This article reports on a study examining second language (L2) teachers' understanding of speech fluency and their self-reported classroom practices for promoting it. Qualitative and quantitative data collected from 84 L2 teachers in England were analysed to answer the research questions. In addition to the descriptive statistics and lexical…

This study investigated the comparative effects of strategic and unpressured within-task planning on second language (L2) Chinese oral production and the role of working memory in mediating the effects of the two types of planning. Twenty-nine L2 Chinese learners at a large New Zealand university performed a narrative task after watching a…

Flow represents a state of complete involvement and heightened intensity that leads to improved performance on a task (Csikszentmihalyi, 1975, 1990). The notion of flow has the potential to provide worthwhile insights into the area of task engagement, yet the construct has received relatively little empirical attention by second language…

This study examines the Spanish use of students and teachers at a US two-way immersion school. Students and teachers from Grades 1, 3, and 8 (5-6-year-olds, 7-8-years-olds, and 12-13-year-olds, respectively) were observed and interviewed, and students completed questionnaires to determine what factors influenced their language of choice and their…

This article presents the findings of an intervention study designed to examine the effects of metacognitive strategy instruction (MCSI) on learners' performance and on strategy use. Two classes in the secondary English oral classroom in Hong Kong participated in the study; one class received eight sessions of MCSI and the other served as a…

Explored the effects of a number of affective and social variables on learners' engagement in oral argumentative tasks. The assumption underlying the investigation was that students' verbal behavior in oral task situations is partly determined by a number of nonlinguistic and non-cognitive factors whose examination may constitute a potentially…

Describes a case study and a follow-up comparative study that focused on expert foreign language teachers' professional knowledge as it was reflected in their spoken and written discourse. Both studies provide evidence indicating that professional knowledge can develop via its verbalization in reflective-narrative discourse from personal…