This article provides a microscopic view of learners' first encounters with multimodal texts in their primary EFL classrooms. It is argued that multimodal texts create opportunities for language development in the primary EFL classroom: they offer different access points for comprehension, invite participation, and motivate repeated practice so…

Lessons designed to teach reading and listening typically concentrate on the use of higher-level skills and strategies, such as predicting, scanning, inferencing, understanding text structure, or activating background knowledge. Given that these normal communication skills are already available to students for mother-tongue use, they should…

This study explores whether an extensive reading (ER) approach can enhance L2 learners' writing performance in an English for Academic Purposes context. Two classes were compared in terms of writing improvement after one semester: a 'traditional' writing class primarily focused on writing practice and grammar instruction, and an ER class in which…

This article reports on a teacher-talk training course for Japanese primary school teachers, who are preparing to teach "communicative English" for the first time. The article argues that teacher-talk training is important for communicative classes with young students because most of the input and interaction is by default teacher…

It is commonly recognized that, for lecturers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in a university setting, the goal of their teaching is to develop learners' ability to communicate appropriately in this language. This means that teaching practices should pay attention not only to the key features of the linguistic system of English, but also to…

This article describes the efforts of an intensive English programme to design a class that addressed the challenges of bringing authentic English into the curriculum. This class exposed students to a variety of authentic English language input, while providing support. Through this class, students volunteered with various community organizations.…

Topics for conversation courses include conversational rules and structure, conversational strategies, functions and meaning in conversation, and social and cultural contexts. The direct teaching of conversational skills involves adding specific language input, increasing the role of consciousness raising, and sequencing communicative tasks…

Rehabilitates teaching techniques that exploit both the meaning-driven and form-focused potential of reformulation and reconstruction tasks in English-as-a-Second-Language classes. Argues that the potential for focusing learners' attention on form has received little attention in instruction models. (30 references) (Author/CK)

Investigates the use of computer conferencing in a second-language context with five English-for-Academic-Purposes students for the purposes of conducting discussions and introducing the students to writing as a process. Students dominated during discussions and received increased commentary on their writing; although the technology did not cause…