Despite the proliferation of research articles in recent years dealing with language‐learning strategies, ethnicity is one variable that has not received a great deal of attention in the literature. Japanese is a language that has not been targeted much in any investigation of language‐learning strategies. This paper seeks to remedy these deficiencies by presenting the results of an exploratory study seeking to identify the language‐learning strategies of learners of Japanese as a foreign language at a tertiary institution. It also seeks to identify the most‐ and least‐favored strategies of a variety of ethnic groups and to investigate the relationship between ethnicity and language‐learning strategy preferences.

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Abstract-Why do bilingual language teachers and students switch between the two languages in their language classrooms? On the evidence of current research findings in relation to English-Vietnamese codeswitching in the educational contexts of Vietnam, this article identifies that classroom code-switching between the second language and the first language has its own pedagogic functions and it can be a valuable language classroom resource to both teachers and learners. In Vietnam, the implementation of the monolingual approach of teaching English-through-English-only faces many challenges such as inadequate classroom resources, students' low levels of English competence, motivation and autonomy, teachers' limited English abilities, and inappropriate teaching methods. Many Vietnamese teachers of English support code-switching in the classroom and they teach English through the bilingual approach. English-Vietnamese code-switching is reported not to be a restriction on the acquisition of English; rather, it can facilitate the teaching and learning of general English in Vietnam. This practice of code-switching is not just due to a lack of sufficient proficiency to maintain a conversation in English; rather, it serves a number of pedagogic functions such as explaining new words and grammatical rules, giving feedback, checking comprehension, making comparison between English and Vietnamese, establishing good rapport between teachers and students, creating a friendly classroom atmosphere and supporting group dynamics.

Decisions by markers about quality in student work remain confusing to most students and markers. This may in part be due to the relatively subjective nature of what constitutes a quality response to an assessment task. This paper reports on an experiment that documented the process of decision-making by multiple markers at a university who assessed the same written student assessment responses. The paper analyses the professional conversations between those markers around their conceptions of quality in the student assessment responses. It was found that the markers appeared to share common understandings of quality in the context of the marking criteria and standards across the achievement levels awarded. However, despite these apparently shared notions of quality, in some cases different levels of achievement were awarded to the same student assessment responses. This suggests that that there is a clear need for explicitly stated standard descriptors for each level of achievement and that this must be interpreted through substantive professional conversations in the context of real student work.The key driver is the student work, and conversations amongst markers about what constitutes 'quality' in the context of the written and explicit criteria and standards of achievement that are available to students and markers alike are a necessity.

Quality assurance is a major agenda in tertiary education. The casualization of academic work, especially in teaching, is also a quality assurance issue. Casual or sessional staff members teach and assess more than 50% of all university courses in Australia and yet the research in relation to the role sessional staff play in quality assurance of student assessment outcomes is scarce. Moderation processes are a pivotal part of robust quality assurance measures. Drawing upon previous work surrounding four discourses of moderation (Adie, Lloyd & Beutel, 2013) this pilot project reports the results of research into the role and impact sessional staff play in moderation processes at the tertiary level. Qualitative data were gathered through focus interviews. Results, in the form of various moderation discourses, indicate that sessional staff impact the formal quality assurance processes in numerous ways.