English language education in Taiwan has experienced a number of modifications over the past decade. The Ministry of Education (MOE) has initiated several reforms since 1994 to change the historical grammar-translation pedagogy into one emphasizing more communication. The purpose of these alterations was to increase learners' communication…

According to Kasper (1992), L2 pragmatic knowledge affects all communicative acts. It can be described as the speaker's ability both to adapt linguistic formulae to social contextual constraints and to understand the implications of indirect utterances. The Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR) describes pragmatic competence…

In response to the realization of the need to develop cultural awareness and intercultural communication competence, recent trends in education policy and pedagogy in the U.S. and the EU have sought to integrate more culture into foreign language curricula. While the theoretical foundations of this trend are accepted as indisputable, the paper…

In its early days, CLT was widely promoted as suitable for all contexts, but many questions have since been raised about what it really means and what versions of it (if any) are suited to specific learning situations. Experiences in Asia, where educational traditions and current realities often contrast strongly with those where CLT originated,…

This study employs the Specificity Principle to examine the relative impacts of external (input quantity at home and at school, number of books and reading frequency at home, teachers' degree and experience, language usage, socioeconomic status) and internal factors (children's working memory, nonverbal intelligence, learning-related…

European countries and their regions are trying to develop quality foreign language policies to help citizens become communicatively competent. The Spanish region of Andalusia has implemented Bilingual Education since 2005, whereas in the United Kingdom the take-up rates of languages in schools are low despite the linguistic demands that Brexit…

This chapter reports on a language teaching practicum course of a Master of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages (MTCSOL) program in China in Fall 2020. Driven by the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, this report presents a model to guide practice in online language teacher training via virtual learning communities. In the course,…

Research has shown that any assumption that L2 learners of English do well to rely on the feedback provided by generic spell checkers (for example, the MS Word spell checker) is misplaced. Efforts to develop spell checkers specifically for L2 learners have focused on training software to offer more appropriate suggestion lists for replacing…

In this review article for the 20th Anniversary Issue, I look back at research from the last two decades on the role of computer technology in understanding and facilitating second language acquisition (SLA) and forward to what future research might investigate. To be discussed are both how technology has been used to conduct research on SLA…

In this paper, we present a learning game designed according to a strategy focusing on favouring the learners' "playful attitude". The game's modalities pertain to what we might call "guessing games". The chosen avatar of such guessing games both exists as learning and Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) board games. We explain in…

To better understand the factors facilitating or impeding the translation of "promising controversies" (Taylor & Snoddon, 2013, p. 439) of plurilingualism theory into meaningful practices, this article presents a synthesis of 30 empirical studies on plurilingual pedagogy as enacted and experienced by educators and learners in various…

This case study analyzed how a group of English learners built critical intercultural awareness through the discussion of cultural events as reported in news media such as "The New York Times," the "U.S. News," and "The Telegraph." Learners' critical reflections on controversial social conflicts related to injustice,…

Educators need to create opportunities to develop English language learners' (ELLs') language skills through creative multiliteracy projects, identify ways to avoid summer loss, and harness the potential of parental engagement. The authors propose the use of a creative digital storytelling (DST) project to achieve these goals. The present case…

Business programs in the U.S., UK, and Australia host large concentrations of globally mobile students who seek English language learning opportunities as part of their studies. This exploratory study identified factors that impacted the English language development of globally mobile students in U.S. business programs, including the level of…

As a response to the mismatch between the performance standards indicated in the English curriculum and the communicative competence of English language learners, teachers employ oral feedback strategies that border on the Embarrassment and Hygiene Resource Framework of Mackay (1993). This study aimed to investigate how and why this framework…