One of the strengths of narrative research in TESOL is its potential to provide insight into long-term language learning experiences that cannot be investigated in real time. Reliance on retrospection, however, brings two problems that are addressed in this article through the concept of "language learning careers". The first problem is…

Foreign language learning contrasts with native language development in two key respects: It is unreliable and it is nonconvergent. At the same time, it is clear that foreign languages are languages. The fundamental difference hypothesis (FDH) was introduced as a way to account for the general characteristics of foreign language learning. The FDH…

A key question in the debate on conversation analysis as an approach to SLA concerns the role of cognition in interaction and learning. Where is cognition located, and how is understanding in interaction achieved? For an empirically grounded answer, I will explore the procedural apparatus that sustains socially shared cognition. Following a brief…

Among the transitions during a pupil's school career, the transfer from primary to secondary school arguably has the most impact. Far from being linear, this transition is a kind of "pupil pilgrim's progress"; a journey with orientations, stops and reorientations, checking and refining skills that the pupils bring with them from primary…

This article investigates assumptions and pedagogical knowledge of English teachers working in primary, secondary and higher education in Turkey to identify their current orientations towards practices in foreign language learning and teaching. A survey was administered to 197 participants. The two questionnaires, on learning and teaching, were…

The study suggests a general model that could guarantee the cooperation between teachers and their students to overcome the difficulties encountered in ESP learning. It tries to join together different perspectives in the research of adult education, specifically in the teaching of English for Specific Purposes. It also provides some sort of trust…

Using a three-part theoretical framework, the cultural relevance cycle--which consists of (a) knowing community dynamics, (b) knowing how community dynamics influence educational processes, and (c) implementing strategies that reflect cultural knowledge of the community--we examined teachers' and students' perspectives on culturally relevant…

The dissertation investigates the effect of a concept-based approach to teaching the Chinese temporal system to English-speaking university learners at the elementary level. The pedagogical framework, Systematic-Theoretical Instruction (STI), adopted in this study was proposed by Piotr Gal'perin and originated from Vygotsky's…

Recent studies of emerging technologies have shown that mobile phone production now exceeds one billion devices globally per year (Johnson, Levine & Smith, 2008). With a level of production that signifies a shift in the ownership of "networked machines" from institutions to individuals, the broad appeal of portable technologies now…

This review of research on the learning, teaching, and assessment of L2 German may be particularly timely due to developments from within the profession as well as recent political changes which continue to have a strong bearing on the way L2 German is promoted, learned, taught and assessed. Far from representing an isolated field of research…

Content and Language Integrated Learning has received a strong tailwind in European educational and language policies. It is on the verge of becoming a mainstream phenomenon. However, an overly speedy implementation of "CLIL for all" might bear a number of risks for all groups of stakeholders. The purpose of this book is to link the…

The study reported in this article investigated (a) whether classroom language anxiety affects learners' ability to improve accuracy in their use of English articles when provided with corrective feedback in the form of recasts and (b) whether language anxiety influences the extent to which learners modify output following recasts. Four groups…

From an information processing perspective, humans have a limited attentional capacity for processing information. Thus, second language (L2) researchers have investigated the role of pretask planning in task performance, finding that planning results in greater fluency and complexity but has mixed effects on accuracy. However, most planning…

This research explores what constitutes an educational tool for students in the Sultanate of Oman, using a quantitative questionnaire with face-to-face semi-structured interviews. Students and teachers at Nizwa College of Technology and Salalah College of Technology participated in the study. Educational tools are widely used as part of…

Learners engaged in synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) work collaboratively to construct knowledge by providing each other with implicit and explicit feedback. In addition to its value in encouraging learners to make modifications toward target-like forms, the implicitness or explicitness of the feedback provides a means to…