Consistent with recent calls to bridge the research-practice divide in second language acquisition, this article reports on the findings of a collaborative autoethnographic study that we, authors of this article, conducted as critical second language teacher educators. Conducting a series of constructive dialogues among ourselves for a semester,…

Translation has recently been revived as an approach to language learning that builds on students' linguistic repertoires, particularly in linguistically diverse classrooms. However, few studies have examined how students use translation as part of writing in an additional language. This article provides new insights based on the translation…

Positive relationships with teachers are important for students' second language motivation. However, little is known about how interpersonal interactions stimulate motivated behavior. Drawing on studies of teacher-student relationships, theories from positive psychology, and the psychology of unconscious self-regulation, this case study examines…

What becomes of language students who participate in study abroad and then continue their study at home? What part can their memory of in-country living play in shaping subsequent classroom experiences, not only for the students themselves but also for their classmates and teachers? This study explores changes in the motives of a study abroad…

The article aims to expand the scope of research on international teaching assistants (ITAs) by foregrounding identities as pedagogical resources. Employing an ethnographic multiple case study approach, the study examined the experiences of 2 English department ITAs in learning to teach College Composition classes at a public university in the…

In the last 20 years, technological advancement and increased multidisciplinarity has expanded the range of data regarded as within the scope of languages for specific purposes (LSP) research and the means by which they can be analyzed. As a result, the analytical work of LSP researchers has developed from a narrow focus on specialist terminology…

This article examines how adult learners were socialized by one another in the context of content materials in conjunction with the teacher's participation. Based on the premise that second language learning is experiential and emergent and using discourse analysis of students' asynchronous electronic postings and writing assignments together with…

This article reports on a study that analysed life history accounts of language learning. The key aim of the study was to understand how the experience of language learning was discursively constructed through recourse to particular cultural worlds and narrative strategies. The study contributes to the growing field of research using language…

This study explores a child's emergent second language (L2) interactional competence during her first year in a Swedish immersion classroom. Within the theoretical framework of situated learning, it focuses on how she acquires expertise in a specific classroom practice: multiparty classroom talk. The data cover three periods (the early, middle,…

This article, based on a longitudinal, ethnographic study among engineering students, examines the interactional processes surrounding second language (L2) socialization. L2 socialization perspectives argue that the cognitive and the social are interconnected, and that learning an L2 is a process of coming to understand socially constructed…

Examines the role of tension in the process of instructed second/foreign language acquisition on the basis of findings from a comprehensive ethnography of the 7-week intensive beginners' class in the summer French School of Middlebury College. This project completes and challenges the current research paradigm on language anxiety as it shifts the…

Examines various criteria that have been proposed for evaluating the increasing number of empirical studies carried out using qualitative research methods and demonstrates how such criteria may privilege certain forms of qualitative research while excluding others. Select existing evaluative criteria for qualitative research proposed by applied…

Explains how conducting ethnographic interviews can promote openness toward culture learning. Reports on a study in which 35 college students from second-year Spanish classes were introduced to ethnographic interviewing skills and assigned to interview native speakers of Spanish. Results showed the interviews positively affected students'…

Based on an ethnographic study that focused on the relations of students' in- and out-of-class cultural learning during a five-week study-abroad program in Spain, this article analyzes processes of teaching and learning in a Spanish culture and civilization class, the experiences of the only African-American student in the program, and students'…

In dual immersion classrooms, students from different language backgrounds are immersed in the minority language for large portions of the school day with the expectation that they will become equally proficient in their first language (L1) and in their second language (L2). Research on dual immersion indicates that students reach above-average…