<p>This study explores six cases of non-native English speaking students engaged in a distance English-medium course on critical thinking at a university in Iran. Framed within activity theory, the study investigated students’ course-related activity systems with a particular focus on contradictions that underlie any human activity. The construct of contradictions provides a theoretical lens to understand a web of relationships among a number of elements in course-related activities situated in a cultural-historical setting beset with political controversies, technological challenges, and needs for a bilingual curriculum. The findings indicate that all student participants had multiple activity systems within the course environment. Most participants had primary, secondary, and quaternary contradictions that had positive and negative consequences on the expansion of their activity systems. Discussion also includes practical implications for the distance university under study that could potentially be applied to similar distance schools.</p>

The broad range of English language teaching and learning contexts present in the world today necessitates high quality assessment instruments that can provide reliable and meaningful information about learners' English proficiency levels to relevant stakeholders. The TOEFL Junior® tests were recently introduced by Educational Testing Service (ETS) to address the assessment needs of educators of young adolescent learners by providing necessary information on their English language proficiency. This study explores the perceptions of key stakeholders (202 student test takers and 9 teachers) of the TOEFL Junior Standard test in an English as a foreign language (EFL) context (an afterschool program in Armenia). The analysis of the data gathered through questionnaires provides insights into the perceptions of test users, suggesting that the test tasks were perceived to be developmentally appropriate for the student test takers and allowed them to demonstrate their English language abilities. The findings of the current study can serve as additional validity evidence for the TOEFL Junior Standard as they reflect the correspondence found between the test construct and test users' perceptions and, thus, support the validity argument for TOEFL Junior Standard score interpretation and use in EFL settings.

No abstract

Teaching foreign languages at distance is now becoming widespread; so is the need for evaluating online language courses. This article discusses an example of a framework that was applied to evaluate an online English as a foreign language (EFL) course at a Middle Eastern university. The development of the framework investigated areas of interest specific to the given school context: level of student engagement, student perceptions, and learning outcomes. This case study followed a mixed method design. Accordingly, the data discussed are both qualitative and quantitative.

No abstract