This paper explores the adoption of the Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach in primary classrooms, emphasizing that language acquisition is best achieved through meaningful communication rather than rote memorization. Drawing on Krashen's Input Hypothesis and Vygotsky's socio-cultural theory, the study highlights the importance of…

In this paper, a review of the role of input, output and instruction in second language acquisition is provided. Several pedagogical interventions in grammar instruction (e.g., processing instruction, input enhancement, structured output and collaborative output tasks) are presented and their effectiveness reviewed. A final and overall evaluation…

Striving to be more representative in their answer to the question, "What is German," many programs are expanding their curricula to include the history and perspectives of Black Germans and Austrians. Through discussion of a course on "Die afrikanische Diaspora im deutschsprachigen Europa," this article argues that examining…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to develop a set of generic prompting principles and a framework of prompts that have the potential to foster learning and skill acquisition among adult novices when performing complex, ill-structured problems. Design/methodology/approach: Relevant research in the literatures surrounding problem structure,…

This study investigates contextual features surrounding the use of a first language (L1) in a Japanese university English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) course during peer interaction in the extended preparation phase leading up to two oral presentation tasks (OP1 and OP3), performed seven months apart. Interaction data were analysed in terms of the…

This project investigates whether learners of Russian perceive the sociocultural weight of the two personal pronouns for "you", "ty" (informal/intimate) and "vy" (formal/polite) when they listen to native speech. Research on address pronoun use shows it to be an important sociocultural variable and, while there is some general consistency in use,…

This study investigates how mediated learning designed to improve peer cooperation within activity-based problem solving tasks influences cooperative learning outcomes. Two groups (n = 22) of Year 8 students (mean age 13 +/- 5 months) were randomly assigned to an experimental or control group. The study began with two one-hour sessions of…

This study focuses on the use of the native language (L1) by second language (L2) learners when carrying out a collaborative jigsaw task in a computer chat environment. It investigates the extent and function of L1 use by means of a sociocultural theoretical framework. The research project was carried out in three languages: Chinese, German, and…