When in the late 1990s we set out to review the accumulated research on second language (L2) instructional effectiveness, it was with a sense – though no certainty – that a journey into the uncharted territory of systematic research synthesis would eventually prove worth the effort. In order to find a fitting methodology, and in the absence of any guidance within applied linguistics, we willingly delved into challenging techniques and debates from other disciplines. A few years later, we had to search long and hard to find enough synthesists working on language learning and teaching issues to warrant a book, but we did, and we saw that new effort as an important, if initial, step towards the adoption and adaptation of research synthesis, and particularly the subset of methods known as meta-analysis, to the problems of applied linguistics. Now, some ten years after our first publication on the topic, applications of meta-analysis have increased dramatically in the field, as this Timeline clearly shows. For some topics (e.g. interaction, corrective feedback), we have even seen several studies replicating and building on each other. We are pleased with these developments and welcome the efforts of the field to engage in rigorous and meaningful reviews of L2 research, with an eye towards cumulative explanation of key phenomena. At the same time, we also hope that researchers will avail themselves of the full potential of systematic research synthesis, which considerably transcends the narrower domain of meta-analysis and includes other quantitative as well as qualitative methods that more fully enable the task of synthesizing accumulated knowledge in the increasingly diverse research landscape of applied linguistics.

This state-of-the-art review provides a critical overview of research publications in Spain in the last ten years in three areas of teaching and learning foreign languages (especially English): context and language integrated learning (CLIL), young language learners (YLL), and technology-enhanced language learning (TELL). These three domains have been selected for their relevance to current education policies and practices in Spain. This review aims to provide access for international readers to research published in Spain in the local languages or in English, within these innovative fields.

El presente artículo ofrece una mirada crítica a las investigaciones en torno a la enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras en España en los últimos diez años. Este estado de la cuestión presta especial atención al inglés y aborda tres ejes que tienen gran relevancia en las actuales políticas educativas y las prácticas docentes en España: la introducción temprana de una lengua extranjera, el aprendizaje integrado de contenidos y lenguas extranjeras (AICLE) y el aprendizaje de lenguas asistido por ordenador (ALAO). Este artículo pretende divulgar internacionalmente los estudios publicados en el ámbito nacional, en inglés y en las lenguas vernáculas, en estas áreas de innovación.

The European Framework for CLIL Teacher Education (EFCT – http://clil-cd.ecml.at) is a conceptual tool for guiding the professional development of CLIL teachers. CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) is a dual-focused approach in which an additional language is used for the learning and teaching of both content and language. The framework provides a set of principles and ideas for designing CLIL professional curricula. CLIL programmes differ widely from country to country in their organisation, content, intensity and choice of languages, and there are corresponding differences in how teacher education providers design and implement teacher training and development programmes. The EFCT aims to serve as a transnational conceptual tool for supporting the development of theoretically-sound educational practice in CLIL contexts. It is not intended as a prescriptive template.

In this review of research in applied linguistics and language teaching and learning in Singapore, more than one hundred national publications for the period 2000–2007 will be reviewed. Since this period encompasses certain changes that were introduced in Singapore schools at the start of the new millennium, it would be appropriate to take stock of the studies that showcase these changes. These studies fall under five main areas of local research: norms, standards and models; English language curriculum and policy; reading and writing instruction and research; mother tongue teaching and learning; and the teaching of English to international students. In this review, representative work under each research area will be discussed, and this will be done within the broad historical and sociopolitical context of research in Singapore. The results of the review suggest that practical concerns assume priority over theoretical issues, which are relegated to secondary importance. This can be explained in terms of the role of the state in education reform and governance and its top–down decision-making processes, the impact of globalization on education, and the role of education in the management of race relations in the country.

This study examines the experiences and motivations of language and linguistics academics who have published in potential predatory journals (PPJs). A questionnaire was administered to 2,793 academics with publications in 63 language and linguistics PPJs, and 213 of them returned their responses. A subsample of the respondents (n = 21) also contributed qualitative data through semi-structured interviews or email responses to open-ended questions. Analyses of the survey data found that the authors were mainly from Asia, mostly had a doctorate, chose the PPJs chiefly for fast publication and/or meeting degree or job requirements, were predominantly of the opinion that the PPJs were reputable, and commonly reported positive impacts of publishing in the PPJs on their studies or academic careers. A thematic analysis of the qualitative data revealed five main themes: unawareness, unrelenting publication pressures, low information literacy, social identity threat, and failure to publish in top-tier journals.

This article presents research on teaching English in Israel, a vibrant multilingual country, in the period between 2014 and 2020. After a brief introduction to the current approach to English language teaching around the world, it outlines the studies investigating: (a) learners of English, (b) English teachers, and (c) methods that are used in the country for teaching English. We explore how various student populations, Arabs, Bedouins, Circassians, Druze, Charedi (ultra-orthodox Jews), Jews, and foreign students, are taught English as well as their attitudes to this language. Then, we discuss research investigating different categories of English teachers in Israel, including teachers in Arab and Jewish sectors, the teachers labeled as ‘native speakers’, and also teacher trainers and teacher-training principles. We look at secondary and high school students, including those in special education, as well as those who take English courses in tertiary educational institutions. Finally, we are interested in whether innovative teaching methods compete with the conventional ones and which groups of learners have access to the former. Throughout the article, we aim to show to what extent practitioners and researchers are aware of the present-day realities of the interconnectedness of ‘teacher, student, and method’ elements and the impact of multilingualism on English teaching in Israel. This Country in Focus report also considers the current holistic perspective on English language teaching. This language should not be taught in isolation but work in concert with other contact languages.

The study of planning in second language (L2) writing research is heavily influenced by two research domains: (a) early research on cognition in first language (L1) composing processes and (b) second language acquisition (SLA) research. The first research domain has been instrumental in determining the specific systems and processes involved in composing and has led to widely accepted models of L1 writing (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987*; Flower & Hayes, 1980*; Hayes, 1996, 2012) as well as a widely accepted model of the interaction between working memory and L1 writing systems (Kellogg, 1996*; Kellogg, Whiteford, Turner, Cahill, & Mertens, 2013). The influence of these early studies is still felt in process approaches to composition instruction commonly implemented in L1 and L2 writing classes. The second research domain—SLA and more specifically task-based language teaching/learning—has come to view planning as a feature of task complexity that can be manipulated to facilitate the production of language that is complex (syntactically and/or lexically), accurate, and/or fluent (Robinson, 2011*; Skehan, 1998*; Skehan & Foster, 2001). This research timeline traces the study of planning in L2 writing in each of these domains by reviewing key L1 and L2 writing research over the last 30-plus years and by highlighting each study's findings. Prior to presenting the timeline, the following sections provide backgrounds in each of the domains noted above and situate planning within those domains.

Published in Language Learning in 1995, Munro and Derwing's* investigation of foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in second language (L2) speech instigated significant change in L2 pronunciation research (Levis, 2020). A key finding was that despite the presence of a foreign accent, listeners could indeed comprehend L2 speech. Within their framework, comprehension of L2 speech was assessed along two dimensions. The first, intelligibility, was an assessment of actual listener comprehension, measured through listener transcriptions of a given utterance. The second, comprehensibility, was a scalar measure of how easy to understand listeners perceived an utterance to be. While these two measures of listener comprehension (i.e., understanding) have been shown to correlate, they have also been shown to measure different forms of understanding (Derwing & Munro, 2015). This means that while increased intelligibility can be associated with increased comprehensibility, it is still common for listeners to accurately transcribe nonnative speech while simultaneously indicating the speech to be hard to understand (i.e., evidence indicates that intelligibility outpaces comprehensibility in the development of L2 pronunciation). Research published in the 25 years since has repeatedly demonstrated that accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility are partially independent dimensions of L2 speech (Munro & Derwing, 2020). Whereas Munro and Derwing's (2011) research timeline attended to the concepts of accent and broad intelligibility (i.e., inclusive of both actual and ease of understanding), the past decade has seen an increased scholarly emphasis specifically on the global speech dimension of comprehensibility. Given this increased scholarly interest, our timeline is presented with the goal of tracing the post-Munro and Derwing (1995) development of L2 speech comprehensibility research.

East (2014) presented a largely qualitative study that uncovered how beginning teachers of languages other than English developed their understandings about task-based language teaching (TBLT) as they took part in a year-long initial teacher education programme in New Zealand. This paper reports a comparative re-production. It complements a recent New Zealand based study, experimental in nature, and its approximate replication (Erlam & Ellis, 2018a, b). The present paper argues that TBLT remains in practice a contested endeavour. Positive experimental research findings are not necessarily finding their way into classrooms, and practitioner-focused studies play a crucial role in adding to our knowledge of what works and what does not work in authentic contexts. The original study and the comparative re-production addressed the same research questions and drew on parallel data sources. The findings of the comparative study, which supported those of the original study, helped in identifying more clearly the issues at stake for the profession and the variables that require attention. It is apparent that the challenges reside in upskilling and supporting practising teachers, who need to become a stronger focus of dedicated and long-term professional development opportunities that will introduce them to the innovation, and sustain them in its implementation.

Teaching poetry in second language (L2) classrooms raises theoretical and practical questions about how best to treat literature when target language and culture is also being negotiated. Current pedagogy derives from disparate sources, including the experientially-driven practices of individual teachers, the quantitative and qualitative research methodologies of Second Language Acquisition, and the aesthetic, historical, and philosophical traditions of literature and cultural studies. This paper surveys the knowledge base that shapes literature pedagogy, examines the conceptual implications of two common approaches (close reading and genre-based treatments), and argues for new teaching objectives.

Our overview of current dissertation work at German universities has identified four main strands of research interest within the field of second language acquisition (SLA). The 38 Ph.D. theses reviewed here were all read between 2006 and 2009 and fall into the subject areas of: foreign language (FL) teaching in primary school, Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) and multilingual pedagogy, language learner autonomy, and multimedia and language learning. Research methods are mostly qualitative in nature, although method and instrument triangulation are common, and studies often involve smaller research groups. The focus of study tends to be quite practical, reflecting the need to adapt teaching curriculums and learning materials to changing learning situations and populations.

This paper puts forward a research agenda in the area of explicit and implicit knowledge and learning of second or additional languages. Based on a brief overview of reliable findings as well as open questions in the field, three agenda items are highlighted. First, valid and reliable measures of explicit and, in particular, implicit knowledge and learning need to be identified and their suitability for participants of different ages established. Second, and closely related to the previous point, explicit and implicit knowledge and learning should be investigated across the human lifespan. Therefore, studies need to include to a greater extent hitherto under-represented groups such as children and older adults in order to pinpoint the benefits or otherwise of implicit and, in particular, explicit knowledge and learning in these age ranges. Third, researchers should aim to capture with their designs the complex and dynamic interplay of the multiple cognitive, affective, biographical and contextual factors that influence the development of explicit and implicit knowledge over time. Concrete tasks for future research are proposed under these three agenda items, with a view to assisting interested investigators in formulating research questions and specifying research designs.

Research conducted over the past 15–20 years has revealed significant insights into the nature and role of learner selves in language learning settings, particularly the importance of considering the interaction between situated contextual factors and the ways learners perceive, imagine, and construe their possible selves. To further advance this active line of investigation, this article first reviews key previous research and argues for the need to address the generalizability of learner possible selves through replication of original research conducted with different types of learners in diverse social and educational contexts, particularly in multilingual settings and in relation to learning target languages (TLs) other than English. Then, two studies are identified as ideal for replication, and their motivation, methods, and findings are reported in detail. To strengthen the validity and reliability of the original studies’ findings, several suggestions are made for ways to replicate the focal studies as a necessary first step in building robust comparative evidence. As an important second step in this endeavor, the article concludes by arguing for the value of case studies that align with current dynamic conceptualizations of the self.

In this article, I present an agenda for researching help options for second language (L2) listening in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) environments. I outline several theories which researchers in the area draw on, then present common points of concern identified from a review of related literature. This serves as a means to establishing the need for this research agenda and also informs the approach suggested for the six research tasks I propose classified under four themes: learner perceptions and experiences; comparisons of different conditions; learner variables; and learner training.

What the foregoing should have brought out is that ‘communication’ and ‘communicative’ are still very much the watchwords of current ELT, and that interest in research into what constitutes ‘communication’ persists strongly. It is, of course, true that over the last ten or so years a vast corpus of new knowledge has been accumulated and has led to many new applications; yet it is also evident that there is as yet little feeling of self-satisfaction and that efforts continue to be directed towards improvement of all aspects of ELT. However, there are some danger signs, perceived notably by Brumfit, that where the ‘communicative approach’ is concerned, stasis could well come about unless the obsession with syllabuses is leavened with a more immediate and sensitive concern for classroom techniques and events. The ‘humanistic/psychological approach’ is, on the other hand, principally methodologically orientated, but its own weakness is that it seems to underestimate the value of the syllabus as a device for assisting efficiency and, being in a sense ‘anti-linguistics’, may fail to see the value of descriptive knowledge of language. No doubt the debate as to how ‘explicitly’ one should actually teach learners will continue for many years to come – indeed, it has always been a perennial issue – but the one safe prediction at the present time seems to be that some sort of synthesis, as foreseen by Stern and Brumfit, will take place between the ‘communicative approach’ and the ‘humanistic/psychological approach’, such that ‘communicative teaching’ may come to have a more similar meaning for everybody. But for more detailed predictions of directions for the 1980s, Alatis et al. (eds.) (1981) should serve as a good starting-point.

English as a lingua franca (ELF) refers to ‘any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option’ (Seidlhofer, 2011, p. 7*). ELF research started relatively recently. It was only discussed occasionally in the last century. Landmark changes were the publications of Jenkins (2000*) and Seidlhofer (2001*). These works inspired more research into ELF, as witnessed by a dramatically increased interest in ELF since then, resulting in a large number of journal articles, monographs, edited books (e.g. Mauranen & Ranta, 2009*) and large corpora (e.g. the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English, the Corpus of English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings, and the Asian Corpus of English). In addition, ELF researchers have launched the annual conference series (International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca), the Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, and the De Gruyter book series Developments in English as a Lingua Franca. These publications move from an initial understanding of ELF as a ‘variety’ or ‘varieties’ to a later conceptualisation of ELF as a dynamic, fluid and variable phenomenon. ELF has become a major focus of discussions and activities among both applied linguists and English language teaching professionals (Jenkins, Cogo, & Dewey, 2011).

Calls to diversify second language acquisition (SLA) (e.g., Ortega, 2013) have led to increased interest in multilingualism and inclusion of groups less represented in samples of university students, such as individuals at older ages. Nevertheless, we still have more questions than we do answers. This article outlines a research agenda targeting older adult language learning and multilinguals at older ages, both in and beyond the classroom. Since a key difference between young and older adults is cognitive aging, I follow a cognitive approach, focusing on how individual differences in cognition may affect language and vice versa, and how relevant sociocultural factors add to the interplay between language and cognition. Notably, this is not always a story of decline and deficits, but instead of both strengths and weaknesses that differ from those of young adults.