The purpose of this paper is to reconsider the concept of the native speaker of English in light of the heightened status of English as a global language. The broadening and acceptance of criteria regarding who is a native speaker is historically discussed and placed in a modern context. In particular, perceptions towards the English native…

Ideally, through blogs, students would create content and construct knowledge using the wonders of these publishing tools that abound online. The author definitely believes in the power of blogs to improve students' abilities while learning a second language, in her case, in an EFL context. However, blogging doesn't simply happen. The word has…

Taking an experiential approach to language development, this article links gaming to the language development of a 10-year-old deaf child under speech therapy. Specifically, it examines face-to-face interactions between mediators and the child, during 1 year of gaming in clinical encounters. To do so, it codes data by means of interactional…

Concerns about American's youth being productive workers, capable leaders and conscientious consumers in a global community are copious. The Committee for Economical Development (2005) reported that youth in the U.S. know little about the world or international issues and how this affects their future, acquire insufficient international skills and…

In this article the development of educational provision for second-language speakers in various English-speaking countries is traced. Conclusions are then drawn as to which are the best educational models for international schools, and an argument is made for the central positioning of ESL-and-mother-tongue departments as one entity in…

This paper briefly discusses different research approaches in CALL and makes a case for applying grounded theory (GT) to data gathered from an electronic role-play conducted in L2. The article shows that this method can help gain a better understanding of what learners do when engaged in the task. Through the process of open coding, four…

Most research on text-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) in language learning has used output logs as the sole data source. I review interactionist and sociocultural SCMC research, focusing in particular on the question of technological determinism, and conclude that, from whichever perspective, reliance on output logs leads…

In this speech, the author covers a lot of ground. In the first half of his speech, the author gives a brief summary of the last 40 years of the history of language testing, from his perspective. The author reviews these years more or less by decade. Additionally, he discusses the evolution of the profession of language testing during this period,…

This paper presents the results of a study on the use of a virtual reality (VR) world in a German language classroom. After participating in a lesson on the use of commands, students experienced the language and culture through navigation in a VR world. It is argued that this new medium allows for students to be immersed in the target culture and…

The goal of this article is to examine the factors that are proposed in the literature to explain the success--failure in the child L2 (second language) acquisition of grammatical gender in Dutch definite determiners. Focusing on four different groups of bilingual children, we discuss four external success factors put forward in the literature:…

The way adults express manner and path components of a motion event varies across typologically different languages both in speech and cospeech gestures, showing that language specificity in event encoding influences gesture. The authors tracked when and how this multimodal cross-linguistic variation develops in children learning Turkish and…

The assessment of so-called depth of word knowledge has been the focus of research for some years now. In this article the construct of deep word knowledge is further specified as the decontextualized knowledge of word meanings and word associations. Most studies so far have involved adolescent and adult second language learners. In this article,…

This article describes a strategy employed on a teacher training course in Hong Kong involving the use of lesson transcriptions. Transcriptions from two course participants' English lessons were used to arouse greater classroom language awareness and promote reflection in one of the teachers, who was initially very reluctant to accept comments and…

This article reports on a study investigating the textbook evaluation techniques of novice and experienced teachers, which was conducted by the Language Teaching Expertise Research Group (or LATEX) within Lancaster University's Department of Linguistics and English Language. Three ELT teachers were chosen to evaluate the student and teacher…

Most new English language learners spend their school days in monolingual teachers' classrooms. This study examines the writing practices taken on and negotiated by multilingual class members within two multiage elementary classrooms. This article details the writing practices enacted and constructed in the daily writing lives of elementary…