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This paper, which originates in an English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classroom activity in Hong Kong, aims to explore English learners’ expressive and creative potential in writing by studying their work in the literary narrative genre.

A group of upper secondary students (15-16 years of age) with limited English resources and competence was enlisted to remake a folktale with visual and written prompts.

The writing samples demonstrate that these low-level EFL writers are able to refashion the narrative elements, and to communicate meanings for their own purposes. They exhibit logicality and problem-solving skills in their attempts to challenge and transform idea and to include themes of interest to them. There is also evidence of creative play with language in their use of dialogues and figures of speech.

These writing outcomes suggest the need to re-vision English language arts practices in increasingly diverse education systems. Genre-based instruction, with its emphasis on “writing to mean” as a social activity supported by learning to use language, could lead to widening EFL learners’ access to genre knowledge and to greater life chances.

A linguistics-based pedagogy scaffolding less able EFL writers while they learn to build effective narratives is identified as a way forward.

Although the idea of using narratives to engage EFL learners in writing is not entirely new, this paper contributes to the field by responding to low-level learners’ writing that goes beyond linguistic “correctness”, and developing strategies for supporting creativity and language play.

Desertion rates in Colombian universities remain unacceptably high. In the field of foreign languages, academic failure is particularly concerning since English language instruction is compulsory in most universities. To address the issue of poor student performance and high dropout rates, the University of Colombia has set up a peer tutoring scheme (PTS) for English as a foreign language (EFL) students in order to inform programme development. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

The study was informed by realist evaluation principles. Qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted with eight PTS stakeholders supplemented by documentary analysis of the programme’s publicity material on the PTS website. The data were analysed using thematic analysis.

Findings reveal discrepancies between the “espoused theory” about how the programme operates and the “theory-in-use”. In particular, according to stakeholders, the programme does not appear to be used by many of those EFL students who would benefit from it, which suggests that the programme is not as effective as it could be. Student and teacher contextual factors and mechanisms may explain the reasons for issues with programme effectiveness.

Formative evaluations such as the current study can provide rich contextual information, but cannot be generalised to other settings. Also, this study does not explore the perspective of peer tutors and tutees, which means key variables may have been overlooked. Further research into the perspectives of tutors and tutees would therefore be needed to firm up these conclusions.

Due to the scarcity of literature into EFL peer tutoring interventions in higher education (HE), it is hoped that these findings will have relevance for similar contexts. The current evaluation highlights the influence of contextual factors such as willingness to ask for help, student motivation, student priorities, tutor credibility, teacher workload, timetabling and scheduling issues and involvement from teachers on the success of open-access peer tutoring programmes for EFL students in higher educational settings.

As far the researcher is aware, this is the first evaluation of an EFL peer tutoring programme in a private HE context in Colombia, and one of only a handful of studies into EFL peer tutoring programmes. The findings therefore have implications for those working in similar contexts.

This study aims to propose and test a model that examines the potential connections between two teacher situational variables (teacher immediacy and credibility) and three learner affective factors (motivation, attitudes and communication confidence) and to examine how such associations predict learners’ L2WTC (Foreign/second language willingness to communicate) in a language class via a comprehensive communication model to structurally verify the theoretically based associations among these variables.

In total, 214 females and 198 males took part in the study with age range between 19 and 38 years. Participants filled in a verified, translated Arabic version of the questionnaires using an online questionnaire. Data were gathered using questionnaires and were analyzed using descriptive statistics, confirmatory factor analysis, path analysis and sequential mediation analysis using bootstrapping methods to identify and verify direct and indirect paths in the model.

The initial L2 communication structural model showed acceptable goodness of model fit. Teacher credibility and immediacy behaviors only indirectly predicted L2WTC through the mediation of affective variables. Motivation and communication confidence mediated the relationship between credibility and L2WTC, while the association between immediacy and L2WTC was mediated by communication confidence.

The findings of this study have important pedagogical implications globally for professions related to communication instruction, especially with regard to teacher credibility behaviors and particularly for practitioners and beneficiaries in EFL contexts where learners are widely acknowledged for their unwillingness to communicate in foreign language classes.

The purpose of this paper is to explore EFL reading anxiety of first-year undergraduate engineering students and its effect on their reading performance in a public sector engineering university in Pakistan. It specifically aims to explore their top-down, bottom-up and classroom EFL reading anxiety.

Data for the present study were collected from 200 first-year engineering students to explore their reading anxiety. A 20-item questionnaire developed by Zoghi and Alivandivafa (2014) was used to measure students’ EFL reading anxiety, while an IELTS academic reading test was used to measure their reading performance. The data were analyzed through exploratory factorial analysis and multiple regression analysis to determine which type of reading anxiety has a significant effect on students’ reading performance.

It was found that the bottom-up reading anxiety and the classroom reading anxiety have a significant negative impact on the reading performance of the first-year undergraduate engineering students of a Pakistani university. However, top-down reading anxiety has an insignificant negative impact on the reading performance of university students.

The data for the current study were drawn from one Pakistani public sector engineering university, and all the students were first-year undergraduates. The data were collected through a self-reported questionnaire and IELTS (academic) reading test. Some of the students may be unfamiliar with the IELTS test pattern, so their reading performance might have been affected.

Teachers should adopt such a methodology in their EFL classrooms which helps students reduce their reading anxiety. Reading texts must be selected considering the proficiency level of students, and reading strategies must be explicitly taught to reduce bottom-up and top-down reading anxieties. Teachers should create a positive learning environment in their classroom by encouraging students to make an effort to improve their reading skills in order to deal with classroom reading anxiety. Students must be explained that they should help one another rather than ridiculing each other’s reading mistakes. Differentiated instruction can also be adopted to facilitate weak readers. The teachers can provide additional/out of the class support to weak readers in order to help them deal with reading anxiety.

The EFL reading anxiety among university students in the Pakistani context has received little attention from the researchers. Furthermore, although the impact of EFL reading anxiety on EFL students’ reading performance has been explored previously, the impact of three types of EFL reading anxiety on EFL learners’ reading performance has not been adequately investigated.

Web-based language learning (WBLL) materials have long been favored by English language instructors because they are plentiful, easily accessible, user-friendly and, most importantly, free. This research looks into the effects of learning the simple perfect tense translation in three different English translation classes that used three different teaching methods: traditional face-to-face, integrative and web-based learning. It also aims to investigate the impact of gender on every mode of instruction and to identify the most effective method for learning translation.

The study is quantitative, with a pretest/posttest quasi-experimental research design. A total of 93 third-year undergraduate students (51 female and 42 male students) participated in the pretest/posttest design. Each group was exposed to one mode of instruction for nine weeks. All groups sat for a pretest in the first week of the treatment. After the treatment, the participants were provided with a posttest, and the data obtained were analyzed using the SPSS computer software program.

The findings revealed a significant difference in both tests for all modes used. All three groups improved in their gain score, but the highest gain among these groups was the integrative method, followed by web-based learning. The result of the independent sample t-tests and ANOVA exhibited that there was no significant difference in the level of students between the two groups, both were sig. two-tailed (p = 0.342). Furthermore, it was discovered that gender did not affect students' performance in the posttest (Z = −1.564, p > 0.05) when each mode of instruction was applied. Finally, the integrative method was observed to be the most effective.

The findings can inspire translation course designers to plan necessary policies or syllabi regarding English translation courses and may serve as a platform for improving the curriculum for training and motivating the next generation of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners.

The findings of this study could be used to improve English instruction in countries where English is a second or foreign language. The actual gap in knowledge is that no other studies have compared all three groups in the past few years.

This paper aims to explore the changing pedagogic discourses in China today, using the current wave of English curriculum innovation as a focused case. Given the cross-cultural nature of foreign language education, the change in the English as a foreign language curriculum in China has served as a fertile ground for different pedagogical ideas to emerge and to cross. The new English curriculum in China has endorsed a more communicative and humanistic view of language teaching, encouraging teachers to adopt a task-based approach to organize their classroom teaching. The new English curriculum has aroused a heated debate among Chinese scholars on the suitability of such a Western curriculum idea in the Chinese educational context on the basis of its relation to the Confucian tradition of education, the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context of China and the danger of post-colonialist imposition.

A critique is conducted on the three areas of controversies by situating the debate in the larger context of the cross-cultural understanding of the Chinese pedagogic discourse in the process of globalization and internationalization.

It is important for China to resist the homogenizing effect of globalization and internationalization in the area of curriculum development; however, being defensive and protective of one’s own and dismissive of others has not been and should not be the attitude of Chinese curriculum reform. The evolution of Chinese pedagogy is not only a result of Western influence but also a result of social change in the process of industrialization (Cheng, 2011). Global trends and national traditions should not be taken as extremes in an incompatible and irreconcilable dichotomy.

The three areas of debates on the new English curriculum can serve as a good lens into the evolving curriculum discourses in China. They reflect the cultural–historical, contextual and critical considerations among Chinese educational scholars in the national curriculum innovation efforts.

The current research presents a 14-week experience of developing socially orientated narratives in a digital mode, which involved 60 female Saudi English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. Initially working together, they were later divided into groups of approximately eight members each. The purpose of this research is to determine the benefits and challenges facing EFL leaners who are engaged with socially orientated digital-storytelling tasks. It also explores the nature of creating language-related socially orientated digital-storytelling projects and the main features associated with such projects. This practice targets the use of a new form of educational technologies that promotes educators’ pedagogical strategies, as well as their social needs, by sharing learners’ personal thoughts with others and cooperating and coordinating with other team members.

The current research has been designed in line with qualitative analysis. A qualitative analysis approach was chosen as the study seeks to gain further understanding about the issue of socially orientated digital storytelling among EFL learners in Saudi Arabia. The two main research methods used for conducting this research were semi-structured interviews and analysis of the content produced by the participants. Both methods were selected to enable the participants to express their personal thoughts and feedback directly to the researcher.

The findings have shown several benefits of this method, as well as highlighted the challenges regarding the application of such a practice in English language classes at university. The findings have indicated that such a novel educational atmosphere would result in the role of social orientation as a culture for enhancing learners’ competence and willingness to share a co-learning experience being regarded more highly. In addition, the results have revealed how such group work can be constructed and the main aspects of content that exist in the digital stories produced.

One limitation of the current research is that it only included a group of female EFL students. Therefore, it is recommended that the same research be conducted on male EFL students in Saudi Arabia so that a comparative analysis can be made regarding the effects of socially orientated digital storytelling on both genders. In addition, it is recommended that the research be carried out among more classes containing female and male EFL students to be able to analyse the data quantitatively. Lastly, there remains the issue of convincing administrators, parents and instructors opposed to these ideas to implement this kind of project in formal language education, which is often independently orientated.

The effect of such a practice is the improvements made to learners’ academic and digital literacies. Specifically, students’ academic-writing skills and abilities to tell stories are essential parts of this process that can be improved by learners during the online storytelling process.

The research presents an application of a promising pedagogy that integrates digital technologies into different learning settings, including the context of learning English as a foreign language.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of blogs on teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) to primary students. The study also explores educators’ perceptions of social media tools and digital literacy in school environments.

A three-step approach was used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data. First, the blogs of 23 fifth-grade students in an EFL class in Kuwait was analysed for one semester along with student perceptions and teacher observations. Second, a survey was distributed to the students at the end of the semester, and finally, four focus groups were conducted regarding educators’ perceptions on the use of social media, their skills and needs and problems encountered.

The findings showed that by the end of the semester, students were writing lengthy sentences, had fewer spelling and grammatical mistakes, were more motivated and independent and displayed a more positive attitude towards learning EFL. In addition, educators are enthusiastic about using Web technologies in their teaching practices but have several concerns such as digital literacy competencies, technology-use behaviour and lack of accessibility to digital content.

The number of questions on the student survey could be reduced. Also, it would be preferable in future studies to require all students to blog at least twice a week which could provide a broader representation of their writing abilities.

Little research has been reported in the literature on the use of blogs in teaching EFL to primary school students. Most literature focuses on teaching EFL to university students. By using a mixed-methodology approach, this study also highlights the needs of educators and students in technology learning environments and makes a good contribution towards offering pragmatic solutions.

A plethora of research highlights the pernicious effects of English language learning demotivation on students' language learning outcomes. Therefore, to prevent students' demotivation has been a challenging task for the English language teachers. To shed fresh insight into this problem, the prime purpose of the present study was to examine the possible constituents of Pakistani university students' language learning demotivation, and how they interact with the resilience and the two personality dimensions (i.e. conscientiousness and openness to experience).

The present quantitative research study administered a questionnaire consisting of four parts to 215 undergraduate students who were enrolled in the two public universities in Quetta, the capital city of Balochistan province of Pakistan. To analyze the data, both descriptive and inferential statistics were performed with the SPSS (version 24).

The results identified both external and internal salient demotivating factors. The external factors included classroom environment, classroom learning materials, characteristics of classes, whereas lack of language learning interest and experiences of failure were the internal factors. Additionally, the results of simple linear regressions and multiple linear regressions also revealed that resilience and the two personality dimensions influenced the English language learning demotivation.

The prevalence of demotivation in the language classrooms necessitates Pakistani university English language teachers to adopt motivational teaching strategies to elicit, enhance and sustain language learners' motivation. The present study also draws the attention of the university teachers to foster students' resilience, conscientiousness and openness to prevent their language learning demotivation. The findings also implicate the ministry of education of Pakistan to equip educational institutes with language learning facilities to lower the burgeoning issue of students' language learning demotivation.

The present study provides empirical evidence regarding the interaction of resilience and personality with demotivation in the Pakistani context and contributes to the sparse existing knowledge on this issue. Additionally, the present study also establishes the knowledge that despite experiencing demotivation, language learners can regain language learning motivation through their resilience as well as behavioral patterns (i.e. being conscientious and open).

The purpose of this paper is to scrutinise the potentials and challenges of variation theory when adopting learning study in Austrian initial EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher education.

Based on a hermeneutic and epistemological approach, projects, and publications employing variation theory in the context of EFL are critically evaluated.

Variation theory and learning study turn out to have great potential for EFL teaching and learning in Austria. However, three critical issues need further conceptual and empirical research before new learning cycles can be implemented and evaluated: the object of learning, the SLA-variation theory interface, and the roles of variation theory on different educational levels.

By identifying and discussing important critical issues within the current practice of variation-theory-oriented EFL teaching, this study could lead to further theoretical and empirical deliberations in various areas of modern language teaching. This in turn could help pave the way for both the development of theoretical underpinning and methodological refinement, ultimately fostering international co-operations in implementing learning cycles.