This study investigates Vietnamese EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices regarding oral corrective feedback, exploring and seeking to explain some of the relationships between beliefs and classroom practices. Data were collected in primary schools in Vietnam, and consist of 24 classroom observations and interviews with six teachers. Overall, the teachers showed high levels of awareness of the benefits of oral corrective feedback. They nominated pronunciation errors as the most important target for correction in the primary context. In practice, although pronunciation and grammar accounted for the majority of the total errors, leading to the majority of total feedback moves, the frequency of feedback per error was much higher for vocabulary errors. Prompts were reported by teachers to be more effective and more favourable than reformulations, but this preference was not reflected in the classroom observations, in which a large number of didactic recasts were used. The observed discrepancies are interpreted in relation to contextual factors and the influence of different sets of beliefs on practices. It was also noted that the linguistic realizations of these teachers’ feedback moves contained some inaccuracies. Implications for educational practice are discussed.

This study employed an explanatory sequential mixed-methods research design to examine the beliefs of Vietnamese EFL students concerning oral corrective feedback (CF) and the role of some individual differences in these beliefs. The data consisted of questionnaires completed by 250 Vietnamese high school students and follow-up interviews with 15 of them. Exploratory factor analysis revealed six latent factors underlying students’ beliefs about CF, namely, (1) output-prompting CF and eliciting recasts, (2) desire for CF, (3) non-verbal cues, (4) important errors, (5) input-providing CF, and (6) less important errors. Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis of the interviews showed that students were positive about CF. They liked both input-providing CF and output-prompting CF for all error types. Metalinguistic feedback was the most strongly preferred, while clarification request was the least preferred. Further statistical analyses revealed some interesting relationships between students’ beliefs about CF and their gender, English learning motivation, and self-rated introversion/extraversion. Females were more positive about CF than males, and extraverted females were more positive about input-providing CF than introverted females. Also, students learning English for exams were more positive about CF than those learning English for communication. Pedagogical implications for effective feedback provision in EFL contexts are discussed.

One measure of the impact of a high-stakes test is the attitudes that test takers hold towards it. It has been suggested that positive attitudes produce beneficial effects while real or anticipated negative experiences can result in the development of attitudes that erode confidence and potentially impact negatively on performance. This study investigated test taker attitudes by exploring the opinions, beliefs, and feelings of a group of overseas trained teachers preparing for a professional gate-keeping test, and examining correlations between attitudes and demographic and experiential factors. The participants were 105 candidates who were enrolled in a preparation course for the Professional English Assessment for Teachers. They were asked to complete a written survey questionnaire with three parts: to determine the nature of their attitude towards the test, to explore the relationship of attitudes and demographic data, and to investigate their perceptions of the sources of their attitudes. Results indicated that there was a slight predominance of negative attitudes, particularly among candidates who had unsuccessfully attempted the test. The main reported sources which correlated with a negative attitude were personal experiences and feelings as well as the impact of other people: notably teachers and other candidates.

This paper presents an enhanced evaluation framework for teacher professional development programmes, which is based on one originally proposed by Huber in 2011. This paper draws on a study on the Professional Up-skilling of English Language Teachers (ProELT) programme in Sabah (Borneo), Malaysia. The study adopted a mixed methods exploratory sequential design using a questionnaire survey, individual interviews and a focus group discussion. Based on the findings from the study, four new components have been added to Huber’s original framework, namely (1) selection of participants, (2) incorporation of the Adult Learning principles, (3) follow-up support, and (4) assessment of programme impact. This enhanced framework has significant contributions to make to programme designers and programme providers, in providing them with additional guidelines to consider when designing the pre-, ongoing and post-phases of a teacher professional development programme.

Partial bilinguals who were born and raised in diaspora communities sometimes experience pragmatic failure when interacting with native speakers of their heritage language. This paper explores encounters among heritage and native speakers of Greek, focusing specifically on how the former conceptualize politeness, and how expectations may differ. Differences have been identified between Modern Greek and English: for example, the negotiation of the communication norms of a positive politeness society, – the management and mitigation of face threatening acts, the use of diminutives and terms of endearment, and the use of politeness markers and formulae. The present research explores how Greek and English politeness norms are conceptualized, experienced and managed by Australian-born heritage speakers of Greek. In semi-structured interviews of 1–1.5 hours’ duration, eliciting both general beliefs and small narratives of lived experience, Greek Australian participants were asked to reflect on their experiences communicating in Greek in a range of interpersonal contexts, including visits to Greece. The key concepts to emerge were directness, consideration and generosity, and respect, manifest in both behavior and language. Findings suggest that politeness expectations are at least partly shaped by experiences of communication with other members of the diaspora and with local and/or native speakers encountered during visits to Greece. A model is proposed for a range of situated interactions emerging from the data, which it is suggested can impact on politeness behavior and belief.

It has been estimated that over 40% of people of Greek origin reside outside their home country, maintaining their language and cultural identity in different ways and to different degrees (Tamis 2005). As the proportion of Greek-born migrants in diaspora communities diminishes, their second-, third-, and fourth-generation descendants have been found to develop hybrid identities in which different attributes and values define their “Greekness.” Visits to the homeland and the nature of homeland experiences provide avenues for revaluation of identity, and real-world encounters involving the Greek language can play a significant role in how diaspora and transnational Greeks experience insider or outsider status, exerting an influence on the way they come to see themselves. This article reports on the experiences of Australian-born members of the diaspora, ranging in age from late teens to late forties. Conversational interviews were used to elicit stories of experience, which were then analyzed in terms of a multifaceted identity framework including reflexive, projected, recognized, and imagined identities. The findings reveal a complex interaction between the different facets of identity and shed light on how some individuals can represent experience in ways that reflect an overall positive picture of resilience and cultural clarity.