Using a foreign language can influence moral decisions. However, it was previously unclear whether such a foreign language effect might affect victim blaming. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the use of foreign language affects victim blaming and to explore whether this effect is modulated by belief in a just world. The results showed that the type of language significantly influenced victim-blaming behaviour. Specifically, participants in the foreign language group were less likely to blame the victim than those in the native language group. Furthermore, belief in a just world modulated the foreign language effect on victim blaming; that is, the foreign language effect was only observed in the high belief in a just world threat condition. The entire study not only confirms dual-process theory but also highlights the role of individuals' belief in a just world in foreign language effect.

Portraying higher education students' accounts of foreign language classroom enjoyment and its effects.

The cultural politics of curriculum discourse: Cultural representations in Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) textbooks

Exploring Chinese college EFL learners' AI technology acceptance driven by computer self-efficacy.

This review systematically examines the benefits and challenges of integrating Virtual Reality (VR) into English language instruction in higher education. Analysing 27 studies published between 2014 and 2024, the findings reveal that VR has been predominantly utilised as an instructional tool across diverse domains, including General English, English as a Foreign Language (EFL), English as a Second Language (ESL), English for Specific Purposes (ESP), English for Occupational Purposes (EOP), and English for Academic Purposes (EAP). The technology has been shown to enhance core language competencies such as speaking, writing, and vocabulary acquisition, with applications spanning vocational training, university programs, and specialised courses. Fully immersive VR, low-cost immersive VR and low-immersive VR were designed by the prior study in exploring learners' English language skills. However, challenges such as dizziness, fatigue, motion sickness, neck pain, and cognitive overload were identified as potential barriers to effective learning. The review further highlights underexplored opportunities for future research, including the integration of cognitive and metacognitive assessments, gamified learning environments, and evaluations of VR's impact on learner motivation. These insights aim to guide educators and researchers in refining VR-based language education strategies while addressing current limitations.

Lexical collocations in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) coursebooks: A corpus-based analysis of the usefulness score and pedagogical value

Perceived teacher-student rapport and academic engagement in Chinese EFL learners: The mediating role of language learning anxiety.

Foreign language modulates neural responses to instructed fear: a neuroimaging study in bilinguals.

A multidimensional exploration of negative emotions during undergraduate thesis writing: Evidence from English majors in China.

Learners' engagement is a key factor in successful language learning. However, the emotional and motivational mechanisms behind engagement have not been fully explored, especially in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts. This study explored how EFL learners' self-efficacy affected their engagement through the mediating role of enjoyment, and how anxiety and boredom moderated these emotional paths. Based on survey data from Chinese university EFL learners (N = 940), a regression-based path analysis using Hayes' PROCESS macro was conducted to test a moderated mediation model. The results indicated that EFL learners' self-efficacy positively predicted engagement both directly and indirectly through enjoyment, while anxiety weakened the paths from self-efficacy to enjoyment and from enjoyment to engagement. Boredom, despite its negative association, intensified the effects of self-efficacy and enjoyment on engagement. This study provides a theoretical basis for understanding how efficacy beliefs and achievement emotions jointly influence classroom engagement. Practically, these findings suggest that teachers should foster self-efficacy and enjoyment, reduce anxiety, and treat boredom as a signal to adjust emotional support.

Reconceptualizing instructional materials: Integrating roles, orientations, and instructor styles in foreign language teaching

How high-achieving and struggling learners at the novice level engage with written corrective feedback: Insights from a Japanese as a foreign language classroom

Beyond immersion: Investigating the impact of SVVR on FLCA in a Chinese EFL speaking class.

Linking mindsets to emotions in foreign language learning: A study integrating situated expectancy-value and control-value theories across proficiency levels

EFL students' telecollaborative journey to intercultural intelligence: Transformative engagement in classroom reflections.

In the condition of impetuous holistic and technological variation, foreign language education has taken part of its elaboration. Sophisticated pedagogy increasingly implies that learning of any language shouldn’t be restricted to the assimilation of grammatical frameworks and lexical units, but should promote to the intellectual of the conformation of their capacity to analyze, reflect and on their own hook reasoning. From this framework’s perspective the fusion of critical thinking with artificial intelligence and (AI)-based educational tools have become an inherent in modern pedagogical tendency and educational system of the twenty-first century. This research was carried out among the students of the undergraduate course of the Faculty of Philology at the university known as “South Kazakhstan University of Muktar Auezov”. The main purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness of the pre-existing methods of teaching Foreign Languages with the technique of teaching with an instructional model that includes AI-supported learning tools. While the control group was taught through conventional grammar- and text-based approaches, the experimental group engaged in learning activities supported by adaptive digital platforms, virtual assistants, and interactive tasks. The findings demonstrate that the systematic and pedagogically grounded use of AI technologies contributes not only to the improvement of students’ linguistic competence, but also to the development of their critical thinking skills, reflective abilities, and learning autonomy. The study argues that the meaningful integration of AI tools into foreign language instruction creates favorable conditions for the formation of analytically minded, motivated, and independent learners, which corresponds to the fundamental principles of modern language pedagogy.

ABSTRACT Addressing the tension inherent in educational research between locally based realities and broader trends, this exploratory study draws on semi-structured interviews to identify English-medium education lecturers’ use of languages, resources and tools in the classroom, and their professional development (PD) needs. The dataset comprises ten lecturers from two universities, one each in Austria and Spain. The qualitative content analysis revealed some differences regarding the roles of English and other languages. Reflecting institutional policies, findings underline the site-specific framing of English mainly as a lingua franca in the Austrian setting vs. as a foreign language in the Spanish one. While all lecturers identify translanguaging as key to overcoming communication barriers and ensuring content accessibility, it is specific to the Austrian context that it is also seen as a resource for enhanced knowledge development. Additionally, all lecturers showed awareness of using multimodal resources to facilitate disciplinary content delivery. For the future, lecturers expressed interest in learning about the implementation of artificial intelligence, and in strategies to promote communication skills and the use of English in the classroom. This study calls for further research to identify lecturers’ discipline and context-specific needs, supporting PD initiatives that are relevant and tailored to effectively strengthen teaching practices.

Source-based writing is an important yet under-researched aspect of English-medium instruction (EMI) and English as a foreign language (EFL). Students often struggle to write reports that demonstrate lexico-grammatical variety, cohesion, and coherent paraphrasing. This study investigated how student reports manifest the relationships among lexical control, structural clarity, and genre awareness, both intentionally and unintentionally. The data consist of 35 student reports on a published article, along with surveys and reflections. A genre-informed analysis was conducted, and quantitative findings were triangulated with qualitative data from student insights and textual excerpts. Findings indicate partially developed genre awareness and lexical and sentence clarity, but persistent difficulty with paraphrasing, transitions, and argument independence. Students were confident repurposing ideas from the source text but found it challenging to integrate them cohesively into their own arguments. Lexical precision and cohesive progression were influential factors. The study demonstrates that genre awareness enhances structural competence, skill, and coherence without replacing them. It also highlights students’ areas of difficulty and confidence. Recommendations for genre-informed pedagogical practices that focus on lexical sophistication, argument progression, and source-based integration are offered to help students move from reproduction to argumentation

The integration of social media applications into English as a foreign language instruction has attracted increasing attention in educational settings. This study examines teachers’ perceptions of the use of social media applications in English language instruction at Saudi universities, focusing on instructional practices, perceived effects on students’ English learning and language skills, and challenges related to their integration. By foregrounding teachers’ perspectives through a quantitative lens, the study examines how instructional practices and institutional conditions shape the pedagogical use of social media in English language teaching. Adopting a descriptive quantitative survey design, data were collected through a structured questionnaire administered to 249 teachers of English as a foreign language lecturing at Saudi universities. The questionnaire gathered information on commonly used social media applications, teachers’ perceptions of their pedagogical value, and perceived instructional and institutional challenges. Quantitative descriptive statistical analyses, including frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviations, were used to analyze the data. The findings indicate that teachers frequently use applications such as YouTube, WhatsApp, and Telegram as supplementary instructional tools and generally hold positive perceptions of their influence on students’ motivation, engagement, and development of key language skills, particularly vocabulary and speaking. Teachers also reported challenges related to classroom management, limited professional training, and the need for sustained institutional support. The study concludes that while social media applications offer valuable pedagogical opportunities for English language instruction, their effective integration depends on purposeful instructional design, active teacher mediation, and institutional readiness. The study provides empirical evidence to inform instructional practices, teacher education, and policy decisions in higher education contexts.

This study aims to evaluate the degree to which core and peripheral meanings of polysemous verbs are used in the English textbook Full Blast Plus 4 for upper secondary students and to determine the cognitive processes underlying their semantic extensions. Polysemy is common in natural languages; however, it has received limited research interest. This is because research on vocabulary prioritised breadth – the number of form-meaning pairings acquired by learners – over depth of vocabulary knowledge, which encompasses a broader range of lexical features beyond basic form-meaning connections. Recent studies have begun to acknowledge the significance of polysemous senses in vocabulary education and learners’ lexical proficiency, especially from a cognitive linguistics perspective. Still, few studies have examined polysemous word senses in educational materials; therefore, this paper addresses this research gap. This mixed-method, corpus-based research uses Sketch Engine’s Word List and Concordance tools to compile a list of polysemous verbs and explore their meanings. The Concordance tool is also applied to find metaphorical senses, which are manually analysed to find incongruous vehicle verbs and their context or co-text and determine conceptual metaphors that underpin them. The findings show that the textbook under study does not offer opportunities to engage with less common or peripheral senses. In addition, despite the apparent neglect of conceptual metaphor in the textbook’s design, conventional conceptual metaphors underpin most peripheral and figurative senses of the verbs examined. The results have significant implications for comprehending, as well as applying, polysemy and underlying cognitive mechanisms in second and foreign language learning.