This study is a conceptual replication of Teimouri et al.'s (2022) investigation into the validity of the second language (L2) grit scale (the L2-Grit scale). There are several concerns about the generalizability of the findings of Teimouri et al. (2022), especially regarding the discriminant validity of the scale and the relation of L2 grit with…

My first encounter with English for specific purposes (ESP) teaching was in the late 1980s. I was asked to lead a small team of teachers in designing a new English course for university students of art and design. We had just a few weeks to devise a teaching plan and materials. ESP was famously described at that time as 'essentially a materials…

In her position article, Lee (2019) compellingly argues for focused written corrective feedback (FWCF) and offers clear guidelines for teachers to shift their feedback approach. As English language teaching practitioners in Chinese universities, we share Lee's view against any unthinking adherence to comprehensive written corrective feedback…

The production-oriented approach (POA) has been developed over ten years to overcome the weaknesses in English instruction in tertiary education in Mainland China. The POA tries to integrate the strengths of Western instructional approaches with Chinese contextual features and consists of three components: (a) teaching principles; (b) teaching…

A widely accepted orthodoxy is that it is impossible to do replication studies within qualitative research paradigms. Ontologically and epistemologically speaking, such a view is largely correct. However, in this paper, I propose that what I call comparative re-production research--that is, the empirical study of qualitative phenomena that occur…

After completing a law degree at the University of Birmingham when I was 20 and not really knowing what I wanted to do, except that it was not law, I became an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher accidentally through signing up as a volunteer with the British United Nations Association (BUNA), roughly equivalent to the US Peace Corps.…

Students entering English-medium universities around the world come from diverse linguistic backgrounds and many find it difficult to cope with the language demands of their degree courses. This speech focuses first on the motivations for introducing what are known in Australia as post-entry language assessments (PELAs). I discuss in particular…

In the past decade or so there has been a well-documented decline in language take-up among secondary school pupils of Years 10 and 11 in England (14-16-year-olds, also referred to as Key Stage 4 in the national curriculum for England and Wales) and there have been fewer UK-domiciled undergraduates or postgraduates studying for a languages degree…