This book examines a ubiquitous, yet under-researched, area of language education, i.e., language teachers' use of curriculum materials. It particularly focuses on EFL teachers' use of prescribed curriculum materials in higher education in Mainland China and presents a qualitative, multi-case study involving four Chinese EFL teachers and eight students (two students from each teacher’s class) at one university in Mainland China. Drawing on data from pre-lesson and post-lesson interviews with the teachers, lesson observations, and documents in three consecutive semesters at the target university, the book delineates the processes of materials use in classroom settings. 

This book introduces the concept of the ‘native speaker’ frame: a perceptual filter within English Language Teaching (ELT) which views the linguistic and cultural norms and the educational technology of the anglophone West as being normative, while the norms and practices of non-Western countries are viewed as deficient. Based on a rich source of ethnographic data, and employing a frame analysis approach, it investigates the ways in which this ‘native-speaker’ framing influenced the construction and operation of a Japanese university EFL program. 

This study of narrative technique in Victorian novels introduces the concept of "narrative annexes" whereby unexpected characters, impermissible subjects and plot-changing events enter fictional worlds that otherwise exclude them, challenging Victorian cultural and literary norms.

This collection brings together research on linguistic prescriptivism and social identities, in specific contemporary and historical contexts of cross-cultural contact and awareness. Providing multilingual and multidisciplinary perspectives on both institutional and informal mechanisms of prescriptivism, our contributors relate language norms to frameworks of identity including citizenship, nativeness, ethnicity, politics, and empire.

Web-Based Teaching and Learning across Culture and Age

Identity and diversity permeate teaching and learning. Technology-mediated learning environment designs are infused with cultural values, norms, and assumptions. In addition, age-related diversity mediates interactions, learning, perceptions of instruction, self-regulation, and experience with technology. Individual instructors and/or instructional designers are both cultural insiders and cultural outsiders to diverse groups of online learners. Learning difficulties are likely to arise when underlying pedagogical values, norms, and epistemologies in an online learning setting are culturally inappropriate or ineffective for a learner group.