James P. Lantolf is George and Jane Greer Professor Emeritus of Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics and former director of the Center for Advanced Language Proficiency Education and Research at the Pennsylvania State University, USA. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Applied Linguistics in the same academic unit at Xi'an Jiaotong…

This special issue on language diversity and bilingual processing is based on papers presented at the "Exploratory Workshop on Speaking, Thinking and Gesturing in Two Languages," at the University of Reading, UK, in September 2012, sponsored by the European Science Foundation (IM/SCH/EW11-145). The workshop brought together a…

Vygotsky's work on the acquisition of foreign language words has been criticized for lacking a formal view of language as a system and for taking little interest in questions such as the route and rate of language acquisition. We argue that word meanings really do not constitute a formal system, either in the way they develop, or in the way they…

This article examines the relationship between spoken language research and ELT practice over the last 20 years. The first part is retrospective. It seeks first to capture the general tenor of recent spoken research findings through illustrative examples. The article then considers the sociocultural issues that arose when the relevance of these…

This professional paper builds on the work of TESOL's issue briefs, "Implementing the Common Core State Standards for English Learners: The Changing Role of the ESL Teacher" (February 2013) and Overview of the Common Core State Standards Initiatives for ELLs (March, 2013). It discusses the shifting landscape surrounding the new Common…

A significant body of literacy and language research over the last two decades has been informed by a sociocultural perspective and an associated qualitative design, which are often seen as valuable and appropriate for researching literacy. As an emergent researcher, whose understanding of language education was mostly informed by individualistic…

Held at the American Association for Applied Linguistics Annual Conference, Denver, CO, USA; 21 March 2009. This all-day colloquium was part of an ongoing discussion of ways that methods and frameworks from micro-ethnography, Conversation Analysis (CA), and Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory are re-specifying "language" and "acquisition" from a…

The dominant approach to research in learning disabilities utilizes experimental and quasi-experimental designs to identify the most effective instructional strategies for students with learning disabilities. Research is always undertaken from a point of view, yet the discourse on "what works?" is generally silent on how theoretical frameworks…

Second language acquisition (SLA) research informed by sociocultural theory (henceforth, SCT) began in earnest with the publication of Frawley & Lantolf's (1985) article on L2 (second language) discourse (described in the timeline proper). Since then, well over 300 journal articles, book chapters and doctoral dissertations have appeared in the…

Code Choice in the Language Classroom argues that the foreign language classroom is and should be regarded as a multilingual community of practice rather than as a perpetually deficient imitator of an exclusive second-language environment. From a sociocultural and ecological perspective, Levine guides the reader through a theoretical, empirical,…

How have the ideas raised by Firth and Wagner (1997) influenced the construction of second language acquisition (SLA) theories? In this article, we take the position that prior to and since 1997, there was and has been a notable increase in SLA research and theory that prioritizes sociocultural and contextual factors in addition to acknowledging…

A major preoccupation in assessment is connecting examinees' performance in assessment and nonassessment contexts. This preoccupation has traditionally been framed in terms of generalizability. This article reconceptualizes this problem from a qualitatively different perspective on human abilities and their development, namely, the Sociocultural…

This section presents brief synopses of empirical research and theoretical discussions in peer-reviewed journals. The aim is to disseminate findings and perspectives in fields related to TESOL and to provide access to the diverse conversations among scholars in the field.

The theory of the lexical bar is introduced, based on research in England and Australia. A semantic barrier exists in the English lexicon, separating the lexes of conservative peripheral dialects from those of dominant central dialects, producing differential educational attainment, and reproducing class-based division of labor. (MSE)

In this paper, we explore the intersection of practice, identity, resources and literacy central to the New Literacy Studies and recent second language research informed by sociocultural theories of learning and language. Drawing on the construct figured worlds of literacy that describe how representations of literacy practices invoked in relation…