This article examines the role of cultural awareness (CA) and intercultural awareness (ICA) in classroom theory and practice. CA and ICA can be roughly characterised as an awareness of the role of culture in communication with CA focused on national cultures and ICA on more dynamic and flexible relationships between languages and cultures. There…

Corpus linguistics has transformed the landscape of empirical research on languages in recent decades. The proliferation of corpus technology has enabled researchers worldwide to conduct research in their own geographical locations with few hindrances. It has become increasingly commonplace for researchers to compile their own corpora for specific…

There has been considerable debate about the relevance and applicability of SLA theory and research for L2 pedagogy. There are those who maintain that SLA must be applicable to L2 pedagogy: a view based on the argument that because SLA is a subfield of applied linguistics, it should have direct relevance to L2 teaching. Others take the view that…

This paper brings together the research and developments of instructed pragmatics over the past three decades by reporting the synthesis findings of instructional intervention studies in interlanguage pragmatics. Two questions have guided this investigation: (1) is instruction effective in learning pragmatics?; and (2) what methods are most…

This plenary paper showcases current corpus-based research on written academic English, illustrating the tight links that exist between corpus research and pedagogic applications. I first explicate Sinclair's concept of the "lexical approach", which underpins much corpus research and pedagogy. I then discuss studies which focus on…

There is no doubt that attention and (un)awareness in second/foreign language (L2 learning) are two constructs that have permeated, explicitly or implicitly, second language acquisition (SLA) studies since their inception. Indeed, we have witnessed several empirical studies attempting to probe more deeply into the roles of these two constructs in…

The history of research into dictionary use tends to be characterised by small-scale studies undertaken in a variety of different contexts, rather than larger-scale, longer-term funded projects. The research conducted by dictionary publishers is not generally made public, because of its commercial sensitivity, yet because dictionary production is…

In this review, we highlight 60 articles from 1,120 empirical studies in leading language learning and teaching journals published on the Chinese mainland during the years 2008-2011. In preparing the review, we have found Chinese researchers addressing a wide range of topics including language learners' cognitive processes, their language…

While approaching second language acquisition from a complex dynamic systems perspective makes a lot of intuitive sense, it is difficult for a number of reasons to operationalise such a dynamic approach in research terms. For example, the most common research paradigms in the social sciences tend to examine variables in relative isolation rather…

There is no denying that English is an international language, and as such we must expect to encounter a multitude of local varieties: not only the national Englishes, such as American, British, Australian, etc. but also an even greater number of learner Englishes, such as French English, Brazilian English, Japanese English and the like. But the…

In its early days, CLT was widely promoted as suitable for all contexts, but many questions have since been raised about what it really means and what versions of it (if any) are suited to specific learning situations. Experiences in Asia, where educational traditions and current realities often contrast strongly with those where CLT originated,…

The social and cultural "turn" in language education of recent years has helped move language teaching and curriculum design away from many of the more rigid dogmas of earlier generations, but the issue of the roles of the learners' first language (L1) in language pedagogy and classroom interaction is far from settled. Some follow a…

In this paper I will look at the controversy surrounding the current status of English in the world. I will consider the question of whether the dominant role of English as a lingua franca (ELF) is a menace to other languages, to multilingual communication and to the profession of translation and interpreting, or whether a positive evaluation of…

The term "genre" first came into the field of second-language (L2) writing and, in turn, the field of English for specific purposes (ESP) in the 1980s, with the research of John Swales, first carried out in the UK, into the introduction section of research articles. Other important figures in this area are Tony Dudley-Evans, Ann Johns…

This paper explores three research projects conducted by the writer and others with a view to demonstrating the importance of effective theory and methodology in the analysis of teaching situations where Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), teacher practice and teacher education meet. It argues that there is a tendency in the field of…