This article explores the political dimensions of teacher learning, both in theoretical work on teacher professional vision, and in an empirical study of video-based teacher professional development. Theoretically, we revisit the origins of "professional vision" in linguistic anthropology and trace the concept's evolution in teacher…

Departing from the view that learner beliefs are mental traits and in keeping with the discursive turn in SLA (Kalaja, 1995, 2003; Young, 2009), I argue that SLA learner beliefs research can be advanced through the use of two constructs--language ideology and positioning--that originate from linguistic anthropology and discursive psychology,…

The term "Citetaal" was originally used to refer to the language spoken by Italian immigrants in the Eastern part of Flanders (Limburg) and diffused in the former ghettoised mining areas (the cite). It is a melting pot language, based on Dutch but with a high amount of code mixture from immigrant languages, mostly Italian and Turkish.…

The present study examines how to identify problematic pronunciation features for particular EFL learners, namely native Japanese speakers (NJs) learning English, to acquire comprehensible pronunciation, and tests the appropriateness of the selection. The study comprises two phases. In the identification phase, eight English-specific segmentals,…

The use of reflective tasks, such as journals, as a means to enhance learning is not uncommon in higher education. However, the formative value of reflective tasks is not easily reconciled in tertiary settings where assessment requirements traditionally favour product over process. While learner perception and resolution of this tension have…

Studies from a range of disciplinary perspectives have highlighted how the public rhetoric of the Bush administration has shaped the representation of the conflict which has followed 9/11. However, the literature in this area raises but does not itself address the question of how the administration's use of "terror", "terrorism" and "terrorist(s)"…

This study attempts to explore the nature and the potential of various discourse structures and linguistic functions that may facilitate students' learning in English classes co-taught by a native English-speaking teacher (NEST) and a local English teacher in Taiwanese elementary schools. Considering the nature of the study, the author employed a…

The issue of introducing the target culture into language classroom practice has long been an object of debates as well as the opinions of the learners towards it. Eventually, modern practitioners found a way of having the language learners acquainted with the target culture and introducing culture through culture-based textbook activities.…

Learners frequently experience phonologically inconsistent input, such as exposure to multiple accents. Yet, little is known about the consequences of phonological inconsistency for language learning. The current study examines vocabulary acquisition with different degrees of phonological inconsistency, ranging from no inconsistency (e.g., both…

In this paper we present a comprehensive model of instruction for providing consistent, high quality teaching to L2 students. This model, the SIOP Model (Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol), provides an explicit framework for organizing instructional practices to optimize the effectiveness of teaching second and foreign language learners.…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine sentence-recognition performance for a large, diverse group of nonnative speakers of English on the recently developed Basic English Lexicon (BEL) sentence materials and to determine whether BEL sentence lists are equated in difficulty for this population. Method: The BEL sentences were presented…

Recasts are one type of corrective feedback that reformulates all or part of a learner's erroneous utterance during communicative interaction without changing the meaning. Categorized as implicit and input-providing corrective feedback, recasts have become the focus of debate in the area of interaction research in recent years. The debate…

This dissertation investigates lexical borrowing in Spanish in New York. English-origin lexical material was extracted from a stratified sample of 146 Spanish-speaking informants of different ages, national origins, classes, etc., living in New York City. ANOVAs and Pearson correlations determined whether lexical borrowing frequency and the type…

To what extent does language acquisition recruit domain-general processing mechanisms? In this dissertation, evidence concerning this question is garnered from the study of individual differences in infant speech perception and their predictive value with respect to language development in early childhood. In the first experiment, variation in the…

The purpose of this qualitative study, "Professional development for teachers working with culturally and linguistically diverse students: A qualitative study of teacher perceptions," was to investigate general educators' perceptions of existing professional development activities in order to identify program attributes they perceive as likely to…