Japanese EFL international students may experience high levels of apprehension when communicating in English due to their culture, educational background, attitudes towards the role of English in their society, and lack of opportunities to practice speaking in English. Although the students in this study had studied English before joining the…

Awareness of transcultural pragmatics serves as the foundation for intercultural communicative competence. Explicit teaching of pragmatics in conjunction with intercultural communication training can contribute to the professional development of non-native English-speaking teachers. This article reports on an interdisciplinary attempt to develop a…

The present study describes a six-week study abroad experience in which two graduate and 12 undergraduate students from Johnson C. Smith University attended Guangdong Baiyun University in China. The purpose of this present study was to better understand how Chinese language immersion programs can develop cultural humility in students. Drawing from…

The present study explores Korean students' demonstration of language awareness through their engagement in language play. Grounded in the understanding of the relationship between language play and an "engagement with language" (EWL) perspective, this ethnographic and discourse analytic study investigates how Korean students aged 11-15…

The rapid increase of Asian immigrant students in Canadian classrooms demands more systematic and increased language support to ensure all English language learners (ELLs) achieve success in school. However, research has found mixed results on the usefulness of current English as a Second Language (ESL) support programs and a growing…

Anxiety experienced in the course of learning a foreign language is specific and unique (Horwitz et al., 1986; MacIntyre & Gardner, 1989). This paper reports a study on anxiety in Chinese undergraduate non-English majors at three different proficiency levels in a three-week immersion summer camp. By way of survey, interviews, reflective…

This article addresses the question of how far working memory may affect second language (L2) learners' improvement in spoken language during a period of immersion. Research is presented testing the hypothesis that individual differences in working memory (WM) capacity are associated with individual variation in improvements in oral production of…

This study investigated the effect of language immersion in an English-speaking environment on the production of intonational features in L2 English sentences. It was hypothesized that the Korean group who had been immersed in the English language as children would have intonation patterns more similar to native English speakers than a nonimmersed…

This article examines the claim that a fully immersive English language learning experience can be ensured by universities engaged in transnational education through offshore campuses. Taking as a case study one South East Asian offshore campus of a Western university, the inquiry was designed to discover the extent to which students did, in…

This article examines whether there are changes in students' teaching practices as a result of their experiencing an overseas professional development course (PDC); the process of any such changes; and whether any changes found are sustainable in the long term. Three forms of data gathering are used, lesson observation, in-depth interviews, and…

What is the role of the teacher in developing learner autonomy? The limited research in this area is seldom situated in theory and often based on self-reported data. This study is situated in sociocultural theory and draws on two constructs, the zone of proximal development and imitation, to explain the teacher's role in developing autonomy. The…

This study attempts to identify the specific professional needs of pre-service English immersion teachers in Korea in order to establish key components of English immersion teacher preparation programs. As an alternative approach of English language education, immersion instruction has been employed by a number of private and public schools in…

This contribution reports on a qualitative study conducted with 14 young Chinese children enrolled in French immersion in Canada, to explore their multilingual practices, and their simultaneous acquisition of three writing systems. Drawings and in-depth interviews constituted creative and age appropriate narratives to understand children's…

The English immersion teaching approach adopted by SEIB of GDUFS in China was developed on the basis of the immersion theory which was originally developed in North America. Its purpose is to create a learning environment in which the students acquire knowledge in business with English as the main carrier. The adoption of this approach aims to…

Over the last 30 years, inquiry-based teaching has become a highly valued component of professional development and practitioner research in Australia and New Zealand. This volume of the Language Teacher Research Series focuses on teaching and learning experiences in those two countries, which encompass a large geographical area with diverse…