This report presents a review of the statistical practices of 30 journals representative of the second language field. A review of 150 articles showed a number of prevalent statistical violations including incomplete reporting of reliability, validity, non-significant results, effect sizes, and assumption checks as well as making inferences from…

This article reviews all (quasi)experimental studies appearing in the first 19 volumes (1997-2015) of "Language Teaching Research" (LTR). Specifically, it provides an overview of how statistical analyses were conducted in these studies and of how the analyses were reported. The overall conclusion is that there has been a tight adherence…

In view of ongoing debates about the future of task-based language teaching (TBLT) in contexts of English as a foreign language (EFL), we present a detailed case study of teacher beliefs and practices regarding TBLT conducted in a secondary school in mainland China with a long history of communicative and task-based teaching approaches. We used a…

This article reports on a study examining second language (L2) teachers' understanding of speech fluency and their self-reported classroom practices for promoting it. Qualitative and quantitative data collected from 84 L2 teachers in England were analysed to answer the research questions. In addition to the descriptive statistics and lexical…

The New Zealand school curriculum was last revised in 2007, at which time a new emphasis was placed on culture in language teaching. The practice of intercultural language teaching is implicit in the curriculum document and explicit in the curriculum guide, which features a set of principles for intercultural communicative language teaching…

A growing body of research has shown a positive role of task-supported instruction in second language (L2) learning (Ellis, 2003a; Loewen, 2015; Van Den Branden, 2006). From a pedagogical perspective, recycling or repeating parts of teaching materials is common practice and theoretical support for such practice is emerging (Bygate and Samuda,…

The present study aimed to examine whether distributed practice works better than massed practice for proceduralization of grammatical knowledge. Learners of Japanese as a second language were trained on an element of Japanese morphology under either massed or distributed practice conditions. Results showed that massed practice led to accurate…

This study investigated how learners' ages affect their interpretation of the nonverbal behaviors (NVBs) of teachers and other students in distinguishing between questions and statements in the second language (L2) classroom. After watching 48 short video clips without sound in which three L2 teachers asked a question or made a statement with or…

This article reports on a study in which stimulated recall data and quantitative measures of complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF) were used to address three interconnected questions in different planning conditions: (1) how learners share their limited attentional capacity with different cognitive processes of 'planner/proposer', 'translator'…

Most studies on task-based language learning focus on the oral performance of advanced level learners of English as a second language (ESL), while little research examines the written performance of beginning language learners in non-ESL contexts. This exploratory study aims to address this gap, by examining the effect of pre-writing tasks on…

This article focuses on the design of digital instructional game (DIG) tasks for young second language (L2) learners. The aim of the study is to identify motivational task elements based on what children respond to positively in games and incorporate into their own L2 vocabulary learning game designs. Eighty-two sixth-grade students (ages 11-12…

Interest in pronunciation learning and teaching has increased significantly in the past few years. Studies and resources in the area have proliferated, but it is important to know whether they have influenced teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL). The purpose of this study was to investigate the…

Feedback, or information given to learners regarding their performance, is found to facilitate second language (L2) learning. Research also suggests that the timing of feedback (whether it is provided immediately or after a delay) may affect learning. The purpose of the present study was to identify the optimal feedback timing for L2 vocabulary…

There is currently a substantial body of research on second language (L2) learning and this body of knowledge is constantly growing. There are also many attempts in most teacher education programs around the world to inform practicing and prospective L2 teachers about second language acquisition (SLA) research and its findings. However, an…

This article reports on a pedagogical project aimed at helping second language (L2) learners of English develop the ability to detect and appropriately interpret spoken sarcasm. The study used a pre- and posttest procedure to assess the development of learners' ability to both detect sarcasm and impute appropriate speaker intentions and attitudes…