In the initial sociocultural theory (SCT) timeline, Lantolf and Beckett (2009) surveyed a broad spectrum of research informed by sociocultural psychology as it was extended into the field of second language acquisition and language teaching. Since that time, the amount of research that has been published within the SCT framework has grown…

Using key constructs from sociocultural theory and activity theory, this paper outlines three broad areas of future research on written corrective feedback (WCF) that may be of interest to second language (L2) researchers and practitioners. The first area uses the constructs of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and scaffolding to assess the…

This article updates the trends and developments of Japanese as a second language (JSL) research since Mori and Mori (2011) by reviewing nearly 200 selected empirical studies published in English or Japanese between 2010 and early 2019. The first section of this review examines the cognitive aspects of second language (L2) Japanese development,…

The social and cultural "turn" in language education of recent years has helped move language teaching and curriculum design away from many of the more rigid dogmas of earlier generations, but the issue of the roles of the learners' first language (L1) in language pedagogy and classroom interaction is far from settled. Some follow a…

This paper explores three research projects conducted by the writer and others with a view to demonstrating the importance of effective theory and methodology in the analysis of teaching situations where Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL), teacher practice and teacher education meet. It argues that there is a tendency in the field of…

Until recently, the assumption of the language-teaching literature has been that new languages are best taught and learned monolingually, without the use of the students' own language(s). In recent years, however, this monolingual assumption has been increasingly questioned, and a re-evaluation of teaching that relates the language being taught to…