This article reflects on the epistemological steamrolling that the 2021 Ofsted Curriculum Research Review (OCRR) accomplishes: in part, by the positioning of the problem and solution through highly selective cherry-picking (omitting key causal factors); in part, through the discursive move of acknowledging complexity before offering simple and…

John I. Liontas, Ph.D. is an associate professor of foreign languages, English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), and technology in education and second language acquisition (TESLA), and director and faculty of the TESLA doctoral program at the University of South Florida. Dr. Liontas is a distinguished thought leader, author, and…

Paul Jablon's "The Synergy of Inquiry" (2014) is well-timed. The 2014 deadline set by No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2002) for universal student proficiency has come and gone, and according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, "proficiency rates last year were below 50 percent for nearly every racial and ethnic group, in…

The article addresses the long-standing issue over the role of the mother tongue in the foreign language classroom. In the first part it is argued that the mother tongue lays the cognitive foundations for all subsequent language learning. Double comprehension as the basic requirement for learning to take place is explained. The second part is…

This article is based upon a presentation given at the Language Testing Research Colloquium (LTRC) held in Denver, Colorado, in March 2009. That presentation reviewed some of the recent attempts from within our research community to "tell the story" of our field over several decades. It explored how the discourse of these narratives contributes to…

Just like buildings, tests are designed and built for specific purposes, people, and uses. However, both buildings and tests grow and change over time as the needs of their users change. Sometimes, they are also both used for purposes other than those intended in the original designs. This paper explores architecture as a metaphor for language…

This article discusses three claims of the Graded Salience Hypothesis presented in Rachel Giora's book "On our mind". It is argued that these claims may give second language researchers the chance to revise the way they think about word meaning, the literal meaning-figurative meaning dichotomy and the role of context in language…

A British woman recounts her difficulties in developing the ability to understand humorous French while living in France. (AM)

Recent developments in cognitive linguistics have highlighted the importance as well as the ubiquity of metaphor in language. Despite this, the ability of second language learners to use metaphors is often still not seen as a core ability. In this paper, we take a model of communicative competence that has been widely influential in both language…

This paper does a fine job of advancing discussion concerning a question that is indeed quite underrepresented in the literature, that is, how language learners comprehend and produce language in real time. The paper is firmly rooted in the dual mechanism approach to language processing and takes as its starting point the assumption that normal…

Discusses the problem of the British student of French confronted with French humor in classic and modern French literature. (AM)

Discusses the psychological implications of metaphorical language in second language learning and teaching, and their effect on students' classroom behavior and instructors' self-perceptions. These figures of speech, categorized as "human" (military, medical), and "non-human" (culinary, gardening) posit dyadic, negative relationships. Teachers…

The No Child Left Behind Act, the major education initiative of the Bush Administration, was intended to raise educational achievement and close the racial/ethnic achievement gap. Its strategies include focusing schools' attention on raising test scores, mandating better qualified teachers and providing educational choice. Unfortunately, the…

Argues that abstract, figurative senses of polysemous words are better retained when learners are given core senses as cues, because providing a core sense helps learners develop a "precise elaboration." Results of a series of vocabulary studies involving Dutch learners of English show that providing a core sense results in better guessing and…

The increasing linguistic and cultural diversity of U.S. public schools requires teachers to be more sensitive to how symbols and figures of speech are used to maintain an effective cross-cultural communication. The purpose of this paper is to address and discuss the role of sociocultural factors that shape the insights and perspectives of diverse…