Second language (SL) teacher educators tirelessly teach others how to teach. But how often do we actually define teaching? Without explicit definitional activity on this fundamental concept in second language teaching (SLT), it remains implicit and intuitive – the opposite of clear, productive understanding.

I therefore explore the question, ‘What is teaching?’ in this paper. First, I establish the claim that the SLT literature rarely defines teaching explicitly, in part because of its technical ‘how-to’ focus. Second, I offer a heuristic definition of teaching as evolutionarily adaptive behavior (TEAB) – as existing in humans because it enables adaptation to varied and complex ecosocial circumstances. In contrast, animals have quite modest adaptive powers, so it may come as a surprise that TEAB is not uniquely human. Therefore, third, I review research comparing animal and human teaching in order to help us understand the latter better. Fourth, I describe teaching as studied by anthropologists – as it varies across human groups. Formal teaching is relatively rare from an anthropological perspective, and relatively recent at that. Fifth, I employ the results of this definitional exercise to exploratorily examine what happens in SLT classrooms. Finally, I discuss implications and future directions for the ideas presented here and conclude.

The Center for Language Teaching Advancement (CeLTA) at Michigan State University (MSU) was awarded a U.S. federally funded two-year grant in 2014 to investigate the status of proficiency, and the promotion of proficiency, in foreign language programs. The grant was awarded to Paula Winke and Susan Gass, as principal investigators. The purpose of this initiative was to assess language proficiency development and to show the impact that introducing assessment practices into established language programs has on pedagogical practices and, ultimately, on proficiency outcomes. In total, three grants were awarded, one to MSU, one to the University of Utah, and one to the University of Minnesota. The overall goals were the same, although each institution approached the task in slightly different ways and with slightly different emphases.

This article reviews a selective corpus of empirical and theoretical texts on foreign language pedagogy and teacher education, produced in Portugal between 2006 and 2011. A descriptive and interpretative approach is adopted to inquire into the transformative potential of research, with a focus on its scope, purposes, conceptual and methodological frameworks, outcomes and implications. Four major themes were identified, primarily related to current language policies and theoretical developments in language didactics: intercomprehension and plurilingualism, teacher and learner autonomy, Portuguese as a non-native language, and technology-based learning and teaching. The transformative potential of the studies reviewed is enhanced by their intention to question and reshape dominant practices on the basis of democratic values; an empowering view of language, pedagogy and teacher education; a close relation between pedagogy and teacher education; participatory research methodologies; and the identification of constraints on, and conditions for, change. However, there is a need for strategies that remain somewhat marginal but may enhance that potential: expanding university–school partnerships, professional learning communities and school-based inquiry; strengthening the political dimension of research outcomes; finding strategies to counteract limitations on the scope and impact of naturalistic inquiry; and fostering scholarship in teacher education.

Dr Stephen Evans (Hong Kong Polytechnic University) also contributed to the symposium. Unfortunately Stephen fell seriously ill soon after and was unable to write up his part of the proceedings. We have recently received the very sad news that Stephen has passed away. The field of Applied Linguistics has lost a meticulous scholar and a wonderful colleague.

This article reviews the significant and diverse range of research in applied linguistics published in Australia in the period 2008–2014. Whilst acknowledging that a great deal of research by Australian scholars has been published internationally during these seven years, this review is based on books, journal articles, and conference proceedings published in Australia. Many of these sources will be unfamiliar to an international audience, and the purpose of this article is to highlight this body of research and the themes emerging from it. The journals selected in this review include Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, Australian Review of Applied Linguistics (ARAL), BABEL, English in Australia, English Australia, Papers in Language Testing and Assessment, Prospect: An Australian Journal of TESOL, TESOL in Context, and University of Sydney Papers in TESOL. Selected refereed proceedings are from key national conferences including: ALAA (Applied Linguistics Association of Australia), ACTA (Australian Council of TESOL Association), ASFLA (Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association), and ALS (Australian Linguistics Society). Our review of selected applied linguistics work revolves around the following themes: the responses to the needs of government planning and policy; the complexity of Australia's multicultural, multilingual society; the concern for recognizing context and culture as key factors in language and language learning; social activism in supporting language pedagogy and literacy programmes at all levels of education; and acknowledgement of the unique place held by Indigenous languages and Aboriginal English in the national linguistic landscape.

Accurate description of language use is central to English for academic purposes (EAP) practice. Thanks to the development of corpus tools, it has been possible to undertake systematic studies of language in academic contexts. This line of research aims to provide detailed and accurate characterization of academic communication and to ultimately inform EAP practice. Very few studies, however, have attempted to ascertain whether, and to what the extent, corpus-based findings have achieved such goals. The diverse nature of EAP, and the unique methodological challenges involved in compiling and using corpora, provide sufficient incentive for replication research in this area. The present article makes a case for replication of corpus-based studies in the field of EAP. It argues that replication research not only enhances the credibility of corpus linguistics for EAP pedagogy and research but also provides practical advice for EAP teachers and materials designers. It then looks at how two key corpus-based studies on the topic, Cortes (2013) and Biber and Gray (2010), can be replicated with respect to replication approaches described in Porte (2012).

This paper reviews a purposive sample of 23 doctoral dissertations in second language (L2) education, completed between 2009 and 2013 and published in Germany. From amongst all (approx. 70) relevant dissertations from this period, the following three broad thematic strands can be identified, for which a selection of exemplary dissertations was chosen to review: (1) Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL); (2) learning and teaching about culture in the language classroom; and (3) language teacher education. Categorization of themes was guided by a bottom-up approach, clustering thematically (rather than methodologically) similar works. We identify relevant topics and link these with trends in research methodology (qualitative/quantitative/mixed-methods). We also discuss the depth and breadth of these dissertations and situate their scholarly contributions within German and international research on language education.

Most of the annual reviews which I have prepared for the present journal discuss roughly 100 articles published each previous year in top international research outlets. Even with such a high number per year, considerable selectivity has to be applied – the number of abstracts appearing up to the end of the October 2005 edition of Language Teaching, for example, amounts to 601, mostly published in 2005 and with still more to come for that year. The task of covering 2004 as well as 2005 within the one review, necessitated by personal circumstances, is therefore doubly daunting in its selectivity. For comprehensive coverage then, there is nothing in my view which can compete with the abstracts themselves as published in the present journal.

Until 1989, the American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) could have been viewed as an interest group of the Linguistics Society of America (LSA); AAAL met in two designated meeting rooms as a subsection of the LSA conference. In 1991, I was asked to organize the first independent meeting of AAAL in New York City, with the help of Nathalie Bailey as local chair. With the planning committee, we made several important changes that would take effect in the first independent AAAL conference: we would have many more sessions than could be accommodated in two rooms, we would invite colloquia as well as individual papers, and we would go out of our way to recruit international presenters, even though our name was the american Association for Applied Linguistics. I remember that first independent AAAL conference as a resounding success, with 400 enthusiastic participants.

Learning pragmatics involves learning linguistic forms and their communicative functions as well as the context where the form-function relationships are realized. Given its socially grounded, context-sensitive nature, pragmatics may be best learned in a technology-enhanced environment that provides direct access to contextualized communicative practice. Technology can help produce rich multimodal input, opportunities for interaction with consequences, and experience-based learning, which are all important elements of pragmatics learning. This lecture highlights these benefits of technology-enhanced pragmatics learning using a digital game as a sample platform. We created a digital game to teach request-making in English by having participants experience interpersonal consequences of their request as feedback (observing their interlocutor's reactions to their choice of request-making forms). Using the digital game with Chinese learners of English, a series of studies were conducted to investigate a variety of topics, such as the effects of different feedback conditions on learning outcomes, role of metapragmatic knowledge in learning, and transfer of request-making knowledge to a novel speech act. This lecture presents findings from these studies and concludes with future research directions on technology-enhanced pragmatics learning.

A new education policy for England, announced in Spring 2007, aims to introduce the learning of a foreign language to all children from the age of 8 by the year 2010. But there was a similar initiative in the 1960s and it didn't work then, so why should it now? This presentation explores the reasons underlying the belief that children can ‘naturally’ learn another language if they begin young enough, and considers reasons why classroom learning may not always tap into whatever natural language learning skills children have. Drawing on a range of previously published research and my own recent empirical studies, I suggest that, unless we are careful, our primary-age children will be flung into an adult-style learning approach, which they are too immature to handle. How, then, can young children's learning potential be exploited most effectively? The role of multiword sequences as a form of lexis is considered, making reference to my model of formulaic language processing e.g. Wray 2002. Consideration is given to how memorising useful wordstrings may assist children in developing a view of language knowledge that promotes effective learning.

This article reviews doctoral research into English language teaching and learning completed between 2009 and 2013 at Turkish universities. The 25 dissertations reviewed here fall into these four general categories: (1) instructional variables and designs, (2) learners, (3) textbooks, and (4) development and evaluation. The majority of these dissertations focus on classroom teaching and learning. Half are particularly concerned with the effects of different instructional variables and designs on learning-related issues. The dissertations are presented with a focus on research methodologies to provide the reader with an evaluation of not only the validity of the findings in each study but also their strengths and weaknesses.

This paper presents an approximate replication of Milton's (2007) study on lexical profiles and learning style. Milton investigated the assumption that more frequent words are acquired before less frequent ones. Using a vocabulary recognition test (X-Lex) to measure vocabulary size, Milton found that L2 English group profiles show a linear relationship between greater knowledge of high frequency words and lesser knowledge of low frequency items. The profiles also showed variability in individual profiles. Milton hypothesised that the individual differences in profiles are partly attributable to different approaches to learning, as elicited via language aptitude tests of memory and analysis. Learner profiles that showed a linear relationship with vocabulary frequency scored higher on analysis; learners who had irregular profiles scored higher on memory. The aim of this replication is to confirm whether learning style helps to determine what L2 lexis is learnt. It duplicates the vocabulary size test and the memory and analysis tests. However, the replication uses regression analyses, rather than a single ANOVA, to determine whether memory or analysis contributes to vocabulary knowledge. Moreover, the participants’ L1 backgrounds are mixed, and they are older. The results from this replication do not support Milton's findings, but a post-study supports the notion that at low proficiency there is a relationship between memory and vocabulary size. It is concluded that neither memory nor analysis is related to patterns in lexical profiles, but that memory contributes to vocabulary size.

There is an unavoidable dilemma in any attempt to put together an overview of the research results for one subject within a discipline. A subject area is either so small that the overview is straightforward but perhaps of interest to only a few, or the subject area is much wider – in which case there is the inevitable danger that the overview will be relatively subjective. This means that some activities may be disregarded while others are given more emphasis than another observer of the subject might have considered appropriate. For example, I have not included the teaching of literature, a complex subject with its own rich research tradition. Being fully aware of both the risks and the advantages of subjectivity, I present this very personal view of foreign language learning and teaching in Germany.