The listening comprehension skill is frequently cited by both teachers and learners of a second language (L2) as perhaps the most difficult to deal with in any systematic way. One possible approach is to use the dictogloss task. This involves learners reconstructing a short text they have listened to. Originally developed to draw learners'…

This article presents an overview of action research conducted in an EFL university context, regarding primarily the relationship between individual possible self-images, socially constructed possible self-images, and language-learning motivation. The study used three cycles of action research over the course of one 15-week university semester,…

This article serves as the introduction to this special issue of "Language Teaching Research" on content-based language teaching (CBLT). The article first provides an illustrative overview of the myriad contexts in which CBLT has been implemented and then homes in on the five studies comprising the special issue, each conducted in a distinct…

This article focuses on the use of conversation analysis (CA) to help teaching interactional competence in English to adult second language learners from lower to intermediate levels. To set the context, this article gives a brief overview on the use of CA in second language research as well as considering the construct of interactional competence…

This article reports the efforts of an elementary school teacher of Spanish as a second language to implement principles of dynamic assessment (DA) in her daily interactions with learners. DA is neither an assessment instrument nor a method of assessing but a framework for conceptualizing teaching and assessment as an integrated activity of…

Many teacher training programs, including MATESOL programs, encourage their trainees to be reflective practitioners. The MATESOL program at The American University of Sharjah (AUS) is no exception and offers the students many opportunities for reflection. This article discusses my experience with a recent cohort's reaction to being asked to…

This paper explores why the learning posited as an intrinsic dimension of evaluation practice and use has been difficult to achieve, and how it might be more effectively realized. In recent decades language programme evaluation has evolved from focused studies of teaching methods inspired by language learning theories to a curriculum management…

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how program evaluation can be conducted and communicated in ways that meaningfully affect the education of English language learners (ELLs) in US schools. First, the paper describes the Waterford Early Reading Program Evaluation, a large-scale evaluation of a reading intervention implemented in schools with…

Researching language teachers requires intensive involvement of both the researcher and the researched. Yet, the available methodological literature in the field often paints a blurred picture of the nature of such involvement and provides little advice on dealing with challenges inherent in this type of research. Our doctoral research projects…

This paper first presents and then discusses the attitudes towards and perceptions of education officers regarding introducing a school-based continuous assessment of speaking in the Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE) ESL examinations as provided for in the BGCSE English syllabus in Botswana. Three categories of education…

This article overviews current research on second language vocabulary learning. It concludes that a large vocabulary is necessary to function in English: 8000-9000 word families for reading, and perhaps as many as 5000-7000 families for oral discourse. In addition, a number of word knowledge aspects need to be learned about each lexical item.…

Students are rarely given the opportunity of being decisionmakers in class, and when they are, they may feel unsure of how to organize their own learning. However, over time they come to appreciate the benefits of a more active engagement in learning English. In this paper, I describe a procedure based on Exploratory Practice (EP) for guiding…

This paper reports on the effects of classroom exercises that encourage noticing and conscious attention to form, which were part of a university EFL oral presentation course in Japan. The students on the course were given a set of exercises that encouraged them to notice and to reflect on L2 forms of their own choosing throughout one academic…

Vygotsky's "zone of proximal development (ZPD)" has become associated with the individual "scaffolding" of learners. As a result, because teachers need to teach the whole class, many public school teachers have had to dismiss the concept as unworkable. Yet Vygotsky himself was chiefly concerned with public school teaching and firmly rejected the…

Allwright and colleagues around the world have been developing Exploratory Practice as an approach to practitioner research different from the familiar notion of teacher research. EP offers a set of principles devoted to understanding, in a collaborative mode, the quality of language classroom life. Several underlying points, such as "quality of…