Research into instructed pragmatics mainly comparing implicit and explicit instruction has gained salience in language teaching research in the last two decades. The present study was designed to investigate the effect of cognitive and interpersonal task-based instruction on EFL Learners' production of two speech acts of apology and request. To…

The present study is an attempt to describe the development and validation of an inter-language pragmatic questionnaire to examine the kind of instructional approaches and techniques that EFL teachers use to practice the pragmatic features in their classes. The research made use of two theories; cognitive processing and language socialization…

Recasts are one type of corrective feedback that reformulates all or part of a learner's erroneous utterance during communicative interaction without changing the meaning. Categorized as implicit and input-providing corrective feedback, recasts have become the focus of debate in the area of interaction research in recent years. The debate…

The benefits of instruction on learners' production and awareness of speech acts is well documented (see Alcon and Martinez-Flor, 2008, for a review of pragmatics in instructional contexts). However, few studies examine the influence that instruction may have on the cognitive processes involved in speech act production (Felix-Brasdefer, 2008). In…

Interlanguage fossilization is normal for second language acquisition. It is also a hotspot for studies on theory of foreign language acquisition. Many reasons cause the interlanguage fossilization. This paper probes into the internal mechanism of interlanguage fossilization from five aspects, namely the physiological aspect, the psychological…

This review examined the sequencing and grading of tasks in English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) task-based learning pedagogy. Recent research on task-based learning has focused on cognition and the role that cognitive processes play in determining the ease or difficulty of any particular task. It is argued that an understanding of the effects on…

The proceedings of the fourth colloquium of the Groupe de recherche en didartique des langues (Language Teaching Research Group) include eleven papers and four synopses. The papers, three in English (E) and the rest in French (F), cover these topics: cognitive presence in language teaching/learning (F); interlanguage and metalanguage (F);…

A study tested hypotheses concerning thinking in a foreign language. Specifically, it looked at whether (1) inferencing in a foreign language relies on mental models and propositional thinking; (2) the three stages of the theory of comprehension apply to understanding foreign-language discourse; and (3) propositional thinking manifests native…

A series of partial studies aimed at understanding how much progress students can make in 1 year of second language study are described. The first concerns Swedish university students in their first year studying Spanish as a third language in higher education. Students were tested and interviewed for their perceptions of their language ability…

A discussion of factors that influence English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learning by native speakers of Chinese focuses on three specific factors (cognitive style, individual differences, and native language interference), and offers classroom solutions. The effect of each of the three factors on ESL comprehension and production is considered,…