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The purpose of this paper is to investigate and understand academic English language-related challenges in listening and speaking faced by English as a foreign language (EFL) international Master students enrolled in various taught Master programs in a Malaysian university from the viewpoint/lens of 16 lecturers teaching the students.

This qualitative research relied upon 16 in-depth one-to-one interview sessions with 16 lecturers teaching the taught Master programs at a higher education (HE) institution in Malaysia for data collection. Data collected were coded and categorized according to themes via qualitative analysis software, NVivo.

It was found that academic English language-related challenges in listening and speaking from the viewpoint of the 16 lecturers are such as lack of discipline content knowledge to communicate, lack of confidence in communicating orally, difficulty in understanding lectures and other oral activities in the classroom, and coping with differences in learning culture.

This study suggests policies and programs to equip lecturers and university administrators to overcome the challenges faced by the students in their academic English language practices especially in listening and speaking to ensure meaningful academic adaptation in the current context.

The uniqueness of this study is that it is a retrospection of the lecturers teaching EFL and English as a second language (ESL) international Master students in taught Master programs in a Southeast Asian country. The focus of the retrospection is on academic English language-related challenges in listening and speaking faced by EFL international Master students who are currently pursuing their Master education at a HE institution in Malaysia.

This paper examines the experiences of engaging with academic writing of international doctoral students in the schools of humanities and education at a UK university. The purpose of this paper is to uncover the real accounts of international students whose cultural and language backgrounds are often marginalised and considered, not as facilitators, but as barriers to academic writing in the western context of universities.

Developed broadly within an interpretive post-positivistic paradigm, the study utilised Harré and van Lagenhove, 1999 Positioning theory and Goffman’s theory of Stigma to interrogate accounts of 12 students from the two schools in a year-long project involving three focus group discussions, questionnaire responses and personal reflective summaries by the students.

The paper highlights the notions of stigma associated with their foreign writing conventions and how students experience tensions and apprehensions about their ability as they painfully negotiate the new academic writing conventions of the institution. International students position themselves as vulnerable outsiders working within an ill-defined but highly valued language environment.

The research is limited to the extent that it utilises a very small number of students as its key source of evidence. However, the study was not aimed at providing generalisation as much as it sought to explore issues associated with the use of language by international studying in UK universities.

The study has practical implications for the professionals in HE to develop clear guidelines about what constitutes good English and to provide greater support to international students who see themselves as vulnerable outsiders in an environment which marginalises their linguistic and cultural identities.

The study has implications for the social, cultural, and academic integration of international students in HE institutions.

The paper signals a need for diverse writing frameworks which seek to promote rather than silence and marginalise potentially rich sources of knowledge and understanding in an increasingly globalising world.

The purpose of this paper is to explore students’ perception and use of English in higher education (HE) institutions in Malaysia. In doing so, it aims to better understand the relationship between students’ perception of English and academic self-efficacy, particularly since English is used as a medium of instruction in HE institutions.

Approximately, 980 questionnaires were distributed to four HE institutions to explore relationships and patterns of students perceived English language proficiency and academic self-efficacy as potential variables shaping their academic performance. About 838 students participated.

The findings revealed that although students did not rate their English proficiency very highly, they placed high value on English in regards to their academic performance and job prospects upon graduation. More importantly, the findings also show that the majority of the students had high academic self-efficacy beliefs in L2, and were more accurate at calibrating their efficacy beliefs with subsequent performance in academic settings, unlike typical research findings on Asian students as generally holding lower self-efficacy beliefs. This finding was evidenced by the strong and positive relationship between perceived English language competence and academic self-efficacy in L2.

It is imperative that students’ academic self-efficacy beliefs be enhanced as it has been revealed to mobilise motivation and cognitive resources. It is also necessary to offer targeted support services specifically designed to further help students to improve their English academic skills.

In this study, rewards offered by instrumental motivation in terms of increased academic literacy and career appear to supersede the motive of identification with the L2 language community. It is likely that students in Malaysian HE institutions are becoming increasingly motivated to study due to their own visions and desires, rather than as a result of external requirements. Such findings should be capitalised since self-efficacy is predictive of academic performance.

Academic language in social studies lessons is challenging for English Language Learners because of the language barrier. Social studies teachers need to make use of effective techniques that can help English Language Learners overcome the language barrier. Graphic organizers are promising tools for making content more comprehensible for English Language Learners. In this article it is suggested that Inspiration®, a software program that allows production of electronic concept maps in an easy process with minimum learning curve, can help social studies teachers teach English Language Learners more effectively, as well as enhance their language development. Inspiration® is presented as an instructional tool that can help social studies teachers understand the linguistic needs of English Language Learners (ELLs) and incorporate appropriate academic language of different types of language functions prevalent within the discourse structures of social studies textbooks with the help of Inspiration®, such as the language of describing the process of making laws, comparing and contrasting two branches of the American government, and sequencing of events in making of the American constitution.

This study aims to survey academic users in order to identify their needs and expectations about multilingual information processing when they interact with digital libraries. The study specifically aims to determine the disparities in needs and expectations when users speak different languages.

A survey was designed to fill in the gaps in the knowledge about academic users' multilingual needs and expectations for digital libraries. The survey questionnaire incorporates questions about different aspects of the participants' multilingual needs and expectations covering multilingual needs, the multilingual behavior, often‐used multilingual information resources, and desired functions for the multilingual services, retrieval and interfaces in digital libraries. The results are obtained through statistical analyses and clustering methods.

Overall, participants exhibited many multilingual needs during their academic activities. They often require multilingual information when they access academic databases or web information. Frequently, participants use online translation resources and tools, but they are not satisfied with the translation quality. Participants want many multilingual capabilities in digital libraries; they also want more sophisticated multilingual search interfaces. However, participants from different countries or who speak different languages show significant differences in their multilingual needs and expectations of digital libraries. This study's three user groups demonstrated clear differences in all aspects of multilinguality examined, as did the three latent groups identified through the clustering methods.

Few studies have examined the multilingual information process in digital libraries from the point of view of academic users. This study draws its inputs directly from real academic users from different countries and provides insights into multilinguality in digital libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the English for publication purpose practices of doctoral students in Iran. The overall objective was to explore their motives, hurdles and strategies in academic writing.

This case study draws on a narrative inquiry to explore nine science and engineering doctoral students’ perceptions of academic publication. The data were analyzed through a hybrid process of inductive and deductive thematic analysis.

The qualitative results showed three dominant themes, namely: motives for publication, hurdles to publication and strategies for dealing with these challenges were extracted. The main sources of motives were students’ desire to publish their works for their graduation, improve their resume, satiate the universities’ evaluation system, and finally share their knowledge worldwide. Their hurdles included: political reasons, language-related problems, center-periphery priorities and the lack of academic writing instruction. In order to overcome these hurdles, the participants employed some strategies in academic writing.

Due to qualitative nature of this study, only nine PhD students were recruited and therefore the research results are not intended to render generalizability. Besides, only narratives were employed to collect the required data. Future researchers can use surveys to collect more data.

The findings are discussed within English for academic purposes discourse and some recommendations are provided to alleviate the plights of non-native-English-speaking academic writers.

The methodology and the higher education context in which this paper was conducted are new to the literature.

The study aims to reveal how the students improved their academic presentation skills and the limitations to improvement with or without influences of students’ language backgrounds. Since the career paths of postgraduates have become more diverse in recent years, generic skills training is increasingly included in postgraduate programmes in addition to specific research training. However, PhD education generally adopts a traditional style, often relying on an individual supervisor without the inclusion of specific programmes to improve students’ generic skills. As academic presentation skills are crucial to research and are a generic skill that PhD students in science must acquire, we propose that existing student seminar programmes can be used effectively as an active training programme to improve these skills.

To design effective student seminars, we investigated how PhD students improved their academic presentation skills when opportunities to give regular seminars were provided and students were given detailed scores that measured performance in specific areas of presentation competency. We outline an extensive case study of 95 PhD students who presented at student seminars over a period of six years (2006-2011). Valid data of 73 students were collected, and data of 58 students were used for detailed analysis. Performance in three major factors important to presentation skills: structure, visuals and delivery, were scored for each seminar, and the scores underwent detailed statistical analysis.

Our key findings are that international students obtained better scores than Australian students for their first presentations while Australian students obtained a better score than international in for their second and the later presentations. The improvement of international students is slower than Australian students but occurs at a steadier pace. International students showed difficulty in improving answering questions.

This is the first time that a longitudinal study on PhD students’ development of academic presentation skills has been undertaken. Our results revealed how the students improved academic presentation skills and that the limitations to improvement depended on their language backgrounds. We discuss our findings from the viewpoint of student language backgrounds and the process of adaptation to academic culture.

This paper aims to explore the individual and social learning experiences of first-year accounting students studying in English as an additional language. The challenges of these students relating to listening, reading, speaking and writing in English, and the impact of these on their academic outcomes, are examined.

A qualitative case study design was used. Face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 students, both academically successful and unsuccessful, who had completed the first year. A thematic analysis of the data was conducted and a hybrid approach of deductive and inductive coding was used to interpret the data. This entailed the application of a language skills-based framework of teaching and learning to the first-order process of coding. An iterative and reflective process allowed themes to emerge from the data. These themes, in turn, triggered second-order codes that resonated with aspects of the interactionist approach to second language acquisition (SLA).

The themes that emerged indicated that students’ ability to interact with their study material, and their exposure to positive verbal interaction opportunities in both formal and informal contexts, may have contributed to their academic success.

It is recommended that an interactionist perspective be considered when designing curriculum resources and accounting language learning activities for first-year accounting students.

It is anticipated that the results will contribute towards building a bridge between accounting education and SLA research and provide a more informed linguistic foundation for incorporating language skills into the accounting curriculum.

This study reports on the academic support programs targeting first-year business students at La Trobe Melbourne. The at-risk students were offered both a general academic support class and a content-based program. This study was conducted to explore students' perception of the usefulness of these programs. The paper also aims to create a better intervention to attract more at-risk students by exploring the reasons behind the low rate of at-risk students making use of these services.

The specific research uses a mixed method approach to explore a way to best address the academic needs of the first-year international business students, especially those identified as at-risk students in a college in Melbourne where both a general academic program and a discipline-based program were on offer.

The findings indicate that although the content-based program was highly evaluated by students and also attracted more students than the general support module, many at-risk students did not use this service. The low level of English proficiency, the heavy workload, the passive and dependent learning style, the unclear information about the service and the desire to follow only teachers' guidance all prevented at-risk students from making use of the available services. These students need further help and guidance in this transitional period to recognise the assistance provided for them and to make use of these services to enhance their learning.

Recently, various support activities have been designed to assist international students in enhancing their language and academic skills necessary for pursuing their study in Australia. These activities range from credit-based English for Academic Purposes courses, to optional general language and study programs, and more recently, discipline or content-based programs. There is also a tendency in several universities to move from offering general language and study programs to embedding disciplinary programs. Adopting disciplinary-based academic support activities seem to be the right direction in many universities as these activities are more likely to help increase the overall pass-rate and improve student learning outcomes. However, problems seem to remain when many at-risk international students do not seem to go for these services. This study has led some light on how to improve the future language and academic skills to support activities for first-year overseas business students.

The purpose of the paper is to shed additional light on the Englishisation process in higher education (HE), by exploring the contentious and divisive nature of language changes and the different ways in which individual academics experience that process and craft ways of resisting institutional attempts to naturalise the use of the English language in teaching and scholarly writing.

Based on a self-ethnographic insider study in a Portuguese university setting, the data were gathered from multiple sources and over an extended period of time and presented as stories selected as illustrative examples of resistance.

The Englishisation process goes beyond language issues and tends to be associated with increasing competitive pressures and the implementation of international standards that might challenge the cultural mind-set and long-established practices; by exacerbating old political divisions and tensions, the Englishisation process uncovers a confrontation between different visions of the role and nature of the university that seems to co-exist and compete in the same setting – the community of scholars and the market-led university.

The paper adds to the debate on the implications of the Englishisation process in HE showing that resistance to the growing use of the English language might not be about the language after all. It is the full package that comes with the Englishisation process that really seems to matter.