For English language learners, mastering the use of near-synonyms can be challenging. Despite the semantic similarities of English synonyms, they are not interchangeable in all contexts. The objectives of this corpus-based study are to examine differences between the near-synonymous adjectives "blank," "empty" and…

Recent studies indicate that many foreign students now choose to go to the Philippines for university and language education. In this paper, we examine how Filipino Teachers' English (FTE) is represented on English language schools' webpages to market the Philippines as an alternative destination for acquiring "good" English among…

When acquiring a second language, learners must become able to perceive the difference between novel sounds ("discrimination") and also associate strings of sounds with distinct vocabulary items ("lexical encoding"). Recent research has questioned whether discrimination is a sufficient or necessary condition for encoding, and…

This case study examines how preservice teachers make meaning of "American culture" while being cognizant of personal bonding between a Japanese ex-inmate and the community he connected with in prison--whom he refers to affectionately as his Chicano homies--in the college course "Culture and Languages of the United States." The…

The topic of this academic review is settler slogans that mandate colonial school policy in North America. Also discussed is Indigenous futurity as a strategy for transforming education and countering the educational harm that comes from weaponized language. Beginning in 1887, the US federal government authorized colonial schooling, using the…

Drawing upon interview data collected from six American professors who have taught in a Sino-US collaborative programme, this study explores these Western educators' perceptions of their Chinese students. Adopting the theoretical lens of cultural non-essentialism, this study finds that these educators formed an appreciative and contextualized…

A transnational turn on language and literacy urges increased attention on the flexible languaging practices of immigrant children who cross the boundaries of languages, cultures, nations, and beyond. This study examines how immigrant children and parents from transnational immigrant families engaged in translanguaging in museums during their…

This paper uses a critical pedagogical lens for evaluating North American theological education within Black and Brown communities. A Latin American epistemology, exemplified in Freire's (2000) concept of "conscientização," is highlighted throughout. Four major pedagogical themes from Latin American Liberation Theology are applied to…

Synonyms can be problematic for EFL learners since each synonym has distinct meanings to be used in different context. The purposes of this corpus-based study are to investigate distinctions of the synonymous nouns purpose, goal and objective based on the distribution across genres in which the degree of formality is determined and to examine…

The purpose of this multiple-case study was to explore how four US-born Muslim college students spatialized their linguistic and cultural identities within and across their social, academic, and religious spaces. The data were collected through detailed and in-depth data collection methods involving multiple sources of information: observations in…

The extent to which exposure to new phonemic contrasts (i.e. contrasts that are present in the L2 but not in the L1) will lead to the creation of a new phonemic category in L2 speakers, as well as the phonological nature of these categories, remains an open question insofar as there is no consensus on whether acquiring a new contrast would result…

Within the last two decades, theorizing and research on language teaching and teachers have witnessed a fundamental shift of attention and orientation towards socio-cognitive aspects of teaching. This epistemic shift has been paralleled by the global reach of the English language, inspiring scholars to call for a paradigm shift in Applied…

While it is known that heritage speakers diverge from the homeland baseline, there is still no consensus on the mechanisms triggering this divergence. We investigate the impact of two potential factors shaping adult heritage language (HL) grammars: (1) cross-linguistic influence (CLI), originally proposed for second language acquisition (SLA), and…

Purpose: The paper aims to illustrate some of the challenges and outcomes of teaching courses addressing the politics, culture, and history of the US in the Middle East. In doing so, it contextualises an application of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy and describes its implementation. Methodology: A case study method is applied to qualitative records…

Native English speaking language teachers who live and work in various parts of the world often express a desire to learn the language of their host country. Without sustained levels of motivation, however, their desires are unlikely to be realized. This article reports the findings of a longitudinal case study of an American English language…