The past few decades have witnessed a growing interest in how second language (L2) learners come to read in languages employing non-alphabetic writing systems such as Chinese and Japanese and languages employing non-Roman alphabetic systems such as Arabic and Hebrew. Indeed, with efforts afoot to begin more programs in these languages at the K-12 and collegiate levels, in immersion and bilingual settings, and with stated goals for students to eventually attain high levels in reading proficiency, an understanding of this research is critical if program development is to go forward in a principled way. This article discusses some of the theoretical developments that have helped illuminate the cross-orthographic reading process and reports on the relevant research in L2 cross-orthographic reading that has shaped our understanding of the issues involved in learning to read in languages that employ non-Roman alphabetic, logographic, and syllabary systems of writing. The article will also discuss teaching implications, strategies, and classroom practice put forth by reading practitioners, many of which have yet to find consensus.

This article describes how language policy is formed at a European level, focusing on the Common European Framework of Reference for Language (CEFR). The CEFR's prominent role in assessment has led to criticisms of its adequacy as a model for learning and fears that it is being used as an instrument of centralization and harmonization. First, we argue for studying the CEFR's effect on language policy as a case of impact, as this concept is understood within language assessment. We refer to experience with Asset Languages, developed as part of the United Kingdom's national languages strategy. Second, we agree with many commentators who insist on the framework's “flexible and context-amenable” nature. If use of the CEFR is made prescriptive and closed, it indeed becomes a straitjacket. What is needed is engagement with the complexity of specific contexts. We introduce the European Survey on Language Competences, a European Union (EU) initiative scheduled for 2011, which will further raise the profile of the CEFR as an assessment framework. This project should contribute to achieving comparability of measures and standards across languages. At the same time it underlines the need to develop contextualized, practical ways of realizing the CEFR's potential as a framework for teaching and learning.

Many contemporary currents in applied linguistics have favored discourse studies within assessment; there have been calls for cross-fertilization with other areas within applied linguistics, critiques of the positivist tradition within language testing research, and the growing impact of Conversation Analysis (CA) and sociocultural theory. This chapter focuses on the resulting increase in discourse-based studies of oral proficiency assessment techniques. These studies initially focused on the traditional oral proficiency interview but have since been extended to new test formats, including paired and group interaction. We discuss the research carried out on a number of factors in the assessment setting, including the roles of interlocutor, candidate, and rater, and the impact of tasks, task performance conditions, and rating criteria. Recent research has also concentrated more specifically on the assessment of pragmatic competence and on the applications of technology within the assessment of spoken language, including the comparability of semidirect and direct methods for such assessment and the use of computer corpora.

In this article we explore how oral and written modes may differentially influence processes involved in second language acquisition (SLA) in the context of task-based language teaching (TBLT). We first start by reflecting on the differences between spoken and written language. In what follows, we provide a general description of tasks in relation to the SLA processes. We then establish the links between the learning processes and task phases/features in the two modes. Concluding that the role of mode has been underresearched, we call for a more integrative and mode-sensitive TBLT research agenda, in which hybridness of discourse (i.e., mingling of the two modes within one communicative event/task) is taken into account.

Data from self-paced reading (SPR) tasks are routinely checked for statistical outliers (Marsden, Thompson, & Plonsky, 2018). Such data points can be handled in a variety of ways (e.g., trimming, data transformation), each of which may influence study results in a different manner. This two-phase study sought, first, to systematically review outlier handling techniques found in studies that involve SPR and, second, to re-analyze raw data from SPR tasks to understand the impact of those techniques. Toward these ends, in Phase I, a sample of 104 studies that employed SPR tasks was collected and coded for different outlier treatments. As found in Marsden et al. (2018), wide variability was observed across the sample in terms of selection of time and standard deviation (SD)-based boundaries for determining what constitutes a legitimate reading time (RT). In Phase II, the raw data from the SPR studies in Phase I were requested from the authors. Nineteen usable datasets were obtained and re-analyzed using data transformations, SD boundaries, trimming, and winsorizing, in order to test their relative effectiveness for normalizing SPR reaction time data. The results suggested that, in the vast majority of cases, logarithmic transformation circumvented the need for SD boundaries, which blindly eliminate or alter potentially legitimate data. The results also indicated that choice of SD boundary had little influence on the data and revealed no meaningful difference between trimming and winsorizing, implying that blindly removing data from SPR analyses might be unnecessary. Suggestions are provided for future research involving SPR data and the handling of outliers in second language (L2) research more generally.

The word “writing” refers not only to text in written script but also to the acts of thinking, composing, and encoding language into such text; these acts also necessarily entail discourse interactions within a socio-cultural context. Writing is text, is composing, and is social construction. This threefold distinction—between text analytic, composing process, and social constructivist views of writing—has served usefully to distinguish the major orientations adopted in inquiry into second language writing and to circumscribe the implications they have for instruction (e.g., Grabe and Kaplan 1996, Raimes 1991, Silva 1990).

This study is part of a growing wave of interest in foreign language (FL) learners’ emotions, their sources, and their effects. Previous studies have confirmed that there is a clear relationship between the emotions of foreign language enjoyment (FLE), foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA), foreign language boredom (FLB), and foreign language performance. However, the relative importance of each emotion as a predictor of FL performance has yet to be examined, and as different teaching and learning strategies can elicit different emotions, it is difficult to determine whether FL teachers and learners should prioritize a specific emotion in course design and study. We, therefore, utilized structural equation modeling and latent dominance analysis on a sample of 502 Moroccan EFL learners in order to examine the relative importance of each emotion in predicting FL performance. We argue that it is crucial to use sophisticated statistical analyses and to collect samples from outside Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) countries. The latent dominance analysis revealed that FLCA had the strongest (negative) effect on English test scores. FLB had a significant—but slightly weaker—negative effect and FLE had a significant—but weaker still—positive effect. As such, it is vital that FL teachers and learners not underestimate the impact of anxiety on language learning.

This chapter reviews recent progress in resolving tensions between conceptions of literacy as a system of locally situated cultural practices and conceptions of literacy as a broader system of written language that transcends specific individuals and local contexts. Such theoretical tensions have arisen out of earlier, long-standing literacy debates—the Great Divide, the Literacy Thesis, and even debates about situated cognition itself. Recent reviews and critiques of the “New Literacy Studies” examined here—Brandt and Clinton, 2002; Collins and Blot, 2003; Street, 2003a, 2003b—are reaching toward new theoretical ground to address emerging concerns about the adequacy of current literacy theories framed in terms of locally situated social practices. This new work should be of interest not only to those working in the field of literacy but also to applied linguists in general, because the core issues have to do with the nature and role of context in language use, whether in oral or written form.

The language of international aviation communication is English, but numerous aviation incidents and accidents have involved miscommunication between pilots and air traffic controllers, many of whom are not native speakers of the language. In 2004 the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) published a set of Language Proficiency Requirements and a Proficiency Rating Scale, and by 5 March 2008, air traffic controllers and pilots were required by the ICAO to have a certificate attesting to their proficiency in the language used for international aeronautical communication. Although some organizations made efforts to produce tests by the deadline, in the event an implementation period was allowed, with a new deadline of March 2011. This article describes a number of surveys of tests of aviation English, the implementation of the ICAO requirements, and the rating scales. It concludes that many of the assessment procedures appear not to meet international professional standards for language tests, the implementation of the language assessment policy is inadequate, and much more careful and close monitoring is needed of the quality of the tests and assessment procedures required by the policy.

For several decades of the 20th century, the main interest of pronunciation teaching research was in applying contrastive analysis techniques to the sound segments of the L1 and L2 to identify differences between them and so, it was assumed, to highlight areas where L1 transfer errors were likely to occur. Later in the century, pronunciation teaching research began to move on both by embracing more sophisticated approaches to interlanguage phonology, taking universal, developmental, and other processes into account as well as transfer (see, e.g., the range of research interests documented in Ioup & Weinberger, 1987), and by focusing increasingly on suprasegmental features along with segmental. Still more recently and radically, a number of researchers have ceased treating pronunciation as a somewhat isolated, self-contained linguistic and pedagogic phenomenon, but are forging links with research into other aspects of language and language teaching and also maximizing the opportunities offered by technological advances. This chapter will outline these latest developments in pronunciation research and explore the extent of their influence on pedagogy.

I have tried to practice linguistics as a form of social action, a practice which Halliday (e.g., 1985) has suggested cannot be other than ideologically committed. This practice dissolves the linguistics vs. applied linguistic opposition which has evolved in response to the hegemony of American formalism—whose idealizing reductivity comes nowhere near serving the needs of language users and their aids around the world. In its stead, linguistics as social action engages theory with practice in a dialectic whereby theory informs practice which, in turn, rebounds on theory, recursively, as more effective ways of intervening in various processes of semogenesis are designed (Martin 1997; 1998a). My own experience of this engagement has been mainly in the field of literacy, especially of writing development in primary and secondary school. Accordingly, I'll draw on this experience to address the sub-field ‘Writing and Literacy,’ writing as a linguist working across what is generally read and has been increasingly institutionalized as an applied vs. theoretical frontier.

Thirty-five years ago, three leading British linguists published a landmark volume entitled The linguistic sciences and language teaching (Halliday, McIntosh and Strevens 1964). The careful wording of the title of this book was something of a clarion call; in effect, the authors promised to usher in a Brave New World of a stronger descriptive base for pedagogical materials.

Some form of verbal report — that is, a research participant's concurrent or retrospective verbal account of thought processes during problem-solving activities — has been used throughout this century as the data base from which psychologists have developed theories of human mentation. Newell and Simon (1972) and Ericsson and Simon (1980, 1993) have provided extensive justification for use of one such method, protocol analysis, to investigate cognition from an information processing (IP) perspective. They have characterized protocol analysis as a methodology capable of providing evidence of the cognitive processes used when people attend to information stored in short term memory (STM) in order to solve problems. Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT), with its concern for the mediation of human development by culturally- and historically-grounded signs and tools based on the work of Vygotsky (1987), Leont'ev (1981), and others, suggests a different view of protocol analysis. In this chapter I outline a CHAT perspective that accounts for protocol analysis along three key dimensions: (a) the relationship between thinking and speech from a representational standpoint; (b) the social role of speech in research methodology; and (c) the influence of speech on thinking during data collection. The purpose of this discussion is to illustrate how use of verbal reports can be viewed through a CHAT lens and to identify alternative assumptions necessary to use it from a CHAT perspective.

This article argues for an uncovering of the multitude of ways in which applied linguistics has functioned as an important and effective vehicle for White supremacy and empire, with its disciplinary roots embedded in assumptions about racial inequalities and racial hierarchies and, equally importantly, the concealment of these forms of racial discrimination which often manifest as innocuous language practices. In particular, the notion of objectivity has played a guiding role in reinscribing Whiteness in much applied linguistics theorizing and research within a global context of inequitable racial power and forms of knowledge production and transmission that are steeped in colonial reasoning. In this piece, the author considers what antiracism and decolonization mean within applied linguistics and asks: Is the discipline of applied linguistics irretrievably rooted in an ontology of race and empire? Or is an antiracist and decolonizing applied linguistics possible?

Until recently, the interaction between language and religion as topics relevant to bilingualism or multilingualism has been relatively little explored, although there is an extensive body of research on religious language. This chapter first provides an overview of earlier work, much of it on the translation of sacred texts into various languages. Past research has also identified the linguistic consequences of the spread of various religions, particularly with respect to choice of ritual language and orthographic systems. The language use patterns and practices historically characteristic of different religious traditions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Quakerism, are reviewed. The chapter then describes the linguistic effects of missionary activity in several postcolonial settings, concentrating mainly on those pertaining to Christian groups. Other recent research has examined the linguistic consequences of linkages between regionally prominent languages and dialects and religious practice in diverse international locations. Relationships between immigration and language maintenance and shift in religious domains are also discussed. The chapter concludes by noting that recent political events, interest in conversion efforts of religions other than Christianity, and growing recognition of the academic legitimacy of the field of language and religion predict a likely increase in applied linguistic research in this area.

This chapter surveys recent work on Russian as a lingua franca in the territory of the former Soviet Union. This discussion is subdivided into three sections. First, I review recent historiographies and sociolinguistic analyses of russification policies and practices of the Russian empire and the USSR. Then, I review the work on the changes in the status of Russian in the fourteen post-Soviet countries, which display a wide spectrum of approaches: from continuous Russian dominance in Belarus to vigorous derussification in the Baltic countries. I end with an overview of methodological and theoretical challenges facing this area of study and of its contributions to debates on minority language rights, to definitions of postcolonialism and diaspora, and to the study of negotiation and transformation of identities. I also point to productive directions for future research, such as microsociolinguistic studies of regional varieties of Russian, of language choice and use in daily communication, and of intergenerational transmission.

Multilingual first language acquisition refers to the language development of children exposed to two or more languages from birth or shortly thereafter. Much of the research on this topic adopts a comparative approach. Bilinguals are thus compared with their monolingual peers, and trilinguals with both bilinguals and monolinguals; within children, comparisons are made between a child's two (or more) languages, and between different domains within those languages. The goal of such comparisons is to determine the extent to which language development proceeds along similar paths and/or at a similar rate across groups, languages, and domains, in order to elaborate upon the question of whether these different groups acquire language in the same way, and to evaluate how language development in multilingual settings is influenced by environmental factors. The answers to these questions have both theoretical and practical implications.

The goal of this article is to discuss the results of some of this recent research on multilingual first language acquisition by reviewing (a) properties of the developing linguistic system in a variety of linguistic domains and (b) some of the characteristics of multilingual first language acquisition that have attracted attention over the past five years, including cross-linguistic influence, dominance, and input quantity/quality. Trilingual first language acquisition is covered in a dedicated section.

Variation in voice quality has long been recognized to have functions beyond the grammatically distinctive or phonetically useful roles it plays in many languages, indexing information about the speaker, participating in the construction of stance in interaction, or serving to identify the speaker as a unique individual. Though the links between voice quality and identity have been studied in phonetics, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, forensic linguistics, and speech technology, considerable work remains to be done to problematize the ways in which the voice is taken as covering privileged, immediate meanings about the speaker's body and to break apart the ideologies that construct it as an inalienable, unitary, and invariant facet of a speaker's identity. We point out promising directions in recent research on the voice and bring up ideas for where this important area of research should be taken.

Over the last decade, research on multilingualism has grown and has provided researchers with new insights into the mechanisms at work in the multilingual brain. While some studies of multilinguals have shown similar results to what has been seen in studies of bilinguals, certain unique properties of multilinguals are beginning to be noticed, particularly regarding early language representation, gray matter density, and speed of lexical retrieval. In addition, research on cognitive control, language switching, working memory, and certain consequences of multilingualism (advantages and disadvantages) are reviewed in terms of their effects on the brains of bilinguals and multilinguals. Although there is little agreement among papers concerning specific regions that are structurally different in monolinguals and multilinguals, publications do show differences. Similarly, there are studies reporting somewhat different regions called upon for processing a given language in multilinguals compared to monolinguals.

Multilingual education policy has been a controversial affair in South Africa, especially over the last 60 years. Recent research conducted by government-led and independent agencies shows declining student achievement within an education system that employs 11 home languages for education in the first three grades of primary school, followed by a transition to English medium for the majority (approximately 80%) of speakers of African languages. Research that focuses on the linguistic practices of students in urban settings suggests that there is a disjuncture between the construction of multilingualism within contemporary education policy and the multilingual reality of students (e.g., Heugh, 2003; Makoni, 2003; Makoni & Pennycook, 2012; Plüddemann, 2013; Probyn, 2009; Stroud & Heugh, 2011). There is also a disjunction between constitutional and other government policies that advance, on paper, a multilingual policy, yet are implemented through an assimilatory drive towards English (Alexander & Heugh, 1999). As predicted nearly two decades ago, the ideological framing of multilingualism during the negotiations in the early 1990s was to have consequences for the way in which language policy would unfold in the education sector over the next 20 to 30 years (Heugh, 1995, 1999). While poor student achievement in school may be ascribed to a range of socioeconomic indicators, this article draws attention to contributory factors that relate to language(s) in education. These include different constructions of multilingualism in education in relation to sociolinguistic and educational linguistic considerations, contradictory interpretations of multilingual education in a series of education policy documents, pedagogical weaknesses, and recent attempts to strengthen the provision of African languages education alongside English in the first 10 years of school (Grades R and 0–9; e.g., Department of Basic Education (DBE), 2013a, 2013b).