This study examined why current university learners of French, Spanish, Russian, and Japanese, and, for comparative purposes, actual university learners of German, believe that others and why they themselves would study German. Responses were compared against current motivation theories, narratives promoted by academic language programs, research…

International students, especially those studying in English language institutes at universities in the United States, often struggle to create connections with local students and the host community. Learners of non-English languages also struggle to find opportunities to practice languages that are uncommon in the surrounding community. This…

This qualitative study explores how native peers as teaching assistants can support language learning in Higher Education. The data of five semi-structured group interviews of 15 teaching assistants in total were analysed thematically. The results indicate that the assistants embraced multiple roles during the programme and within the lessons.…

Balancing teaching national, regional, and foreign languages presents a challenge for higher education, illustrated by the use of hypertext for multilingual communication. This study investigates the correlation between proficiency in multilingualism and cultural awareness among higher education students. Embedded mixed methods design explores the…

Language tests are useful for many purposes, including monitoring language learning progress and evaluating language programs. This study investigated the interpretations and usefulness of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview -- Computer (OPIc) scores across four languages at a large US…

Answering calls to map college-level proficiency development (Modern Language Association, 2007) and longitudinally chart language learning (Barkaoui, 2014; Ortega & Byrnes, 2008), we mapped the oral proficiency growth of 1,922 lower-division college students of Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish (in the second, third, or fourth semester of…

The scholarship on foreign language (FL) learning and teaching shows various ways Web 2.0 technologies are used to promote and ease communication and gives access to and cultural exchange of information, which are the main purposes of language learning. Despite prolific examination of strategies and impact of Web 2.0 to enhance language learning,…

In this study, 21 university students, who represented thirteen nationalities, participated in an online cross-cultural learning activity. The participants were engaged in interactions and exchanges carried out on Facebook® and Skype® platforms, and their multilingual communications were supported by speech-to-text recognition (STR) and…

Examining speech samples from 75 American university students learning 1 of 3 languages (Mandarin, Russian, and Spanish), this article reports on a study of second language (L2) learners' oral fluency development and its relationship with their gains in holistic proficiency ratings during a semester abroad. In study abroad research, there is a…

The study uses an elicited imitation (EI) task to examine the effect of the native language on the use of the English nongeneric definite article by highly proficient first-language (L1) Spanish and Russian speakers and to test the hierarchy of article difficulty first proposed by Liu and Gleason (2002). Our findings suggest that there is a clear…

This study investigates caption-reading behavior by foreign language (L2) learners and, through eye-tracking methodology, explores the extent to which the relationship between the native and target language affects that behavior. Second-year (4th semester) English-speaking learners of Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish watched 2 videos…

This article presents the findings of a study conducted at five Finnish business schools in 2009. The aim of the study was to provide a broad picture of different aspects connected with language education at universities. After an overview of the situation of language studies in Finnish business education, the results are presented of the analysis…

This study aims to identify the two principal reasons why college students choose a certain language to satisfy a general education second language requirement by polling 172 students enrolled in first-year language courses in 13 languages at a large Northeastern research university. Students answered a questionnaire and chose the two main reasons…

This study investigated the effects of captioning during video-based listening activities. Second- and fourth-year learners of Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, and Russian watched three short videos with and without captioning in randomized order. Spanish learners had two additional groups: one watched the videos twice with no captioning, and another…

In the present study we call attention to the close connection between languages and globalization, and we also emphasize the importance of the Internet and online websites in foreign language teaching and learning as unavoidable elements of computer assisted language learning (CALL). We prepared a checklist by which we investigated 28 foreign…