A great deal of research on second language (L2) input has provided useful linguistic evidence for the development of generalizations about and hypotheses on the usage-based nature of L2 knowledge. However, despite the fact that classrooms are one of the most ubiquitous sites of L2 learning, we still know very little about the linguistic quality of naturally-occurring classroom interactions and their consequential role in shaping learners’ linguistic repertoires (Ellis, 2016). These data are needed in order to understand how differences in L2 classroom interactional activities affect L2 learner language. This is the focus of the set of research tasks I lay out in this paper. After a brief overview of usage-based research on language and a summary of the methodological contributions of conversational analysis (CA) and interactional linguistics (IL) to such research, I will explicate a research agenda comprising five tasks for investigating the links between L2 classroom interaction and L2 learners’ developing linguistic repertoires. By making clear the interrelationships between teaching and learning, findings from the studies will offer new insights into L2 pedagogy and the key role that L2 teachers play in designing the linguistic environments of their learning contexts and shaping learners' linguistic repertoires.

This article calls for replication of two studies (Li, Zhu & Ellis 2016; Arroyo & Yilmaz 2018) that examine the timing of corrective feedback, which refers to whether errors should be corrected during a communicative task (immediate feedback) or after the task is completed (delayed feedback). The article starts with a rationale for replicating the two studies: they address a topic of significance to theorists, researchers, and practitioners; they are conducted with rigorous methods; they represent classroom and laboratory research respectively; they both show an advantage for immediate feedback. It proceeds to contextualize the subsequent discussion of replication strategies by (1) elaborating the theoretical claims and pedagogical positions on the influence of the timing of corrective feedback on learning outcomes and task performance, and (2) summarizing the findings of the research on the effectiveness of corrective feedback. After some background information is provided, a detailed discussion is given for each of the two studies, including a summary of the methods and findings, followed by recommendations about how to replicate.

The majority of studies in second-language (L2) speech processing have involved unimodal (i.e., auditory) input; however, in many instances, speech communication involves both visual and auditory sources of information. Some researchers have argued that multimodal speech is the primary mode of speech perception (e.g., Rosenblum 2005). Research on auditory-visual (AV) input has been conducted more extensively in the fields of infant speech development (e.g., Meltzoff & Kuhl 1994), adult monolingual processing (e.g., McGurk & MacDonald 1976; see reference in this timeline), and the treatment of the hearing impaired (e.g., Owens & Blazek 1985) than in L2 speech processing (Hardison 2007). In these fields, the earliest visual input was a human face on which lip movements contributed linguistic information. Subsequent research expanded the types of visual sources to include computer-animated faces or talking heads (e.g., Massaro 1998), hand-arm gestures (Gullberg 2006), and various types of electronic visual displays such as those for pitch (Chun, Hardison & Pennington 2008). Recently, neurophysiological research has shed light on the neural processing of language input, providing another direction researchers have begun to explore in L2 processing (Perani & Abutalebi 2005).

Although major advances have been made in research on language learning strategies (LLS), there are some areas that have been somewhat surprisingly neglected by specialists. This applies without doubt to the strategies that learners draw on to better understand and learn grammar rules but also to employ grammar structures in real-time processing, as required in spontaneous communication. In this paper, I outline a research agenda for grammar learning strategies (GLS), identifying three distinct lines of inquiry: (1) identification and measurement of GLS, (2) examination of factors moderating GLS use, and (3) strategies-based instruction as applied to GLS. Although these three areas are to some extent reflective of the main foci of empirical investigations in research on LLS, in each case, I try to demonstrate how cutting-edge theoretical and empirical developments can be applied to the study of GLS. For each of the three areas, I propose research tasks the execution of which has the potential of moving research on GLS forward.

After characterizing the study of second language acquisition (SLA) from three viewpoints, I try to answer the question, raised by DeKeyser (2010), of whether the SLA field is disintegrating. In answering this question, I first propose a distinction between SLA as the relatively fundamental academic discipline and SLA as the relatively applied field of language education. Instead of portraying the field in terms of quantitative or laboratory studies on the one hand, and qualitative or anthropological studies on the other, I will look at SLA in terms of theories that differ in their empirical basis. All scientific disciplines must create room for ideas or theories that do not yet lend themselves to empirical testing, but for a discipline to develop fruitfully it is crucial that nonempirical ideas do not outnumber the empirical. The fact that the number of empirical SLA theories is large is not in itself a problem: through the practices of rational ‘normal science’ (Kuhn 1962), the best theories (in terms of coherence, testability and scope) will rightfully come out on top.

The invited colloquium on New Directions in Language Assessment held at the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) annual meeting in Portland, Oregon on March 22, 2014 brought together an international panel of scholars to together explore the possibilities and challenges of translanguaging and bi/multilingual approaches in assessment. Together, the presenters of this colloquium argued that allowing bi/multilinguals to demonstrate their knowledge and skills using their entire linguistic repertoire offers a promising new approach for teaching and assessment.

Learning a new sound system poses challenges of a social, psychological, and cognitive nature, but the learner's decisions are key to ultimate attainment. This presentation focuses on two essential concepts: choice, or how one wants to sound in the target language; and limits, or various challenges to one's goals vis-à-vis accent. Qualitative and quantitative data underscore the relevance of autonomy as a guiding principle from which to explore related constructs such as self-determination, motivation, decision-making and self-concept. I also review several prominent limits on phonological attainment to counterbalance and contextualize the aspect of choice. Suggestions are given for both teaching and research that prioritize autonomy with reference to a complexity perspective.

In pre-service and in-service language teacher education, and in curriculum-related projects in second and foreign language settings, a recurrent issue is the failure to relate the teaching of reading to reading as a meaning-making activity. In this paper, I will consider what current research on second language (L2) reading has actually succeeded in bringing to the classroom. In doing this, I will examine the three obvious candidates for inclusion in a reading programme: extensive reading, reading fluency development, and intensive reading. For each of these I will give my perspective on what's getting through to teachers, and what isn’t, and my best guess as to why it isn’t. This leads to suggestions about areas for further research and other actions that need to be taken to improve classroom practice.

In this article we review research on English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching and learning published in Argentina between 2007 and 2013. This is the first review of a Latin American country in this series. Argentina has a century-long tradition of training EFL teachers but a comparatively shorter though fruitful history of foreign language (FL) research. The article examines 88 articles that appeared in locally published peer-reviewed conference proceedings, academic journals and one edited collection. The contributions cover a wide spectrum of topics that illustrates prominent research interests in the country, such as the role of imagination, emotion and affect in language comprehension and production, intercultural dimensions, FL teacher education and development, content and language integrated learning (CLIL), computer-assisted language learning (CALL), the teaching of English for academic or specific purposes, testing, assessment and evaluation, and materials design and course development. The review includes work by specialists whose research may not be known outside the boundaries of Argentina but who produce high-quality situated research that accounts for the specificity of the local educational setting.

Research has increasingly demonstrated that pronunciation difficulties in English can seriously affect learners’ intelligibility and ability to comprehend spoken English. It is thus crucial that we find ways of helping learners of English become more intelligible. In this talk, I present compelling research evidence in support of a strategy-based pronunciation instruction model, and uncover individual learner, teacher, and instructional variables affecting long-term improvement. Findings from my published and ongoing studies involving different groups of learners and teachers highlight the critical role of teachers in self-regulated learning, and suggest the need for methodological refinements to the model. The results show that students’ self-regulated efforts at learning can be further enhanced and supported if combined with goal-setting and awareness-raising activities, online speech models and resources, video-recordings to assess progress, guided reflections on oral assignments, ongoing feedback, and re-assessments of goals after improvement. I conclude the talk with a discussion of these methodological refinements and possible avenues for future research.

This article is concerned with age in second language learning. It steers well clear, however, of the well-worn issue of maturational constraints and the intractable problems of locating their consensual offset point and finding indisputable evidence for or against them. Instead we propose something completely different in our agenda for age-related research: a programme on some poorly understood non-maturational dimensions of the age factor which will stand some chance of yielding results unlikely to become entangled in theoretical controversy. In other words, the results will, we think, be immediately usable and useful. The topics included in our outlined agenda are: (1) age effects in various dimensions of language teaching and learning (in relation to bilingualism and biliteracy, to different target languages and to Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL); (2) what can be observed in respect of second language (L2) learning in the third age; (3) an ecological perspective on age in classroom L2 research methodology; and (4) an exploration of the attitudes of teachers of different-aged L2 learners.

With roots in social psychology, second language (L2) motivation has largely been investigated using self-report techniques. Studies drawing on observational data gathered in contexts where learning takes place are rare, and understandings of how motivation evolves in classroom interactions remain limited (Boo, Dörnyei, & Ryan, 2015). In a position paper in Language Teaching, Ushioda (2016) maps out an agenda for qualitative research examining motivation that emerges in language classrooms. With a focus on psycholinguistic processes, and with the aim of understanding how motivation ‘connects with specific aspects of second language acquisition [and] particular features of linguistic development’, Ushioda makes the case for researching L2 motivation ‘through a small lens’ (p. 564). Furthering this agenda, I make proposals for research with a relational focus where, through a somewhat wider lens, motivation and engagement generated through connections created by teachers in their classroom practice can be investigated. To frame these proposals, I use the concept of connective instruction (Martin & Dowson, 2009). Connective instruction holds that motivation and engagement increase when students can connect with the teacher as a person, with content that the teacher enables them to get involved with, and with the working methods that the teacher promotes.

The English Language Institute (now the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies) at Victoria University of Wellington has a long history of corpus-based vocabulary research, especially after the arrival of the second director of the institute, H. V. George, and the appointment of Helen Barnard, whom George knew in India. George's successor, Graeme Kennedy, also saw corpus linguistics as a very fruitful and important area of applied language research.

This paper is a very personal attempt to explore the problematics of portraying migrants in Applied Linguistics research. I begin with a discussion of identity, in particular what we might mean when we use the term, and from there I go on to explore its fundamental imprecision through an analysis of a census question about ethnicity. I then consider migration and the problematics of naming migrants in research, first examining an example of my own research and then expanding the discussion to wider issues. I conclude the paper with a brief consideration of the epistemological status of portrayals in research.

Erlam & Ellis (2018) published, in Canadian Modern Language Review, an experimental study that investigated the effect of input-based tasks on the acquisition of vocabulary and markers of plurality by adolescent near-beginner learners of L2 (second language) French. The present paper reports an approximate replication of the original study with the aim of confirming or disconfirming the results.1 The research questions of both studies addressed the receptive acquisition of new vocabulary and the receptive and productive acquisition of markers of plurality resulting from instruction using input-based tasks. Both studies investigated near-beginner adolescent learners of French. The teacher, the students’ usual classroom teacher, was the same in both studies. In the replication study, a new, larger group of students were investigated, the length of the instruction was increased, involving the development of additional tasks, and productive as well as the receptive knowledge of the vocabulary items was assessed. The results of the replication study confirm and extend those of the original study. The teachers’ views about the role of input-based tasks with near-beginner learners remained constant in the two studies. The paper concludes with a discussion of the contribution that approximate replications can make to instructed second language acquisition research.

International teaching assistants (ITAs) are Indian, Chinese, Korean, Turkish, etc. international students who have been admitted to graduate study at universities in the U.S.A. and Canada, and are being supported as instructors of undergraduate-level classes and labs in biology, chemistry, physics, and math. For the past 30 years, the number of ITAs has been increasing, and many departments at universities have come to rely largely on ITAs to cover their undergraduate teaching needs. As high-intermediate and low-advanced second language learners who must use their second language for professional purposes, ITAs face linguistic, social, professional, and cultural challenges. This is a learner population that deserves more attention, as I hope to establish here with this presentation of six research tasks. I have organized proposed research projects in such a way as to increase readers’ familiarity with this little publicized field, and also to relate the projects to different contexts of inquiry. By ‘contexts’ I mean ‘who is asking what and for what reasons.’ The two contexts of inquiry are: (1) Established areas of ITA program concern, including acquisition of fluency, prosody, and vocabulary; and (2) Working with ‘outside’ theories, such as the Output Hypothesis, and deliberate practice theory.