Language Teaching Research

This study investigates the occurrence of students’ language alternation practices during second language (L2) book talk. The data were collected at a voluntary book club for learning English at a university in Korea. The book club was implemented using Zoom. In this context, using multimodal conversation analysis, I highlight instances in which students successfully construct their book talk in English (their L2) but go further by providing translations in Korean (their first language), thus doing repair to deal with (potential) problems of understanding and speaking. The findings show that through these self-repair practices of translation the student-speakers are not only (1) pursuing mutual understanding with the recipients but also (2) managing their turn construction in their doing of book talk. I argue that through these language alternation practices, the students are treating the establishment of intersubjectivity as a central activity of the book talk, which reflects their anticipation of recipients’ possible difficulties in understanding the L2. The findings contribute to a better understanding of language alternation practices in a language learning context and expand our understanding of the endogenous nature of L2 book club activities conducted in a synchronous online session.

This study was designed to explore patterns of student perceptions of second language (L2) classroom environments and the relationships between such perceptions and L2 willingness to communicate (WTC). A sample of 845 first-year undergraduate students of English as a foreign language (EFL) participated in the study and reported their perceptions of the L2 classroom environment and their WTC. Using cluster analysis, this study aggregated students’ perceptions of the classroom environment into four clusters: High support, Rapport, Input, and Low support classes. These four clusters of classes differed significantly in the student perceived support of interpersonal relationships and instructional input. A one-way ANOVA further showed that L2 WTC was positively related to student perceptions of interpersonal relationships and instructional input. More specifically, students’ positive perceptions of interpersonal relationships tended to facilitate WTC in meaning-focused activities, while students’ positive perceptions of instructional input tended to facilitate WTC in form-focused activities. This study finally proposed a model to depict perceived situation cues as antecedents (interpersonal relationship and instructional input) of L2 WTC. Implications for L2 instruction and learning were also discussed.

Effective learning strategies have been proven to be advantageous to lower learners’ foreign language anxiety (FLA) and improve their language proficiency. However, many studies have devoted to students’ learning strategies but ignored the important role of teachers in reducing FLA. In addition, the effectiveness of the FLA-reducing strategies proposed by these studies has rarely been verified in natural classroom environment. The present study was conducted to explore the systematic effects of the teaching strategies on FLA after constructing a 34-item observation instrument Teaching Strategies Intervention Scale (TSIS), and investigated the changes of 306 English as a foreign language (EFL) graduate students’ English learning anxiety levels influenced by the anxiety-reducing teaching strategies in China. Results showed that the student participants’ communication anxiety, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation except for anxiety about English class in the experimental group were alleviated significantly after the teaching intervention. More specifically, findings indicated that test anxiety was the variable most affected by the teaching strategies, while the teaching strategies employed in this study were found effective and feasible. Finally, EFL teachers played a critical role in alleviating students’ FLA. Pedagogical implications of the findings are provided.

While previous research has suggested there are dominantly two reading practices in critical literacy, namely, reading with and against texts, this study introduces the approach of ambivalence as a third way of reading texts critically. For the purpose of this study – establishing ambivalence as a reading practice in critical literacy – four international postgraduates at an Australian University volunteered to participate in a collective case study. They read four national and politico-religious texts and showed their agreement, disagreement, and ambivalence about the texts. They also partook in individual interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs). The data obtained from 16 rounds of reading texts, 40 interviews, and four FGDs were analysed using Foucault’s conceptualization of discourse, power relations, subjectivities, and technologies of the self. The findings advocate that the participants read texts ambivalently in three directions: spontaneously when reading texts, after the initial agreement with texts, and after an earlier disagreement with them. The conclusive data discuss that: (1) participants’ state of perception, which is ambivalence, is associated with their identities and subjectivities and is in the range of active critical engagement with the texts rather than indifference or passivity; (2) ambivalence is informed by participants’ technologies of the self as well as FGDs and reading opposing texts, which buttressed their arguments by attaching their interpretations to existing or non-existent topics in the texts; and (3) ambivalence is tied with participants’ understanding of truth, which helped them not only critique texts but also modify their presuppositions and earlier interpretations of texts. Relevant pedagogical implications including a concrete question set and the adoption of a new technical term, ambivalent reading, are proposed.

Recent decades have witnessed rapid growth of K-12 transnational education programs, but little is known about how human/nonhuman assemblages impact K-12 transnational literacy curricula and how sociomaterial assemblages affect (de)colonizing literacy practices. This study of English and Mandarin literacy curricula at a Canadian transnational education program in postcolonial Hong Kong was informed by posthumanism and theories on decolonizing curriculum. The study combined ethnographic data collection tools (curriculum documents, interviews, classroom observations) and a diffractive methodology of reading, thinking, and writing with multiple data sources and theories to explore how sociomaterial relations between humans and nonhumans shaped the (de)colonization of literacy curricula. Findings show a generative sociomaterial assemblage in the transnational education program that enabled encounters of local-global curricula, local-global languages, and academic-multimedia literacies. New forms of imperialism and colonialism also joined the assemblage and normalized binaries of L1/L2, local/global, and academic/multimedia literacies, thus constraining students’ meaning making across languages, places, and semiotic resources. The article proposes literacy curriculum and pedagogies that could foster students’ ethical relationship building with humans and nonhumans in globalized schooling contexts.

Now more than ever before, language learners can autonomously engage with the target culture beyond the classroom through international television shows, online forums, video clips, and study abroad. Still, much of the literature has deemed the target-language dominant speaker (TLDS) as a key source of cultural knowledge, and, thus, the principal aim here is to ascertain how paid TLDSs and student peers are perceived in terms of their cultural expertise and whether these perceptions affect learners’ confidence development over time. This research is guided by the functional model of second language confidence (FML2C), which integrates the contact space dimensions of richness and self-involvement, and novel to this study is cultural depth. In terms of procedure, 32 second language learners of Spanish carried out eight 30-minute videoconferences over 12 weeks, four with a peer and four with a TLDS on Talk Abroad. In terms of the FML2C, the results revealed that the TLDSs were considered to afford significantly more richness and cultural depth than peers. In spite of this, longitudinal gains in learner confidence were indistinguishable by interlocutor type, suggesting that videoconferencing over time is beneficial, no matter the interlocutor with whom it is realized.

While numerous studies have shown how native speakerism can negatively affect the professional trajectories of those perceived as ‘non-native speaker’, little is known about the ‘native’ and ‘non-native speaker’ representation among course book authors (CBAs). Therefore, this article aims to analyse the ‘nativeness’, ethnicity and country of origin of general English CBAs to understand to what extent native speakerism affects who is recruited as a CBA. Twenty-eight general English adult course books published globally were analysed and three commissioning editors (CEs) were interviewed. The results show that out of 126 CBAs in the sample, 122 are ‘native speakers’ and 123 are white. In addition, the vast majority (79%) come from the UK. While the CEs confirmed they are committed to equality, it is clear that the current CBA recruitment policies lead to a perpetuation of native speakerism and to a situation where most general English CBAs are white ‘native speakers’ from the UK. It is suggested that greater attention is paid by CEs and publishers to recruiting more diverse CBA teams. As the interviewed CEs confirmed, such greater diversity could lead to more diversity in the content of the books.

The importance of socioeconomic status (SES) in foreign language learning has received increasing attention. However, previous research mainly examined the direct link between SES and foreign language learning, and few explored what might mitigate this link, especially in collectivistic culture. Based on social capital theory and the attachment theory, this study explored the moderating role of teacher–student relationships (TSRs) in the link between SES and English learning in China. Data were collected from 1,181 grade 8 and 300 grade 11 students in China using self-reported SES questionnaire, TSRs scale, and English achievement test. The results show that TSRs negatively moderated the association between SES and English performance of Chinese students both in grade 8 and grade 11, but the moderating effect of TSRs was slightly greater in grade 11. That is, supportive TSRs mitigated the effects of SES on foreign language learning, especially for senior secondary students. This finding sheds light on foreign language teaching and learning in China and other countries with similar sociocultural context theoretically and practically.

This commentary focuses on three methodological concerns regarding Bryfonski and McKay’s (2019) meta-analysis of existing works on the effectiveness of task-based language teaching (TBLT). These are (1) loose inclusion criteria, (2) oversimplified outcome effect size calculation, and (3) neglect of influence of moderators. To rectify these issues, we conducted a new meta-analysis to build on the strengths of their work while correcting some flaws by aiming to afford more rigorous and valid insights for education practitioners, researchers, and decision makers. While Bryfonski and McKay (BM) reported a strong positive effect (d = 0.93), our results point to a more modest effect of TBLT on second language achievement (g = 0.61). Different from BM’s claimed four moderators of the main effect (i.e. program region, institution type, needs analysis, and cycles of implementation), our meta-regression results indicate that only sample size and teacher-as-researcher suffice to account for the heterogeneity of the effect sizes. Given the reduced number of acceptable primary studies, our revised results should be interpreted with caution.

Measurement of language learners’ development in speaking proficiency is important for practicing language teachers, not only for assessment purposes, but also for evaluating the effectiveness of materials and approaches used. However, doing so effectively and efficiently presents challenges. Commercial speaking tests are often costly, and beyond the budget of many schools, and the use of frameworks such as Complexity, Accuracy, Lexis, and Fluency place great demand on teachers’ limited time. This article reports on two tests that potentially offer a practical solution to these problems. The speaking proficiency of 75 students in an oral English course at a university in Japan was measured three times over the course of an academic year using short, spoken narratives assessed by human raters with a specially-designed rubric, and a completely automated computer-based test. The many-facet Rasch measurement model was used to analyse the human raters and the rubric, and to provide scores for the subsequent analyses. Mixed-level modeling was used to model growth in speaking proficiency over the academic year, and correlation was used to assess the relationship between the two test types. The results show that both tests were able to measure growth in speaking proficiency, but only in the first half of the year. There was moderate correlation between concurrent administrations of the two tests, suggesting they are measuring the same construct. Results of the narrative test suggest that the rubric was reliable and effective in measuring speaking proficiency in this context, and also provide strong evidence supporting the use of FACETS when human raters are used to evaluate speaking.

This study investigates whether linguistic outcomes of second language (L2) learners’ performance are consistent across oral and written modalities and, if so, whether the consistency remains across proficiency levels. The study also explores whether the linguistic outcomes of speaking, writing, or both are related to working memory capacity. Eighty-six L2 learners, from beginner to advanced, described a series of pictures within time constraints in speech and in writing, and completed two working memory tests. The study found greater syntactic complexity and lexical sophistication in the written than in the oral modality. However, the oral task elicited more lexical diversity, and the advanced learners produced more subordinate clauses in the oral task than in the written task. Learners with more working memory capacity produced marginally more complex structures in the oral task than learners with less working memory capacity. These findings have implications for the effective implementation of speaking and writing activities in L2 learning.

This study aimed to explore writing requirements and lecturer expectations in first-year humanities and social science courses at a New Zealand university. Document analysis and lecturer interviews were used to collect data. The document analysis included writing assignment types, rhetorical functions of writing tasks, and descriptors in marking rubrics. Eight lecturers were interviewed to discuss their expectations of academic writing and perceptions of students’ writing problems. It was found that writing tasks require students to construct evidence-based scholarly arguments grounded on concepts from course readings. Students are expected to show their understanding and critical engagement with the readings, select ideas to strengthen their arguments and evaluate authors’ arguments. Counter-arguments are not required, but showing an awareness of different perspectives is important. Summarization is important for writing, but it is not often assigned as a stand-alone task in this context. These are the areas which challenge students, according to the lecturers. The findings imply that reading and writing instruction should be integrated, and rigid preformulated forms of writing should not be taught, particularly in high-level writing classes. Students need to be prepared to evaluate sources, integrate source ideas into their own essays, and construct scholarly arguments. Implications are discussed for teaching and assessment of writing as well as assessment of integrated reading and writing.

Second language (L2) listening skills play an important role in both content- and language-focused academic success; however, provision of L2 listening-related pedagogy may be lacking or unsuitable in many contexts. Difficulties transposing research derived knowledge about listening processes to appropriate pedagogy arise because it can be difficult to monitor learners’ L2 listening activities, much research uses group-based data which can be difficult to extrapolate to individual needs, and comprehension and related factors are often measured using static metrics. For educators, situated, learner-centric accounts of listening processes, difficulties, and related responses may enable more appropriate listening-related pedagogy; therefore, this study used idiodynamic methodology to capture the dynamic nature of listening comprehension and to elicit rich accounts of learners’ experiences as they watched English medium instruction (EMI)-situated presentations. The data provides evidence of previously-uncaptured comprehension-related volatility during a single presentation, and different comprehension patterns across presentations and between learners. Idiodynamic methodology further allowed the researcher to pinpoint which listening difficulties – e.g. top-down, bottom-up, knowledge- and vocabulary-related – impacted which learner at any specific moment of the presentations. These results can help provide targeted L2 provision in language and EMI programs, and give guidance to EMI providers as to the level-appropriateness of their programs.

Storytelling has a long tradition in education including language learning and teaching because of its extensive benefits in language development. In second and foreign language education, stories and storytelling have been integrated into school curricula to enhance language development; however, there is scarce empirical evidence about how storytelling facilitates children’s English as a foreign language (EFL) learning and its potential as a holistic pedagogy. This article explores a living educational theory (Whitehead & McNiff, 2006) of how storytelling works as a pedagogy in storytelling workshops with an English class at a private tuition centre in Vietnam to facilitate children’s EFL learning. Key pedagogical elements identified through the living theory methodology included storytelling as: a responsive strategy; multimodal scaffolding; mutual inspiration; and a linguistic model. Each of these elements is explained with illustrative examples from the storytelling workshops.

This study attempts to empirically examine the predictive power of learner anxiety and motivation and their causality in explaining proficiency in English as a foreign language (EFL) and other interrelated affective variables, including attitudes, self-confidence, and grit via a treatment-based causal model. To achieve this, the study carried out a 12-week experimental intervention employed by 8 EFL teachers with 282 EFL learners divided into four groups: in group 1, learners were exposed to anxiety-regulating strategies, those in group 2 were exposed to motivational strategies, those in group 3 were exposed to both anxiety-controlling and motivational strategies, and those in group 4 were not exposed to specific anxiety or motivation strategies. Data was gathered using questionnaires, classroom observations, and proficiency tests. ANOVA and ANCOVA tests were employed to assess the treatment effects, and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), structural equation modelling (SEM) and partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) analyses were deployed to test a causal model for the relationship between affective variables and second language (L2) proficiency in the group in which the experiment was most effective. Significant direct paths were captured from all affective variables to L2 proficiency. Motivation and anxiety exerted significant direct, indirect, and high total effects on L2 proficiency, confirming them as the best predictors and the causal variables of learners’ proficiency and other affective variables.

Gender contents, textual or visual, in instructional materials can be considered as a hidden curriculum, and may either hinder or advance equality. How teachers interpret and respond to this hidden curriculum in their classroom discourse, however, can play a crucial role in creating positive change. This research seeks to understand how teachers work with gender-sensitive contents in a newly-published English textbooks series for lower secondary education in Vietnam. To what extent are teachers aware of genderedness in textbooks, and how do they respond to it? Approaching gender as a social construct, using multi-dimensional methods, the study critically explores teachers’ experiences with the textbooks – their classroom practices and underlying perceptions – through 18 classroom observations and 12 follow-up interviews with 12 teachers in four lower secondary schools. Results indicate that neither the hidden curriculum of gender was recognized nor a critical mediation of it was practised. Gender content, whether ‘traditional’ or ‘progressive’, was largely absent from classroom discourse, as teachers prioritized transferring linguistic knowledge. Little space was allocated for promoting students’ critical thinking and self-reflections, including those about gender-related content. Teachers did not often pay full attention to different nuances and dimensions of gender issues, while sometimes their teaching design and interaction were found to be affected by their own bias – consciously and unconsciously. The study reveals that although teachers were later willing to reconstruct their perceptions and future practices, and were able to concretize their pedagogical intentions, enacting teacher agency in relation to critical pedagogy and gender equality in the contemporary English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom in Vietnam might remain a challenge. Based on the study’s findings, pedagogical implications that may enable teachers to be potential agents of change were suggested.

This study investigates the effects of pre-task planning on English as a second language (ESL) learners’ engagement in oral tasks in the face-to-face real-time communication (FTF) and synchronous video-based computer-mediated communication (SvCMC) modes. A total of 36 ESL learners performed two decision-making tasks (with versus without pre-task planning) in dyads in the FTF or the SvCMC mode. Their oral discourse of tasks was analysed via seven indicators in terms of behavioral, cognitive and social engagement. Their emotional engagement was captured via an interview immediately after the task performance. As the results showed, pre-task planning did not significantly affect the learners’ behavioral, cognitive and social engagement in either the FTF or the SvCMC condition. In SvCMC, more negotiations on content were produced when there was no planning time, but such a difference was not observed among the FTF learners. Mixed affective responses were reported on pre-task planning and the two task modalities. The findings yield pedagogical implications for second language (L2) teaching in the face-to-face and online contexts.

With the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) tools available to anybody with internet access, English language learners are increasingly turning to these resources to improve their writing skills. By examining their utilization of AI tools to improve their writing proficiency, this research examines the perspectives of Turkish English language learners enrolled in a preparatory program at a state university in Istanbul. Using a Q methodological approach, researchers created a set of 40 statements based on a literature study, which were then sent to 55 consenting individuals. Qualitative information was also collected by interviewing five students in depth. The analysis indicated a growing tendency among students to utilize AI tools for writing assignments, highlighting advantages such as assistance in translation, idea generation, and preparedness for future studies. However, participants expressed concerns over excessive dependence on these technologies, which can result in problems such as plagiarism, reduced originality, and ethical dilemmas. These findings highlight the need for supporting the ethical and balanced use of AI technologies in language learning environments, ensuring that learners may use technology efficiently while maintaining the integrity and authenticity of their work. Further study should explore strategies for integrating AI tools into language teaching in ways that minimize these concerns and enhance their benefits for learners.