This article reports on a study of foreign students' success in higher education in Norway and focuses specifically on the relation between academic success and students' proficiency level of Norwegian as measured by a CEFR-based university entrance test. This study is distinguished from prior studies because it sets out to investigate not only…

The transformation of higher education has been a pressing concern for policy makers and practitioners. This article provides examples of the transformative potential of assessments designed within the framework of a multi-literacies and heteroglossic pedagogy in an Applied English Language course at a South African university. These assessments,…

Given the growing importance of English as a lingua franca, this study examines which context (classroom instruction in the students' home country vs. studying abroad in an English-speaking country) better facilitates the acquisition of English by learners of different ages: children, adolescents and adults. Participants (N = 197) completed…

Assessment of students is an essential part of instruction in both teaching and learning. With the recognition of alternative assessment methods, classroom assessment has gained attention focusing on learning of students. However, high-stakes testing turns classroom assessment into teachers' high stakes decisions, ignoring the development of…

The purpose of this study was to identify and analyze the views of exchange students from Japan about their sojourn experiences at an American university. The participants were eight exchange students from Japan (four males and four females). This descriptive-qualitative study was conceptualized within sojourner theory (Siu, 1952). The data…

This project examines mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) and in particular the attitudes of undergraduate engineering students at the South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences towards the use of the smartphone app Quizlet to learn English vocabulary. Initial data on attitudes to learning languages and to the use of mobile devices to do…

This article considers the assessment challenges and prospects faced by foreign language teachers in Ukrainian universities in the context of the country's joining the Bologna Process. A major problem relates to adapting higher education to a common framework designed to facilitate comprehension and comparison of the content and outcomes of degree…

Following on preliminary research (Kétyi, 2013), in this project we looked for a mobile language learning solution, which combines computers and mobile devices. Our main idea was to explore whether by integrating mobile devices in our language teaching practice, our students at the Budapest Business School would gain valuable additional learning…

Aimed at developing methods, tools and techniques for delivery and evaluation of an educational module, this article addresses the needs of academicians restructuring, adjusting and altering their curricula to meet European Higher Education Area standards. The paper focuses on two pressing issues -- the applicability of and adjustment to European…

This quant-QUAL sequential explanatory mixed methods study describes a framework for evaluating the communicative competence (Canale & Swain, 1980; Canale, 1983) of non-beginner students of Chinese for placement purposes at U.S. four-year postsecondary institutions. A pragmatic lens was used to collect and analyze data that generated a…

This study investigates the role of motivation and learner variables in bilingual vocabulary development among first language (L1) Japanese students attending hoshuukoo (i.e., supplementary academic schools for Japanese-speaking children) in the United States. One hundred sixteen high school students ages 15-18 from eight hoshuukoo completed…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effect of Iranian EFL learners' proficiency level on their self-related personality traits (self-esteem and self-efficacy). To this end, 141 English major students, male and female, studying at Imam Khomeini International University (IKIU) and Kar Non-profit University in Qazvin, Iran were…

Feedback to the test taker is a defining characteristic of diagnostic language testing (Alderson, 2005). This article reports on a study that investigated how much and in what ways students at a Taiwan university perceived the feedback to be useful on an online multiple-choice diagnostic English grammar test, both in general and by students of…

In higher education institutes (HEIs), Operations Management programmes (OMPs) are among those programmes attracting a substantial amount of international student enrollment. With the current situation that the government is reducing its funding input, the UK HEIs' financial balance relies more than before on the international students who pay…

This study examined the second language (L2) development of adult learners of Spanish at three levels of proficiency during and after a semester of instruction. A fundamental goal was to identify cognitive and psychosocial individual differences (IDs) that can explain between-learner variation over time in order to expand our understanding of the…