Research in sociolinguistics offers important understandings of the social dynamics impacting how language is acquired, used, perceived, and treated in the U.S. and beyond. It provides opportunities to critically examine societal structures and attitudes surrounding language (including personal beliefs) that create and uphold social and racial…

Educators have raised awareness of the importance of meaning in second language instruction over the last decades. However, second language (L2) education has not been as meaningful as researchers might have hoped. Drawing on Hanauer's meaningful literacy, this qualitative research examines Korean students' awareness of the English language…

Since 1997, "Language Teaching Research" (LTR) has published hundreds of research articles, most of which have reported on empirical studies whose broad purpose was to increase understanding on how second or foreign language teaching can be improved. These articles, as a collective whole, can be viewed as an artifact of the research…

It is widely acknowledged that research ethics is a controversial notion in cross-linguistic, crosscultural research. We suggest that most ethical issues in research arise from four major issues: (1) ethics is not adequately defined, theoretically or practically; (2) researchers have failed to make a distinction in the types of communities they…

The paper discusses how learner engagement in language learning settings has been conceived of and investigated in the past decade. Whilst a cognitive focus used to predominate in research on language learners' engagement, the importance of affective (and social) factors is increasingly recognised. The paper interrogates 'engagement' in the…

Core concepts of language are highly contested. In some cases this is legitimate: real empirical and conceptual issues arise. In other cases, it seems that controversies are based on misunderstanding. A number of crucial cases are reviewed, and an approach to language is outlined that appears to have strong conceptual and empirical motivation, and…

Recent scholarship in sociolinguistics and language education has examined how race and language intersect each other and how racism influences linguistic and educational practices. While racism is often conceptualized in terms of individual and institutional injustices, a critical examination of another form of racism--epistemological…

The construct of awareness plays a pivotal role in several big debates in the field of second language acquisition. It lies at the heart of discussions about the (im)possibility of learning without awareness, or conversely, whether some degree of awareness is a requirement for learning to take place. In this study, I propose a research agenda to…

Although writing scholars have increasingly emphasized the need for more equitable approaches to language (difference) in the composition classroom, specific examples of teaching praxis remain sorely needed. In this article, we offer three sets of activities that we have used in our own classes designed for multilingual students. In formulating…

Pakistani English is a variety of English language concerning Sentence structure, Morphology, Phonology, Spelling, and Vocabulary. The one semantic element, which makes the investigation of Pakistani English additionally fascinating is the Vocabulary. Pakistani English uses many loan words from Urdu language and other local dialects, which have…

This study explores how Korean English learners process English caused-motion constructions (CMC) through online and offline experiments. The focus was on how Korean learners' processing of English CMC is affected by the typological difference between English and Korean. Of the 77 volunteer participants recruited, 17 were native English speakers…

This meta-analysis offers a snapshot of thirty-five years (1980-2015) of research on instructed second language acquisition (ISLA). Fifty-four empirical studies involving a total of 5,051 second language learners -- sampled from six applied linguistics journals, "Applied Linguistics, Language Learning, Language Teaching Research,"…

There is mounting evidence that the ease of producing and understanding language depends not only on the frequencies of individual words but also on the frequencies of word combinations. However, in two picture description experiments, Janssen and Barber (2012) found that French and Spanish speakers' speech onset latencies for short phrases…

This paper addresses the gaps between language documentation and language revitalization. It is intended for several audiences, including field linguists interested in supporting endangered language sustainability efforts and participants of all kinds in language revitalization courses, programs, and infrastructure. The authors contend that…

An important question in the field of English language teaching and learning is 'What is the relationship between research and second language (L2) instruction?'. A second question is 'What should the relationship be?'. This keynote speech explores these two questions. The speech provides a general overview of some of the important insights that…