This annual publication is the only long-standing, comprehensive information resource on international students and scholars in the United States and American students studying abroad for academic credit. Open Doors features graphic displays, data tables, and policy-oriented analyses and is an essential resource for those concerned with U.S.…

The Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad program provides grants to support overseas projects in training, research, and curriculum development in modern foreign languages and area studies by teachers, undergraduate and graduate students, and faculty engaged in a common endeavor. Projects may include short-term seminars, curriculum development,…

Seventy-eight native English speakers rated the foreign-accented speech (FAS) of 24 international students enrolled in an Intensive English programme at a public university in Texas on degree of accent, comprehensibility and communicative ability. Variables considered to potentially impact listeners' ratings were the sex of the speaker, the first…

A call for a bridge between research and practice is nothing new, yet it seems to be an impossible task to accomplish. Despite the dedicated efforts made by numerous researchers in the past, the world is still largely separate between researchers and teachers. One piece of evidence is that research studies seem to have only a little impact on…

This pilot study examines the role of metacognitive awareness as a motivational strategy in second language learning. The paper begins by exploring metacognitive strategies within the general language learning strategy framework, and then zooming in upon "interest enhancement" as a particular strategy that influences motivation and…

This article describes a series of exploratory L1 to L2 dubbing projects for which students translated and used editing software to dub short American film and TV clips into their target language. Translating and dubbing into the target language involve students in multifaceted, high-level language production tasks that lead to enhanced vocabulary…

This paper portrays the activity system of eight classes of Grade 6 children with special educational needs in an Intensive French as a second-language education program. Classroom norms and tools reflected a social-interactionist and social-constructivist approach with scaffolding, social interaction, multiple modes of representing, holistic,…

"Open Doors" is a comprehensive information resource on the 764,495 international students in the United States in 2011/12 and on the 273,996 U.S. students who studied abroad for academic credit in 2010/11. The Institute of International Education (IIE), one of the largest and most experienced higher education exchange agencies in the…

The purpose of this study is to explore the nature of feedback that English as a Second Language (ESL) students received on their writings either from an automated essay scoring (AES) system or from the teacher. The participants were 12 adult ESL students who were attending an intensive English center at a university in Florida. The drafts of the…

Online technology and streaming video have the potential to generate tremendous interest and motivation in ESL/EFL students. Unfortunately, as the basis for a task-based language teaching (TBLT) program, such technology often places students in a passive position and limits inter-student communication. This paper describes a successful TBLT course…

The Problem: The purpose of this study was to identify and analyze the information structure of native-English speaking (NES) ESOL teachers in giving explanations in a grammar class at an Intensive English Program (IEP) at a university in southern California Method: This mixed-method study employed a sequential-exploratory design. Six grammar…

Linguistic accuracy plays an important role in the quality of written texts, yet the explicit teaching of linguistic form--particularly grammar--for the purpose of improving learners' writing has generated an ongoing debate. Furthermore, students' voices about their learning are often ignored because they are perceived as not knowing what they…

Replacing face-to-face teaching with online instruction in higher education will become an increasingly attractive strategy for reducing instructional costs. Research on the effectiveness of online instruction, however, is sparse. The purpose of this paper is to present findings of a 2-year study that examined learner outcomes within the context…

Although several studies have been conducted that investigated the attitudes of English as a second language (ESL) students towards their nonnative-English-speaking (NNES) ESL teachers, few scholars have explored the influence of teacher-contact time and other relevant variables on students' responses. This article reports on a study conducted in…

Many intensive English language programmes that English second language (ESL) students enrol in adopt a process approach to writing, interpreting writing as a cognitive process that is highly private or individualistic (Atkinson, 2003), where writers use specific cognitive phases, such as pre-writing, drafting, and revising, to generate their…