on English language skills. This study provides a…

The relationship between executive function and second-language ability remains contentious in bilingual children; thus, the current study focused on this issue. In total, 371 Uyghur-Chinese bilingual children ranging from 3 to 6 years old were assessed by a battery of tasks measuring language ability (expressive vocabulary tests, receptive…

The present study explores the features of English language literacy among 12 famous English language educators since the opening-up policy in China, using the narrative research approach. The purpose of this paper is to examine the characteristics of English language literacy among some famous educators in China and the influencing factors in the…

Involving the global issues as listed in Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in education is necessarily done in the education process, especially in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning. Exposure to global issues is known to improve students' understanding, awareness, and ability to solve urgent issues faced by global society. This paper…

Convergent evidence suggests that, for bilingual learners, well-developed morphological awareness in the first or second language may facilitate second language reading comprehension. However, there may be important differences between types of morphological awareness which could affect the degree to which second language reading comprehension is…

This study investigates the use of formulaic sequences (FS) in academic writings of Chinese learners of English as a foreign language across different levels of studies at a public university in China. Frequency-based formulas were retrieved from a corpus of student academic texts written at five time points between Year 1 and Year 3. The…

With the largest number of English learners in the world, the influence of the English language teaching (ELT) reform in China cannot be underestimated. This article explores the implications of the actual use of English in China's workplace for ELT reform in the context of English as a lingua franca (ELF). On the basis of cross-validated data…

The present study sought to investigate the effects of narrow reading and a combination of narrow reading and morphological awareness training on intermediate Chinese college English learners' vocabulary acquisition and retention. To these ends, 54 Chinese college English as foreign language learners (EFL) were randomly divided into three…

This study investigated how enhanced video captioning types affected comprehension and vocabulary acquisition regarding form recognition, meaning recall and meaning recognition. 158 low-intermediate Chinese EFL undergraduates were randomly assigned to English captions (EC), English captions with highlighted target words and L1 gloss (ECL1),…