This paper reviews a selected sample of 24 doctoral dissertations in language assessment (broadly defined), completed between 2006 and 2011 in Canadian universities. These dissertations fall into five thematic categories: 1) reliability, validity and factors affecting test performance; 2) washback (impact) and ethics; 3) raters, rating and rating…

This article reviews the empirical research literature on foreign language (FL) learning and teaching published between 2005 and 2010 in Germany. It focuses on the empirical studies that have attracted the greatest interest among researchers during this period of time. These include research on educational standards, teacher education, early FL…

Griffith University is set across five campuses in south-east Queensland, Australia, and has a student population of 43,000. The School of Languages and Linguistics (LAL) offers programs in linguistics, international English, Chinese, Italian, Japanese and Spanish, as well as English language enhancement courses. Research strands reflect the…

This study employed synthetic and meta-analytic techniques to review the literature on the Cognition Hypothesis, which predicts that increasing task complexity influences the quality of second language production. Based on 8 inclusion criteria, 17 published studies were synthesized according to key features. A subset of these studies (k = 9) was…

Since the 1980s' decoupling of the formal study of second language acquisition from pedagogical concerns, the social relevance of such research has been of little concern. Early studies, in the 1970s, of uninstructed adult learners' acquisition of morphosyntax pointed to social implications: these working class immigrants had varying levels of…

The purpose of this study was to systematically review the factors affecting the language, speech intelligibility, speech production, and lexical tone development of children with hearing loss who use spoken languages other than English. Relevant studies of children with hearing loss published between 2000 and 2011 were reviewed with reference to…

There has been considerable research in Chinese as a second language (L2) in recent years, particularly in its morphological and syntactic aspects. This article reviews research in these aspects with reference to the broader discipline of second language acquisition (SLA) and suggests that L2 Chinese research has contributed to SLA through…

This article explores a number of key issues that emerged during the panel discussion that followed the General Language Proficiency Symposium at the Language Testing Forum (LTF) 2010, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the LTF. The key issues that emerged during the discussion should be of interest to a wider audience, as they express current…

This paper investigates uses of corpora in language learning ("data-driven learning") through analysis of a 600K-word corpus of empirical research papers in the field. The corpus can tell us much--the authors and the countries the studies are conducted in, the types of publication, and so on. The corpus investigation itself starts with…

Metacognition appears to be a significant contributor to success in second language (SL) and foreign language (FL) learning. This study seeks to investigate empirical research on the role metacognition plays in language learning by focusing on the following research questions: first, to what extent does metacognition affect SL/FL learning? Second,…

Spanish is one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Quechua is the largest indigenous language family to constitute the first language (L1) of second language (L2) Spanish speakers. Despite sheer number of speakers and typologically interesting contrasts, Quechua-Spanish second language acquisition is a nearly untapped research area,…

This study reviews the empirical literature of self-efficacy, a central component of social cognitive theory, in the area of second language learning by focusing on two research questions: first, to what extent, has self-efficacy, as a predicting variable, been explored in the field of second language learning? Second, what factors affect…

Vocabulary is essential for communicating, reading, thinking, and learning. In comparison to typical hearing peers, students who are deaf or hard of hearing demonstrate vocabulary knowledge that is quantitatively reduced. The authors review and summarize research studies published in peer-reviewed journals between 1967 and 2008 focusing on…

This review of research offers a synthesis and analysis of research studies that address issues of language and literacy practices and learning in transnational contexts of migration. We consider how theoretical concepts from transnational migration studies, including particular Boudieusian-inspired concepts such as transnational social field,…

Italian has for many years been considered somewhat of a specialist language when studied as a second language (L2) and this is perhaps due to historical and cultural factors. Its footprint worldwide compared to such languages as English, Spanish and French is therefore somewhat limited. Surprisingly, however, there is a considerable body of…