Spanish heritage language learners (SHLL) on the United States-Mexico border in Texas often select online classes for convenience. This qualitative investigation presents preliminary information on how these SHLLs view twenty online Spanish courses based on 391 course evaluations. The literature indicates a need to consider heritage languages…

The present study investigated The Mixxer language exchange site (https://www.language-exchanges.org/) as a typical informal online community of self-directed language learners with a focus on how learners interact with each other. Learners' perception was also studied regarding how their language learning was impacted by their participation in…

Study Abroad (SA) has often been referred as the ideal means to learn a second language due to the unique opportunities it brings to the learners. SA provides learners access to both formal and communicative learning contexts where they can interact with the members of the target language community. Existing studies identified various contextual…

The literature exploring study abroad students' social networks and intercultural communication traditionally considers three categories of social ties: the co-national network, the multi-national network and the host national network. However, the data collected from a yearlong digital ethnography and the narratives on the social media posts of…

Globalized English offers interaction platforms, including cyber-based settings, for linguistically and culturally diverse speakers, particularly in the English as a second language/English as a foreign language context. Thus, it requires developing the intercultural competence of the parties involved. English users' different perspectives may…

This study explored how 296 U.S. learners of five foreign languages (FLs), including German, imagined stereotypical native speakers (NSs) and likely learners of German. Results showed that (a) when students of different languages imagined NSs of German, they emphasized different stereotypes; learners of German named the most and the most diverse…

Language interaction has been shown to positively impact second language development (Long, 1996). However, whereas research that examined interactionist approaches to second language acquisition (Gass & Mackey, 2006) has meticulously studied how different factors in the interaction (interactional context, type of task, etc) may affect L2…

The involvement of a native English speaker teacher (NEST, henceforth) in teaching English is a new phenomenon in Sumbawa Besar. SMAN 2 Sumbawa Besar involved a NEST sent by the American Indonesian Exchange Foundation (AMINEF) through the Fulbright English Teaching Assistants (ETA) program. This study aims at describing the roles of a NEST on the…

While English is embraced worldwide as a global means of communication, its teaching and learning is a contested arena of contacts between the so-called English native-speaker culture and local learner cultures. In this study, we investigate Iranian university students' viewpoints on the necessity and justifications for learning English and their…

This paper analyses the language attitudes of autochthonous and immigrant families living in Catalonia towards Spanish and Catalan. The research is intended to assess the possible differences in the language attitudes of students and their parents towards the two languages spoken in Catalonia. The investigation takes a sample of 476 students and…

This paper investigates two hypotheses: 1) EFL undergraduate students have positive attitudes towards the use of the phonetics website; and 2) teacher power can greatly influence their positive attitudes toward speaking English intelligibly. Research outcomes derive from questionnaire (n=79), crosschecked with interview data (n=47), revealing…

Previous research has shown that there is a relationship between language and identity, and thus the present study focuses on ethnic group affiliation (EGA) as a part of one's ethnic group identity and its association with speech constructs (i.e., intelligibility, comprehensibility, accentedness, and acceptability). EGA scores were collected…

Research writing is an important part of doctoral study. Previous studies suggest that students who speak English as an additional language (EAL) may experience difficulties in writing a thesis in English. This study investigated the nature of the writing challenges experienced by EAL doctoral students. Drawing on data collected from individual…

Attending to the narrative of a teacher candidate regarding his practicum experience with heritage language learners (HLLs) and L1 Spanish learners, this hermeneutic phenomenological case study describes the identity struggles he encountered during the experience. Findings show that his struggles resulted not only from a perceived lack of…

In countries such as the United States and Canada, an increasing number of non-native English speaking graduate students work in the capacity of university teaching assistants. Over the past several decades, a number of communication challenges between non-native English speaking International Teaching Assistants (ITAs) and native English-speaking…