Situated in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context, this study navigates the intersection of language learner identity and foreign language engagement. Specifically, drawing on the concept of voice (Canagarajah, 2013; Johnstone, 1996; Kramsch, 2003), Bakhtin's (1981) theory of language, and the notion of investment (Darvin & Norton,…

Research has confirmed that supportive social networks and associated resources play a critical role in the adaptation of migrating international students to host communities. Access to such social networks and resources requires migrating students to invest in and make efforts at academic socialisation, as mediated by various social processes.…

The purpose of this study was to explore if teaching ELF would help students change their beliefs about language and language learning. Firstly, students were interviewed in person, and they were found to have a lack of motivation and negative attitudes towards learning English with standard norms. It was also noticed that the students are not…

Exploring opportunities by which learners can internalize new knowledge and consolidate existing knowledge has long been a point of interest in English as a foreign language research. This study investigated how meta-talk opportunities on discourse markers created by four task types including text reconstruction, dictogloss, translation and jigsaw…

This article examines the intervention, through the design and pedagogical implementation of two rubrics based on theory from the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach, to assess the oral competences in English of a group of sophomores in a content subject. The data collection and subsequent analysis included both quantitative…

This study examined the latent factors of dialect variation as they relate to reading achievement of second grade students. Sociocultural theory, identity theories, and critical theory used against a metaphorical backdrop of a bundle of locks were used to illustrate the complexity of language variation and its effect on reading achievement within…

This article focuses on qualitative self-report data from a mixed-methods study which investigated Grade 5 and 6 (n = 274), 11-12-year-old, Irish-medium (IM) immersion students' improvement in linguistic accuracy in response to an explicit-inductive approach to form-focused instruction (FFI). A series of typographically enhanced PowerPoint slides…

Language exchange refers to a learning partnership between two learners with different native languages who collaborate to help each other improve their proficiency in the other's language. The purpose of this study is to examine the ways in which language-exchange participants activate learner agency to construct opportunities for learning in…

The present study examined the effects of languaging by asking four pairs of Chinese university English as a foreign language (EFL) students to rewrite a story from a different perspective through three stages (composing--comparing- revising). Multiple sources of data were collected, including pair discussions, co-constructed writings, individual…

The study reported in this paper explored if learners' perceptions of two types of oral corrective feedback, recasts, and metalinguistic feedback, are influenced by their foreign language anxiety in classrooms. Corrective feedback was provided to English as a foreign language (EFL) learners who were homogeneous with regard to their proficiency…

This article reports on a study that investigated the role of metapragmatic awareness of L2 learners in Hong Kong, and the impact it has on language choices when addressing requests in English. Simulated open role-plays and retrospective interviews were used to explore the ways in which mainland Chinese undergraduates assess, plan and produce…

The socio-cultural conditions of late modernity induce a "reflexive imperative" amongst young people, which also results in metapragmatic and metalinguistic behaviour, as has been demonstrated by linguistic ethnographers (LE). However, recent LE studies on reflexivity in Western European settings have mainly focused on how groups of…

This paper examines the resulting qualitative transformation of two students' metapragmatic awareness following a semester abroad in southern France--one of whom had access to a concept-based pragmatics instruction programme (expert-mediation), while the other followed a standard semester programme. The larger study from which these cases are…

This paper presents research conducted with teachers and students in one year 7 and one year 8 English classroom that worked to support in school English language learning by calling on the resources and repertoires of plurilingual students. In this work, students and teachers were engaged as linguistic ethnographers of their own language…

This empirical study examined the perceptions and experiences of nine Thai college student writers' expression of emotions in poetry, narrative, and opinionated writing written in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages: Thai and English. The study focused on the participants' perspectives in order to gain more understanding of the phenomenon…