The American economy is changing and, according to popular wisdom and policy-level discussions, so is the skill profile of successful workers (see, for example, Naisbitt and Aburdene 1990, Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce [CSAW] 1990, Hudson Institute 1987). A hallmark of most discussions of the skills needed by workers is the emphasis on communication, including abilities to ask questions, clarify concerns, and solve problems cooperatively through discussion with others (Council of Chief State School Officers [CCSSO] 1991: 21, CSAW 1990: 69).

The article identifies four different types of meaning situated in different modules of language. Such a modular view of language architecture suggests that there may be differential difficulties of acquisition for the different modules. It is argued that second language (L2) acquisition of meaning involves acquiring interpretive mismatches at the first and second language (L1-L2) syntax-semantics interfaces. In acquiring meaning, learners face two types of learning situations. One situation where the sentence syntax presents less difficulty but different pieces of functional morphology subsume different primitives of meaning is dubbed simple syntax–complex semantics. Another type of learning situation is exemplified in less frequent, dispreferred, or syntactically complex sentences where the sentential semantics offers no mismatch; these are labeled complex syntax–simple semantics. Studies representative of these learning situations are reviewed. The issues of importance of explicit instruction with respect to interpretive properties and the effect of the native language are addressed. Studies looking at acquisition of language-specific discourse properties and universal pragmatics are also reviewed. These representative studies and numerous other studies on the L2 acquisition of meaning point to no visible barrier to ultimate success in the acquisition of semantics and pragmatics.

The present small-scale study explores whether working memory (WM) and language aptitude (LA) explain any variance in L2 listening comprehension beyond baseline listening ability and explicit strategy-based listening instruction in an instructed EFL setting at the tertiary level. In a pretest/posttest non-randomized group design, the experimental group (N = 19) received explicit strategy-based listening instruction for 12 hours while the control group (N = 17) followed their regular L2 listening course syllabus. L2 listening comprehension was measured with an L2 academic listening comprehension test. WM measures (Foster et al., 2015) included an operation span task (OST), a symmetry span task (SST), and a rotation span task (RST). LA was assessed with LLAMA (Meara, 2005). The findings revealed the effectiveness of strategy-based intervention for L2 listening comprehension. A hierarchical regression analysis indicated that baseline listening scores explained about 52% of the variance in the post-listening scores, while listening strategy instruction explained an additional 16% of the variance. On the other hand, WM and LA did not explain any variance in listening comprehension scores, suggesting that the two individual learner differences in the present study are not significant predictors of L2 listening comprehension.

The discourse analysis typical of language-oriented ethnographic research is distinct form the that which is more linguistically driven. From a linguistic perspective, ethnographic data may seem impressionistic, and the units of analysis (e.g., clarification, shaming, or visiting ritual) too ill-defined for rigorous or detailed investigation. The perspective taken in this review, however, is that ethnographic research has greatly expanded understanding of what can consitute both valid data and appropriate analytical units. Through focus on categories such as speech event or genre, a large number of previously unexamined discourse phenomena have emerged as appropriate and significant domains of inquiry.

Hungary is a small landlocked country in Central Europe with a population of over ten million. The official language, and the mother tongue of the vast majority of the population, is Hungarian. Belonging to the Uralic language family, Hungarian is unrelated to any other European language except Finnish. In order to minimize the effects of their linguistic isolation, Hungarians have always attached great importance to the learning of foreign languages.

Literacy in South America must be understood against the backdrop of the linguistic diversity there. Of the fourteen nations and territories of South America, only Uruguay and the Falkland Islands are monolingual, in Spanish and English respectively. Every other country encompasses from 7 to 200 languages within its borders.

To begin with some history, reflecting the breadth of the field, the 35 issues of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (ARAL) published since 1980 have covered a substantial range of topics. These have included broad surveys of the field of applied linguistics; language and language-in-education; identity; written discourse; literacy; bilingual communities worldwide; language and the professions; communicative language teaching; second language acquisition research; discourse analysis; issues in foreign language teaching and learning; language policy and planning; technology and language; multilingualism; foundations of second language teaching; applied linguistics as an emerging discipline; language and psychology; discourse and dialogue; language contact and change; advances in language pedagogy; lingua franca languages; neurolinguistics; cognitive aspects of language processing; language assessment; and formulaic language.

Work in computational linguistics began very soon after the development of the first computers (Booth, Brandwood and Cleave 1958), yet in the intervening four decades there has been a pervasive feeling that progress in computer understanding of natural language has not been commensurate with progress in other computer applications. Recently, a number of prominent researchers in natural language processing met to assess the state of the discipline and discuss future directions (Bates and Weischedel 1993). The consensus of this meeting was that increased attention to large amounts of lexical and domain knowledge was essential for significant progress, and current research efforts in the field reflect this point of view.

This article examines ideologies surrounding Quechua's use as a lingua franca and contrasts these ideologies with the historical and ethnographic record across pre-Colombian, colonial, and postcolonial times. Drawing from classic and recent research on Quechua sociolinguistics and comparatively on current work in the study of World Englishes and English as a lingua franca, we describe ways in which Quechua possibly served as a lingua franca, but also argue that Quechua's role and potential as lingua franca have often been misunderstood. We illustrate how these misunderstandings are intertwined with some of the myths and ideologies surrounding the Quechua language in particular and lingua francas more generally. Specifically, we argue that Quechua as lingua franca has been neither one stable, standardized variety nor a politically neutral communicative tool. Further, we highlight some of the overlooked ways in which local varieties and local speakers of the lingua franca have responded to, and in some cases resisted, the inequities and ideologies associated with the lingua franca.

Nearly a thousand Publications on reading appear annually in the United States. This Cascade of print deals with the place of reading in our society, the nature of skilled reading, how reading is learned, how it is taught and might be better taught, how to evaluate it, and how to explain and cope with failure in learning to read (Weintraub, et al. 1983). While only a small number of these studies take up linguistic questions directly, all but a few studies necessarily involve language

There is not one notional/functional approach any more than there is one structural approach. There is simply a set of beliefs about language and language learning, some or all of which might be expected to underlie syllabi, courses, and classroom materials labeling themselves functional or notional. In this chapter, therefore, we shall be looking at the core of belief, its implications, and its potential for developemnt.

Throughout the entire recorded history of Africa, from the days of early missionaries until the present, the question of language constantly recurs. This is not surprising in view of the existence of a plethora of indigenous languages which cut across national borders and the added aggravation brought on by the introduction of the widely spoken and prestigious languages of the colonial powers. Finding answers to questions such as the most appropriate language, the medium for training citizens to meet their responsibilities, or the vehicle for conducting business has by no means been an easy task, given this sociolinguistic complexity, coupled with the fragile unification of African states.

This article takes a comparative look at language teacher anxiety (LTA) vis-à-vis students’ language classroom anxiety (LCA) and contends the benefit of pursuing and expanding LTA research. Specifically, the paper first traces the development of LTA inquiry from its inception in the 1990s until today and highlights how it historically aligned with and, more recently, diverges from LCA research. After establishing LTA as an idiosyncratic variable in instructed language learning and teaching contexts, I grapple with the questions of whether and why LTA merits further research attention and suggest that the pursuit of LTA research is not only beneficial to examine the role of teachers’ emotions in instructed language learning but also for the advancement of three other flourishing domains in the field of second language acquisition (SLA). These include the diversification of theoretical frameworks through which language classroom emotions can be examined, the advancement of research methodologies, and the role of emotions in social justice-centered approaches to language teaching (e.g., pedagogies of discomfort).

Focused as we are on uncovering how language works, many linguists are less cognizant of how the communicative strategies we employ in our knowledge-gathering activities impact the language users, identities, and communities we connect with and learn from. This autoethnographic essay, offered as a critical, introspective and analytical account by a U.S.-based, African American woman researcher, unfolds across three scenes of embedded ethnographic research in Micronesia and Tanzania—ocean-facing nations separated by a distance of more than 12,000 kilometers. Each scene's storytelling and dialogue—among users of Pohnpeian and Nukuoro in Micronesia, and users of Korean and Swahili in Tanzania—depicts how competing ideas about the value of marginalized languages surface within the talk of the research interview through allusions to socioracial power and linguistic capital. The essay concludes with a discussion of how a shift toward multilingual, multi-person interviewing can expand and deepen the insights of language-focused research.

Several excellent articles and books have been written, based on discourse analyses of spoken language, which can infrom teachers (and teacher educators) about features and conventions that are unique to spoken English (Brown, et al. 1984, Brown and Yule 1983, Bygate 1987, Melrose 1989, Tannen 1989) or about differences between authentic, naturalistic discourse and that fount in textbooks (Cathcart 1989, Scotton and Bernstein 1988). These approaches, clearly, have applications and implications for language instruction. However, it is the intent of this paper to discuss the ways in which discourse analysis itself can be useful for language learners as a tool for speaking and listening instruction. Many of the techniques and activities described in this paper bring students into the role of active participant in their own language learning processes, requiring them to collect and produce their own language “data,” to analyze these materials, and to become conscious of the skills involved with language production.

This volume of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics returns to a topic first covered in Volume Two (1982). In the time-span between thematic volumes on Language Policy and Planning (LPP), major changes have evolved in the field and recent world events have led practitioners to rethink many issues and concerns related to language policy and planning. In the early 1980s, many LPP discussions centered around various national case studies of language policy and planning; indeed, the stress on policy, as separate from planning, was not often emphasized. The focus on non-national level planning was also not as common as the national-level focus.

Any account of the lexcial description of English with reference to second language teaching over the past decade is essentially a review of developments in pedagogical lexicography over the same period. It is not simply that English monolingual dictionaries designed for foreign learners have increased astonishingly in number, variety, and authority throughout this time (McArthur 1989, Zgusta 1989); it is also the case that much recently published lexical analysis with an applied linguistic focus has either had the partial aim of improving existing dictionaries (Herbst 1984, Bolinger 1985) or been a preliminary to the compilation of new ones (Cowie 1981, Sinclair 1985).

Research in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has neither traditionally nor recently had a language or setting-specific emphasis, one that would have established a distinction between second language learning (SLL) as opposed to foreign language learning (FLL) applications in its attempts to answer principled CALL questions. For example the two anthologies of essays, studies, and reports on CALL theory and practice by Smith (1987; 1989), the papers on CALL research compiled by Dunkel (1991b), and the collection of international perspectives edited by Pennington and Stevens (1992) summarize work done in the 1980s and provide directions and guidelines for work to be done in the 1990s with implications for both SLL and FLL. As this continues to be the case in recent CALL research, an FLL emphasis in the chapter of non-English L2 instructional context has been maintained exclusively for the discussion of software; whenever the rationale for the design and implementation of FLL software was based on second language acquisition theory or findings from empirical ESL-oriented CALL investigations, the respective research source was examined and cited.

The Language Aptitude Outside the Classroom (LAOC) study investigates the factors that contribute to successful English-learning among newly arrived parent-child immigrants. Two types of factors are considered: cognitive abilities (aptitude measured with the LLAMA tests and working memory) and contextual-affective factors (exposure and anxiety). Participants are pairs of Spanish-speaking immigrants in the US. Each pair consists of a parent and their child aged 7–16. Their English proficiency is measured longitudinally during a one-year period using a listening comprehension test, a verbal fluency test, and an oral narrative (frog story). This contribution focuses on the lexical diversity of the oral narratives (Guiraud Index). Linear mixed models were run on the entire sample and on adults and children separately using time, aptitude, working memory, exposure to English, and anxiety as predictors of lexical diversity of the oral narratives (random effect = dyad, random slope = time). The results show that the development of lexical diversity over a one-year period is predicted by exposure to the language (and, for the children, anxiety). Two subtests of the LLAMA aptitude battery are also significant predictors when the entire sample is considered, but this effect nevertheless disappears for the adults when modeled separately from the children.

Many language teachers have had sporadic exposure to applied linguistics, limited experience with programmed learning/individualized instruction, and an incomplete understanding of ways in which educational technology can significantly augment the quality of the teaching–learning process. what is the process. what is the probability that administrators, teacher educator, materials developers, teachers, and students will appreciate and accept CAI as an approach that seeks to combine these three fields meaningfully? The propose of this discussion is to examine CAI is terms of key definitions, observations, concerns, developments, and contributions that have achieved significance during the 1979–80 academic year in the area of language teaching and learning. Implications and a challenge for future research studies will also be listed.