Pragmatic competence is an essential element of communicative competence, which makes it relevant for speakers of all ages, including young language learners (YLLs). Despite the recognized importance of pragmatics, research of textbooks for adult second language (L2) learners to date has found them lacking in their approach to this key aspect of…

One of the underrepresented aspects of pragmatic competence development is perceiving and responding to impoliteness acts. The present study reports on a quantitative and qualitative investigation of two international English language teaching (ELT) textbook series published by Oxford and Cambridge University Press; it focuses on the books highly…

Studies examining culture representation in language textbooks have rarely adopted the semiotic approach, despite its potential for presenting and (re)creating cultural meanings at their various levels (i.e. cultural, intercultural, multicultural, and transcultural) in the co-instantiations of texts, tasks, and images. To address this issue, a…

In light of the growing importance placed by states on the use of authentic materials in foreign language education programs, this study explored the literary content found in the 18 English, French, and German ministry-approved language textbooks used in upper-secondary schools in Russia. The study identified 150 literary texts, following which…

Though reports of pedagogic materials production point to the range of compromises authors make when writing language teaching textbooks, many accounts are retrospective in nature. This study sought to expand the research perspective by interrogating writing episodes via qualitative content analysis to discover how two expert ELT (English language…

This study examines the representation of cultures and communities in the world across five editions of New Headway elementary level textbook (NHE). It conducts a diachronic content analysis to explore how the representation of cultures and communities has evolved in NHE across five editions since its first edition's publication in 1993. Adapting…

This article brings together an experimental study involving L2 knowledge of negation in English and an analysis of how English language textbooks treat negation, in order to consider whether textbook explanations of negation could better exploit linguistic insights into negation. We focus on the English negative polarity item any, whose…

Communicative language teaching and language teaching research suggest forms for desirable and effective grammar teaching. This study investigates to what extent these suggestions are integrated into teaching materials. On the basis of prior studies, we developed a list of both qualitative and quantitative criteria to determine the position of…

During my third semester as a student pursuing a Masters in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL)--which was also my second semester as an ESL teacher--I was encouraged by a professor of a graduate seminar to think outside the box about professional development (PD). After all, inquiry-based approaches to PD and teacher education emphasize…

Submissions to conferences can provide rich material for analysing characteristics and trends within a conference's history and that of similar conferences, as well as the associated field at large. The present study uses data gathered over 30 years from a language teachers' conference in Japan (JALT National) to expound upon patterns related to…

Over the past few decades, the pursuit of teachers-as-researchers has become an ideal for developing teacher autonomy to which many in the world of curriculum development and language teacher education try to promote (Benson, 2001). Nevertheless, research into how teachers learn to do research has been scarce, and there are pressing needs for…

While much has been written about task-based language teaching (TBLT), research examining teachers' understandings of what TBLT means remains limited. This article explores the understandings of TBLT of three Chinese secondary school teachers of English and the implementation of TBLT in their lessons. Narrative accounts were constructed for each…

This is an account of how one class of English language learners compared and contrasted their language learning experiences with English language teaching (ELT) research findings during a five-week Intensive Academic Preparation course at an Australian university. It takes as its starting point the fact that learners, unlike teachers and…

This article presents data from a study examining secondary mathematics teachers' and science teachers' implementation of a language of instruction policy in Malaysia, which made English the medium for mathematics and science instruction. It explores the beliefs of math, science and language teachers, and how these beliefs influence their…

This article examines the ideological import of (a) a selection of internationally distributed ELT textbooks to find out whether a recurrent ideological pattern could be observed and (b) the ELT books used in Iranian high schools to see if the ideological import of these books was different from that of the internationally distributed ELT…