Examines learner attitudes toward classroom learning of English, with particular focus on collectivism versus individualism, attitudes towards authority, and types of achievement motivation. Data are collected from eight Asian and three European countries. Although many attitudinal differences occur between individual countries, striking…

Investigated the performance of three pairs of adult English-as-a-Second-Language students on a writing task assigned in class. The main source of data was transcripts of pair talk. Results show that students working in pairs may not necessarily work in a collaborative manner, but where they do collaborate may have an effect on task performance.…

Discusses recent changes in Chinese as a second/foreign language (CSL/FL) teaching and research, examining the diversification of contexts for CSL/FL learning in terms of learners needs, and advances in language learning research over the past 25 years that can provide a basis for informing teachers' choices in the classroom. (Author/VWL)

Investigated the possible effects of two types of form-focused instruction on the acquisition of a specific feature of the Italian verbal morphology system. Processing instruction was compared to an output-based type of grammar instruction. (Author/VWL)

Investigates the use of pedagogically directed conversational shadowing, the partial to complete repetition by listeners of a speaker's utterances. Looks at conversational shadowing through transcripts between two Japanese learners of English talking with two English native speakers in mixed dyads in which they were instructed to shadow each…

Illustrates the significant contribution journal writing can make to deepening researchers' understanding of all facets of the research processes. Argues that such journals can provide other researchers with illuminating insight into the research process. (Author/VWL)

Highlights a recent project that is focused on the changes undergone by teachers of English as a Second Language in Hong Kong from graduation through their first years in the classroom during a time of substantial social and political change. Follows the progress and development of two cohorts of teachers who graduated with a bachelor's degree in…

Investigated possible links between classroom interaction and the learning of new vocabulary. Learners were asked to report the new words they could recall immediately after their lessons. Found both positive and negative links between mentioning new words, repeating new words, focusing on new words, turn-taking around new words, and recall and…

Investigated pragmatic aspects of task-performance in a series of argumentation tasks that Hungarian learners of English performed over a period of 2 years. Sought to determine how task repetition, long-term development of language skills, and a short-term focused intervention influenced various pragmatic measures of task performance. (Author/VWL)

Describes the processes of curriculum and teacher development that follow an evaluation of a British University English for academic purposes program. (Author/VWL)

This paper describes a framework for researching the Cognition Hypothesis which claims that pedagogic tasks be sequenced for learners on the basis of increases in their cognitive complexity. It distinguishes dimensions of complexity which increase the conceptual and linguistic demands tasks make on communication, so creating the conditions for L2…

Three experiments examine the acquisition of word-initial consonant clusters by adult second language learners. Native speakers of Spanish acquiring English participated in a metalinguistic judgment task, a perception task, and a production task. The judgment task indicates that beginning, intermediate and advanced second language learners have an…

A refinement of the verbal process category of MAK Halliday's System of Transitivity makes it possible to distinguish three sub-categories of verbal process: positive, negative and neutral. This in turn makes possible an analysis of negative verbal processes used in a corpus of 50 news texts from the "UK Times" which reveals some of the linguistic…

This paper draws on data used in the pilot application of data-driven pedagogical strategies for dealing with non-nativeness in the writing of advanced FL learners of French to expose attendant practical problems and theoretical issues. The discussion focuses on the question of vagueness in academic writing and involves a three-way comparison of…

There is a growing volume of research on task-based language use; however, the nature of "task proficiency" has not yet been clearly defined. In order to gain new insights, this study examines the relationship between the process of communication in an L2 and a task outcome by analysing lexical density, as obtained from the pattern of a…