This study investigates the enhancement of spoken English proficiency among students at Taiwan's technological and vocational education (TVE) universities. The focus is on the significant impact of positive learning attitudes and effective methodologies, using questionnaires and in-depth interviews to assess students' confidence and perceptions of…

This article compares the immersion-education systems in Brittany and Wales. The number of Welsh speakers is growing thanks to its well-developed immersion-education system. Brittany has a much less well-developed system and the number of Breton speakers is falling dramatically. Urgent action is needed if Breton is to survive. Using an approach…

Increasing migration-induced language diversity is putting pressure on the teaching of regional and minority languages in official bi- or multilingual regions. This study presents an in-depth analysis of teachers' and teacher trainers' beliefs and views towards language awareness and translanguaging approaches as possible ways to enhance pupils'…

The native language use in the target language classroom has recently gained the attention of second language acquisition research. This study analyzes such issue in the context of Dominican university students, ranging from 18 to 35 years old, studying in an English immersion program, who have been speaking their native language, namely, Spanish…

With U.S. classrooms increasingly characterized by linguistic diversity, policies mandating teacher training around English learning have proliferated. Recent federal oversight prompted Massachusetts to implement an initiative to endorse its 70,000+ teachers in Sheltered English Immersion (SEI). While policy research has productively emphasized…

In this article, we analyze the plurilingualism of instructors and their students in a program taught through the medium of French at a multilingual, Anglophone university in Western Canada. We employ the lenses of plurilingualism and plurilingual competence in the analysis of data from a one-year qualitative study of plurilingualism across the…

This book fills a large gap in our understanding of how to prepare teachers for the challenging but increasingly popular task of integrating content and language instruction. It brings together findings on content-based teacher education from Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North America in order to inform researchers and teacher educators and…

Few studies have examined willingness to communicate (WtC) changes resulting from short-term intensive immersion programmes. This study investigated the antecedents to and changes in WtC during one such programme held at a Macau university. The programme required students to reside on campus and participate in extensive task-based communicative…

Based on video recordings of five pre-k to grade 4 Chinese dual-language bilingual education (DLBE) teachers' classroom instruction, this article examines the Chinese DLBE teachers' target and first language use and pedagogical moves during their processes of learning to teach in immersion schools in the US. Conversational analyses of classroom…

Conducting undergraduate studies in the English language, while only a small minority of students speak English at home, poses many problems to learning in the South African context. This article explores how restrictive language policies may influence proper learning and impact negatively on the self-understanding of students. It also explores…

It is commonly believed that intensive English programs (IEP) are designed to immerse learners in an English-speaking environment to help them effectively develop their language skills. Therefore, despite countless studies on the importance of a learner's first language (L1) in second language learning, some IEPs enforce English-only policies that…

The critical importance of second language (L2) input, output, and interaction in TESOL notwithstanding, the decision between immersive (L2-English only) versus nonimmersive approaches is considered "the most fundamental question facing second language acquisition (SLA) researchers, language teachers, and policymakers" (Macaro, 2014, p.…

In striving for internationalisation, government and university policies in Catalonia promote the use of English in classrooms in two ways that often overlap: (1) as a lingua franca aiding the participation of international students and (2) through immersion approaches targeting local students. However, as the findings presented in this article…

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 paper addresses a niche in studies on immersion programmes for English as second language learners. While studies on the impact of the experience of studying abroad are replete with reports about the enhancement of participants' language proficiency or intercultural skills, the present study investigates the types of language and culture…