Developing young children's vocabulary is essential for later reading success; thus, early childhood classrooms require a comprehensive vocabulary approach that teaches academic vocabulary. Yet even providing young children with child-friendly definitions of sophisticated words can be a challenge. First, the authors outline the components of a…

In the high-stakes accountability English educational system, decisions made by government and agencies about curriculum, pedagogy and assessment drive school planning and actions. This paper analyses the drivers for the recent change to French German and Spanish GCSEs and highlights particular areas of the new specification which may damage the…

Vocabulary can be a key factor for success, central to a language, and paramount to a language learner. In such situation, the lexicon may be the most important component for learners (Grass and Selinker, 1994), and mastering of vocabulary is an essential component of second/foreign language teaching and learning that has been repeatedly…

Task based learning (TBL) continues to evolve as information and communication technology (ICT) inspired tools and teaching approaches afford the possibilities of transforming students' learning experiences by heightening their motivation and sense of autonomy, and in turn, their vocabulary development. To capture this synergy, teachers will need…

This formative experiment explored the extent to which two instructional frameworks that varied in the explicitness of academic vocabulary instruction, comprehension strategy instruction, and supports for student autonomy influenced reading comprehension, vocabulary acquisition, perceptions of autonomy supports, and reading engagement in…

Interview guides and a questionnaire were developed in order to find what factors demotivated students in Japanese high school English classrooms. Five college students who were attending two private universities and one public university shared their views about demotivation in the interviews. Forty-two students at a public university responded…

Learning-disabled sixth through eighth grade students (n=25) received vocabulary instruction involving matching negation prefixes to root words. The students used an instructional computer game or a computer program that operated identically but without game features. Both programs produced equal gains in task skill, but the game produced higher…

Based on the questions of second language teachers concerning classroom practice, generated by mail survey in 1983, research on aspects of second language teaching and learning was reviewed and is summarized here. In each case, a question or questions are posed and a brief discussion follows, in layman's language and based on relevant research,…