This qualitative case study describes in detail a college teacher's experience in teaching critical literacy to English major students in Taiwan. A qualitative analysis of the data collected from classroom observation, class discussion and interviews shows that the teacher struck a balance between language skills teaching and critical literacy…

This study investigates the effects of strategy-based instruction (SBI) on the promotion of learner autonomy (LA). LA was conceptualized and operationally defined as learner self-initiation and learner self-regulation. An intervention study was conducted with the participation of 37 students in an experimental group, and 54 students in two control…

Submissions to conferences can provide rich material for analysing characteristics and trends within a conference's history and that of similar conferences, as well as the associated field at large. The present study uses data gathered over 30 years from a language teachers' conference in Japan (JALT National) to expound upon patterns related to…

Although a number of studies have investigated classroom-based peer interaction with adults and high school students, research pertaining to children in the elementary grades is scant. Drawing on sociocultural theory, the present study investigated how children in an intensive elementary level Grade 6 class for English as a second language (ESL)…

Empirical research on possible selves proliferates in the literature on psychology, yet it is only in the latter half of the 2000s that possible selves were exploited in applied linguistics fields. Kubanyiova's (2007, 2009) recent mixed-methods study introduced the concept of "possible language teacher selves" as a construct through which to…

Despite the ubiquity of teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) globally and the weight of evidence about the importance of training for new expatriate staff in international settings, the process of orienting EFL instructors to new workplaces and unfamiliar cultural surroundings has yet to be researched. This article presents the results…

This study employed an ethnographic methodology to explore the use of "literacy bags" (LBs) to promote parental involvement in Chinese children's literacy learning in the English language. It was conducted with a first-grade class consisting of 18 students and their parents in Taiwan. Data resources were obtained from teaching questionnaires,…

This study investigated the ways in which two groups of four adult learners of English as a second language (ESL) responded to unfamiliar words they encountered in four communication tasks and the effect that different levels of engagement with these words (including negotiation of form and meaning) had on subsequent recall of word meaning. Of the…

Second language teacher education (SLTE) has undergone considerable change over the past 25 years. The question of how language teaching is learnt and how programmes of professional preparation can contribute to this process now elicits quite different answers. A new agenda of theory and practice has emerged as SLTE has incorporated many of the…

The goal of this article is to make research on English language teaching and learning published locally in Israel more widely available. Given that so many Israeli researchers are internationally trained and maintain wide connections, it necessarily omits much important work that appears in European and US journals. It focuses on shorter studies,…

Second language acquisition (SLA) is a relatively new field of enquiry. Before the late 1960s, educators did write about L2 learning, but very much as an adjunct of language teaching pedagogy, underpinned by behaviourism, the then-dominant learning theory in psychology. In this view, the task facing learners of foreign languages was to rote-learn…

The paper reviews eight topics in the area of second language critical pedagogy: (i) historical inheritances and lines of development associated with critical pedagogies; (ii) advocacy (and the need for critical language teachers to engage in it); (iii) the diverse institutional contexts that could be explored for critical language pedagogy; (iv)…

Teaching poetry in second language (L2) classrooms raises theoretical and practical questions about how best to treat literature when target language and culture is also being negotiated. Current pedagogy derives from disparate sources, including the experientially-driven practices of individual teachers, the quantitative and qualitative research…

Over the past few decades perspectives on second language (L2) pronunciation have evolved from pessimistic appraisals of the capabilities of L2 learners and doubts about the value of instruction to a view of pronunciation teaching as an effective and important part of language pedagogy. Earlier research on the teaching of pronunciation dwelt…

The National Institute of Education in Singapore (which is part of the Nanyang Technological University) is the leading national pre-service and in-service teacher training tertiary institution. It offers diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. The academic departments are called Academic Groups (AGs). The English Language and…