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This study examines the Split phenomenon in EFL learning, in which a word in the L1 is manifest in two or more forms in the L2. This phenomenon is most difficult to learn in the L2 when the L1 and the L2 are syntactically and typologically different, as in the case of Korean (L1) and English (L2). Communication verbs in Korean and English are a good example of the Split phenomenon, because the Korean verb (Malhata) splits into four verbs (Tell, Say, Talk, and Speak) in English. Korean university students who had read four novels during an extensive reading course were tested to determine how correctly they used the four verbs and their subtypes in context. Results show that these verbs are not equally difficult for L2 learners to learn: Talk appears to be the easiest and the [say + to NP] subtype construction the most difficult. Rates at which Korean learners used these four verbs correctly were not associated with their frequencies in either the British National Corpus or a corpus based on the novels used in the study. This suggests that L2 learners’ knowledge of verb semantics and argument structure information is not guided exclusively by input frequency or by contextual information in the process of learning an L2. Semantic transfer in the form-meaning mapping in L2 vocabulary learning is discussed.

This paper discusses some important issues concerning discourse and gendered language in educational settings. Initially, two key concepts are dealt with: discourse and gender. Subsequently, the concept of gendered discourse and its adverse effect on students in educational settings will be highlighted. Meanwhile, sexist language as the prevailing manifestation of gendered discourses in the classroom is taken into account. Due to the importance of second and third feminist waves in the discussion of gendered language, we will focus on these two waves with greater depth in this article. Having identified gender biases in educational settings, the author analyzes the existence of such a trend in three possible areas of “teacher-talk to students”, “student to student talk” and textbooks. The paper ends by offering suggestions as to possible ways to lessen the effect of gendered discourses in classroom settings. After all, critically scrutinizing the three areas of concentration concerning gender-biased issues in educational setting accompanied by going beyond mainstream, conscious raising through intervention can yield a better outcome to the benefit of all young girls and boys whom we consider as the future women and men in the wider society.

This article examined the classroom interaction of two teachers and their pupils (36 Grade 5 and 35 Grade 6) in 26 lessons (totalling 15.2 hours) to investigate the way in which these teachers spontaneously attended to form, and to determine the extent to which these Chinese young learners could and did subsequently demonstrate uptake in their production. In addition, individual interviews (approximately 8 hours) with both teachers and learners were carried out to assist interpreting lesson transcripts in relation to corrective feedback and learner uptake. The results suggest that both teachers often take advantage of corrective feedback, creating opportunities for learners to correct errors, and learners are capable of correcting errors after a prompt. Such attention to form that provides learners with an opportunity to negotiate of form or meaning can potentially benefit L2 learning. This article concludes with implications for pedagogy, research and teacher professional development that are made based upon these findings.

This paper reports on the assessment of readiness and receptivity of school principals, English panel chairpersons and English teachers for the implementation of the new senior secondary curriculum (NSSC) in English Key Learning Area (KLA) in Hong Kong. Recent research has probed into the dilemmas and challenges faced by school administrators and frontline teachers when facing curriculum change. Such challenges exist in the management of change, the teachers’ readiness for change, and in problems with collaboration among the stakeholders. Drawing on these research findings the analysis of this paper focuses on whether such problems are also re-occurring in the implementation of change in the NSSC, and if so, considers how they can be resolved. Using qualitative research procedures four key questions were addressed: how far the school personnel understood the changes in the NSSC; the extent to which they felt they could implement the new curriculum; which factors encouraged/constrained implementation; and the possible effects of change on schools. The findings showed that schools with students of high or medium ability seemed to be more positive in terms of perceptions and receptivity at the initial stage of change, while schools dominated by cohorts of medium or low academic ability students appeared to be resistant to the shift in pedagogic arrangements. Yet all the school principals interviewed expressed their unreserved agreement with the spirit of the new curriculum.

Learning from one’s own teaching experience has been recognized as an effective way of improving teachers’ professional competence. This study proposes an on-site model of teachers’ professional development, that is, a self-directed teacher learning situated in day-to-day classroom teaching. A four-month longitudinal study was conducted to examine what and how two Chinese tertiary EFL teachers learn through classroom teaching. Data analysis shows that the chief changes happened in the participant teachers’ pedagogical knowledge, with the largest growth in general pedagogical knowledge and knowledge of students; changes also occurred in the teaching behaviors of the two teachers. Data also indicates that teachers learn actually at every stage involved in daily teaching, pre-class preparation for a new lesson, inclass delivery of the lesson content, and after-class reflection on their performance. Another important finding of the present study is that teacher learning is affected by such contextual factors as students, curriculum and educational policies.

This paper reports a study on English textbooks which serve as the major source of lexical input for acquisition in an ESL setting. A corpus of English words available for acquisition in the major local English textbooks for primary and junior secondary school students was compiled to generate textbook frequency lists in order to find out the richness and nature of lexical input. The lexical variation (type-token) ratio was calculated, using WordSmith Tools (Scott, 1998). The textbook word lists were then compared with General Service List (West, 1953), VocabProfile (Nation, 1996) and Academic Word List (Coxhead, 1998) to determine the nature of words that Hong Kong students encounter after nine years of English learning. Results have shown that the Hong Kong students are exposed to an impoverished lexical environment which is reflected by the lexical variation ratio, nature of vocabulary, and variety of words.

Metadiscourse refers to “aspects of a text which explicitly organize a discourse or the writer’s stance towards either its content or the reader” (Hyland, 2005, p. 14). It is an indication of whether the writer has had a particular reader in mind while developing the text. This study aimed to metadiscoursally analyze the articles in two Iranian EFL journals, i.e., Roshd and TELL which are apparently addressed to different audiences and see how the authors in these journals pay attention to the expected readers. Moreover, to have a clearer picture of the metadiscourse use in academic texts, some articles written by English language native speakers were analyzed both in terms of the metadiscourse use per Tunit and per 100 words. The results indicate that the articles written by native speakers which are mainly addressed to TESOL professionals and researchers include more metadiscourse signals than the articles in the two Iranian journals. Comparing Roshd and TELL, it appears that Roshd authors use more metadicourse in the abstract sections of their articles, but in the introduction and results and discussion sections, the TELL authors used more metadiscourse. The findings of the study imply that Iranian authors in general and Roshd authors in particular should pay more attention to their expected readers through more metadiscourse use.

Research in the area of reading comprehension strategies (RCSs) suggests that not all learners use these strategies in the same fashion and that various factors affect the type and frequency of the strategies used by second/foreign language learners. This study attempted to investigate the effect of two factors, namely, L2 proficiency and L1 reading strategies on the use of FL semantic and syntactic RCSs of Iranian university EFL learners. To this end, data were gathered form ninetyseven Persian learners. Results of the study indicated that L2 proficiency did not have any significant effect on the use of L2 semantic and syntactic RCSs. However, L1 semantic RCSs were found to have a significant effect on the use of L2 semantic RCSs. Moreover, the interaction of L1 syntactic strategies and L2 proficiency had an impact on using L2 semantic strategies. The implications of the study along with suggestions for further research have also been provided.

This study explores whether the presence of phrasal verbs in reading texts affects the reading recalls of EFL learners, and whether having a large vocabulary size assists learners’ reading recall of a text with frequent occurring of phrasal verbs. Forty-five university students from North Taiwan were invited to participate in the present study. Three major instruments were used: the Vocabulary Levels Test, two reading passages, and a reading recall measure. The study was conducted over two consecutive weeks, with these three instruments of data collection implemented separately. Results indicated that the occurrence of phrasal verbs significantly hindered readers’ recall of the proposition units containing phrasal verbs, while it did not impact the recall of those units not containing phrasal verbs. This study’s second line of inquiry revealed that having increased vocabulary size did not guarantee higher competence as regards coping with phrasal verbs in reading. These findings were further extended to provide some pedagogical recommendations regarding the teaching of phrasal verbs in EFL contexts.

Corrective feedback has long been raised in education and psychology, but has attracted much attention in recent years, especially with the advent of form-focused instruction. Great many studies have been conducted to investigate the efficacy of the corrective feedback and its types in the process of language learning and teaching. The purpose of this paper is to study the efficacy of recast and metalinguistic clues as two types of feedback. By selecting these two types, the study also aimed at comparing the implicit and explicit types of feedback. To this end, 81 university students were randomly selected in two groups in an essay writing course. Two target structures were adopted: relative clause, and passive case. One group received their feedback on these structures using recast, and the other group received metalinguistic clues. The structure subtest of TOEFL was administered as pre- and posttest. The findings of the study indicated that while both proved efficient to some degrees, metalinguistic clues were more efficacious than its counterpart, recast. This study also suggested that corrective feedback, no matter what type is being put to use, could provide a highlighted input, for it raises a selective attention for the input on the side of the learners and this physical saliency can work for the betterment of language learning.

Although it is now generally agreed that grammar should be an integral element of second language programmes, there is still a diversity of opinions about how it should be taught. In this paper, attention is first drawn to relevant issues raised in reviews of the teaching of grammar derived from SLA research and teacher cognition. This paper then reports a survey of Vietnamese teachers’ attitudes towards grammar and grammar teaching in their own particular teaching contexts. It uses a questionnaire adapted from that used in a 2002 survey of teachers of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in British universities and in a 2008 parallel survey of EAP teachers in New Zealand. The key findings of the present study are presented and then discussed in relation to those of the other two surveys. They indicate that these EAP teachers in Vietnam, like those in Britain and New Zealand, appreciate the centrality of grammar in their language teaching and have a critical awareness of many of the problems and issues involved. The findings suggest that the teachers favour a discourse, rather than a decontextualised approach to the presentation of grammar and there is an emphasis on systematic practice of grammatical forms and the correction of grammatical errors.

In this article, the EAP/ESP materials are approached with a view to introduce a way for the promotion of critical thinking/reading ability. To this end, nature of the thought, language and written texts have been considered in the light of Oller’s true narrative case, Piaget and Peirce’s Schema theory and Montague’s views toward indexicality; from there, the authors go on to suggest that subtitled videos (and in the case of the present article, Same Language Subtitles) alongside the potentials they have for the formation of abstract schemata, can be used to develop and enhance the critical thinking ability of the foreign language learners in general and the ESP students, in particular.

This study explores the relationship between learner autonomy and English language proficiency of Japanese university students from 16 universities. Questionnaires were administered to 721 students to clarify the perception they hold of their learning and learner autonomy. The students were divided into three levels of English proficiency, based on their score in a vocabulary test. The authors compared the subjects’ differences in perceptions of learner autonomy among the three groups. The questionnaire was analyzed using factor analysis, and nine factors emerged. For future analysis, ANOVA and multiple comparisons, using Tukey HSD, were employed on three levels for those factors. Results show that there were differences in the degree of autonomy among the groups and revealed that good performers show attributes of “independent users”, the middle group stayed at the range of “independent learners”, and the poor performers were struggling at the “dependent learners” level. Based on these findings, the authors have summarized the characteristics present in the three levels of Japanese university students. This paper will present these findings and discuss the pedagogical implications of this study and how learner autonomy can be nurtured in each group.

This paper attempts to explore how English-language learners experience and make sense of the social, cultural, and political ramifications of the global dominance and spread of English. Through focus group interviews with 30 university and college students in Taiwan, the findings suggest that most participants were aware of the issues surrounding English in the world and in Taiwan. Yet, rather than taking into account the power relations and ideological struggles that underlie the English-language, most of the participants took for granted the power of English, and were eager to become a part of the privilege. A questioning stance was not a mentality shared by the majority of the participants. For the minority group, resistance mainly involved a concern for the preservation of the official language and the culture it reflects. Participants were less aware of the sociopolitical consequences of English and its learning. The results not only offer implications for critical pedagogy in ELT, but also point to the need for a reconstitution of critical pedagogy practices that is situated in each local context and a shift away from a western-centered paradigm to an Asian-centered lens from which to view English-language teaching and learning.

Manchón and Haan (2008) in their introduction to the special issue of Journal of Second Language Writing note that research findings and theoretical discussions relating to EFL contexts are underrepresented in mainstream L2 writing literature. Drawing on the same line of argument in this paper I examine some salient teaching and learning practices of L2 writing in EFL contexts. Review of literature shows that teaching and learning practices of L2 writing vary based on various contextspecific issues. I argue that in order for L2 writing researchers to construct inclusive L2 writing theories it is imperative that they look into context-specific teaching and learning practices, especially those in EFL contexts. Various implications and recommendations are also discussed.

Second language development is an important topic in second language acquisition research, but as different studies usually focus on different linguistic features, a more comprehensive picture of language development is called for. The present study examines the developmental features in Chinese English majors’ writing in the key linguistic features summarized by Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaski and Kim (1998) by comparing 100 learners’ compositions from 2003 TEM4 (Test for English Majors Band 4) with their compositions from 2005 TEM8 (Test for English Majors Band 8). The empirical tests indicate that learners make statistically significant improvement in fluency and lexical features. The minor improvement in syntactic complexity and overall rating of their writings fail to receive statistical support. On the other hand, significant decline is reported for the measure of accuracy. A comparison of learner performance from different universities shows a clear pattern of institutional differences. The results of the study suggest that progress in learners’ writing cannot be taken for granted. Of the 100 learners from the four institutions in question, only those from one university show improvement in every index, most of which are statistically significant.