Graduates who typically have L1 English, have majored in one foreign language (FL, L2) or more at university and have gone on to occupy FL posts in the UK civil service have reported mismatches between their pre-employment L2 learning and the tasks they face in the workplace. Such reported divergences in UK civil service capability have not,…

The shift from teacher-centered to student-centered instruction requires language teachers' roles to change from being lecturers and controllers to facilitators and advisors. This shift requires students to have a high degree of learner autonomy. However, some teachers hesitate to promote learner autonomy. If they remain uncertain about the…

This study investigates the effectiveness of the PACE approach (Adair-Hauck & Donato, 2002) for grammar teaching in beginning (novice mid/high) second language (L2) Spanish classes. Even though research has reported instructional benefits for PACE in L2 French (Groenveld, 2011), Alutiiq (Branson, 2015), and ESL (Harris, 2017; Ngo, 2018), to…

This study investigates the effects of motivation and structured input on the acquisition of English past tense regular forms. The role of motivation in the positive effects generated by processing instruction has been investigated in one previous study (Farhat & Benati, 2018). However, more research is needed to generalize the initial…

The beneficial role of collaborative dialogue in second language (L2) writing has been established, with considerable research investigating the role that collaborative writing tasks play in facilitating language learning by promoting language-related episodes (LREs). However, when compared to that of commonly taught languages, research…

Team teaching is re-emerging as a relevant research topic in language education due to the complexity and realities of globalization (Williams, Evans, & Metcalf, 2010). This qualitative study examined the characteristics of high-performing teams and their leadership in foreign language programs. Fifty-four college-level teachers, department…

Language instruction at the Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center (DLIFLC), as it does at colleges and universities, focuses on developing linguistic competence. There is no textbook or teaching materials that explicitly and systematically teach students the pragmatic knowledge of the target language. Such knowledge is either…

Multimodal approaches to second-language learning can boost language proficiency (Ajayi, 2009) by providing foreign-language learners with greater exposure to the target language's culture, enabling multiple-literacy competencies in the target language, and appealing to students' learning preferences. This article aims to present a…

Whereas major research universities may accommodate programs of study in Arabic, Chinese, or Persian, regional universities and liberal arts colleges have struggled to adapt to a wider and more complex array of world languages and literatures in the 21st century. Many have been forced to choose between radically restructuring or closing programs…

A new technique to teach language grammar is proposed. It consists of the blending of two previously existing techniques--VanPatten's (1996) Processing Instruction (PI) and Adair-Hauck and Donato's (2002) Presentation, Attention, Co-construct, and Extension (PACE) Model. The result is the S-PACE Model, which incorporates the whole-language…

This study examined learner perspectives of the benefits of communication strategy training by analysing strategy diaries written by low English proficiency learners enrolled in an English for Occupational Purposes programme. The communication strategy instruction involved 23 students who were taught 13 lexical, negotiation, and discourse-based…

This study examined the impact of the manipulated task complexity (Robinson 2001a, 2001b, 2007, 2011; Robinson & Gilabert, 2007) on second language (L2) speech comprehensibility. I examined whether manipulated task complexity (a) impacts L2 speech comprehensibility, (b) aligns with L2 speakers' perception of task difficulty (cognitive…

Although substantial research has examined how teachers respond to students' linguistic errors, the motivational influence of feedback practices in foreign language education has received relatively little attention. Drawing on recent feedback theories of educational assessment (e.g., Hattie & Timperley, 2007; Carless, 2017) and second…

Learning a second language (L2) is not merely mastering an additional linguistic system, but rather learning a new way of conceptualizing the world. Grammatical development does not always align simultaneously with conceptual development in L2. That explains why L2 learners may produce sentences that are grammatically correct, but pragmatically…

Using a case study design, we compared two prior-service cadets learning Portuguese at a United States (U.S.) military academy on how they dealt with aspects of foreign language learning (FLL). In particular, we explored how three specific components contributed to the formation of the cadets' second language (L2) motivational selves. These were…