Numerous studies have analyzed various aspects of English language teaching to uncover discriminatory employment practices within the field. However, there is a gap in the research regarding the discourses present in school-managed teacher recruitment websites (TRWs), particularly in the field of private online language education (POLE). This study aims to address this gap by investigating how the preferred online English teacher is characterized and what benefits they are promised when visiting these webpages. Using critical discourse analysis, the author analyzed the textual elements of 32 TRWs of online English schools operating in six major markets in Asia. The findings reveal that although a few schools show signs of relatively fair policies and emphasize professional qualifications, most of them appear to exploit native-speakerism through their application requirements and compensation policies that often favor only some groups. The implications emphasize the benefits of creating equitable employment opportunities and professionalizing POLE by leveraging the qualifications and experience of teachers from diverse backgrounds, while ensuring fair compensation. Finally, this study provides practical strategies for present and prospective online teachers on how to take advantage of the opportunities of digital language work while contributing to the attainment of equity in the industry.

The invitation to speak at this conference on corpora and data-driven language learning (DDL) at COSEDI, the University of Grenoble, was received at the beginning of February 2023. ChatGPT had been released on 30 November 2022 and it was already becoming obvious that this technology would present revolutionary opportunities and challenges for corpus applications to language learning. Through a limited number of case studies – the Collins Cobuild Dictionary, a data-driven workshop for academic writing for research students, and the replication of the tasks used in the workshop, using ChatGPT – this presentation selectively highlights the trajectory of DDL from its beginnings to the present day and takes a look into a possible future with large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT.

The primary objective of this paper is to contribute to the advancement of second language (L2) fluency research by outlining a specific proposal for future replication studies. The overarching goal is to assess the generalisability of the original findings of the two influential studies in the area of perceived fluency: Kormos and Dénes (2004) and Rossiter (2009). This objective will be achieved by first introducing the concept of L2 fluency that often conflates two categories: (1) overall language proficiency; (2) temporal features of speech production. The paper then highlights limitations in the current fluency research paradigm emphasising the variability in the methods employed for speech analysis and rating data collection. This diversity makes it somewhat challenging to compare results across various studies. In response to these challenges, the second part of the paper proposes several close and approximate replications of the two studies.

Second language acquisition (SLA) or second/foreign language teaching has been influenced to various degrees by key linguistic theories, including structural linguistics (Bloomfield, 1933; Saussure, 1959), generative linguistics (Chomsky, 1957, 1965), systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 1973), and, more recently, contemporary Cognitive Linguistics (CL; Goldberg, 1995; Lakoff, 1987, 1993; Langacker, 1987, 1991; Talmy, 1988, 2000), a theory composed of several related linguistic approaches often viewed as a response or complement to generative linguistics. While structural linguistics, generative linguistics, and systemic functional linguistics have each provided a theoretical impetus for one or more of the prominent language teaching methods or approaches over the past century (such as the Audiolingual method, the Natural method, and the Communicative Language Teaching method), CL, as a newcomer, has begun to exert a growing influence since the early 1990s. Given that the purpose of this research timeline article is to present a historical overview of the key thoughts and studies on CL-inspired approaches to instructed second language acquisition (ISLA),1 a brief discussion of CL's main differences from the other linguistic theories and its key theoretical tenets is in order.

Research on digital multimodal composing (DMC) in second language (L2) classrooms has proliferated considerably in recent years, to a large extent in response to the changing digital and multimodal communication landscape. This article offers a research agenda on DMC in L2 classrooms. We begin with a theoretically oriented overview of DMC scholarship. We then examine seven research themes for future research inquiry, from which we draw seven research tasks. The seven themes are: (1) the effectiveness of DMC for L2 writing development; (2) DMC task design; (3) L2 teacher education/training for implementing DMC; (4) feedback practice for DMC; (5) DMC assessment; (6) collaborative DMC as a translanguaging space; and (7) the deployment of DMC for critical digital literacies. Throughout the article, we refer to interdisciplinary scholarship and methods from multimodality, L2 writing, composition studies, new literacy studies, language teacher education, and computer-assisted language learning. The seven research tasks represent what we see as the essential next steps for understanding DMC, which is a young domain that has great potential to advance L2 language and literacy education in the digital age.

I read Carol Griffiths' article with great interest. This is due in part to being in what I feel is a privileged position as book reviewer for a UK journal, the EL Gazette,1 for whom I have read several titles by authors she references on teacher wellbeing, such as Mercer and Gregersen (2020). I wondered, however, why Brierton and Gkonou (2022) was not listed there as it also deals with issues raised by Griffiths such as how academic managers can help create an environment that reduces stress and mental health problems. It was also interesting to note that Griffiths, like myself, has spent most of her working life involved in English language teaching, almost all of which has taken place in Turkey. Her article also resonated with my own experience as a teacher-educator as it draws upon research carried out in a Turkish context (Griffiths & Sönmez, 2020).

The steady expansion in qualitative research in the area of language education over the last two decades indicates the growing recognition of its importance to investigating issues of language teaching and learning. Along with this recognition, understanding and assessing the quality of qualitative studies in this area has gained increasing significance. Addressing this concern, in this research synthesis, we qualitatively explore how 236 qualitative language education studies published in seven leading journals explicitly foreground the issue of ‘research quality’. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of how authors of these studies addressed the main quality concepts proposed by well-known frameworks of qualitative research quality. Our findings, presented as ten major themes, show that qualitative researchers' overt treatment of research quality is realised based on three distinct orientations: no explicit quality criteria, positivist views of quality, and interpretive quality conceptions. We discuss aspects of these orientations and their implications for qualitative research in language education.

This study explores the impact of power dynamics – represented by linguistic privilege, learning environment, and identity formation – on translingual practices in Chinese as a Second Language (CSL) writing education. It focuses on a specific case involving Chinese language learners at a Sino-US joint-venture university in China to elucidate these dynamics in a real-life context. The findings revealed how societal expectations, internalized power dynamics, and prevailing language ideologies nurtured perceptions of a diminished Chinese identity and influenced students' language preferences and engagement in CSL writing. The article argues that the decolonization of writing education necessitates critical awareness of power dynamics and the challenges they pose to monolingual ideologies. It also proposes pedagogical strategies to incorporate power dynamics into translingual practices by emphasizing the need to embrace language diversity and fluidity, facilitate translingual identity formation, and employ reflective practices. By raising awareness of power dynamics in translingual practices, educators can empower students to confront the linguistic status quo, promote linguistic justice, and cultivate a more equitable CSL writing education.

Research into young learners' metalinguistic awareness has led to both definitions of the construct and key findings about its role in children's cognitive and linguistic development. I briefly summarise this research before introducing two established theoretical models that can help us understand the concept of metalinguistic awareness more broadly: Ellen Bialystok's classic dichotomy of analysis of knowledge and control of processing, and Rod Ellis's notion of explicit (second language) knowledge. This is followed by an overview of measures of metalinguistic awareness that have been used in empirical studies to date as well as an illustration and critique of selected measures. As a result, I propose a model that combines features of the two previous frameworks by conceptualising knowledge representations and processes in terms of (1) how implicit/explicit and (2) how specific/schematic they are. I explain this model to illustrate how it can serve as a useful thinking tool. In particular, I argue that the model not only allows us to theorise measures of metalinguistic awareness more clearly and easily, but that it can also capture tasks aimed at assessing other linguistic and cognitive abilities. The article concludes with a brief outlook on future research into metalinguistic awareness.

As a language teacher, teacher educator, and researcher over the past 40 years, my interests have been centered in classrooms where students are learning something else while also learning language. In the 1980s, as an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teacher, my students were learning ‘English for specific purposes,’ where they brought knowledge from their fields, working as economists, in business or tourism, or as drivers and receptionists, and I saw how language teaching needed to focus on the language and discourse patterns that would be most relevant to the ways they would use English in their professional roles. In the 1990s, as a teacher educator and director of a university English as a Second Language (ESL) writing program, I saw how students' academic writing goals needed to be foregrounded. In the last 20 years, as a researcher in elementary and secondary schools, I engaged with, but also saw, shortcomings in ‘content-based’ language teaching (e.g., Moore & Schleppegrell, 2020; Schleppegrell, 2007, 2016, 2020; Schleppegrell et al., 2004).

Increased work connectivity and study mobility over national boundaries in recent decades has led to a shift in the kind of English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction implemented in many educational institutions. Instruction to develop learners’ general English language proficiency may appear as a time-consuming and abstract endeavour. Instead, many institutions implement English for Specific Purposes (ESP), including English for Academic Purposes (EAP) type instruction. In ESP, the aim is to help students develop the specialized academic and work-related linguistic registers they need to function in target settings where English is used as a medium of instruction or in businesses and workplace communication. A great deal of ESP research has now been conducted to build linguistic descriptions of specialized registers. Rather less research has focused on the learning of such specialized registers. This article identifies areas for a research agenda to develop an understanding of learning a specialized register. It sets out two sites for enquiry, namely, learning in a target workplace or disciplinary study setting and learning in instructed ESP, and four topics for enquiry, namely, processes of learning, conditions for learning, learning trajectories, and transfer of learning. Example tasks are suggested for research into learning in target settings.

Written corrective feedback (WCF) is a ubiquitous pedagogical activity in second language (L2) classrooms and has become a key area of inquiry in L2 writing research. While there have been several reviews on experimental WCF research, there is not yet a synthesis of naturalistic classroom studies where the type and amount of feedback provided on students' writing performance is not manipulated or controlled. This state-of-the-art article intends to fill the gap by providing a comprehensive and critical review of naturalistic WCF studies in L2 writing, with significant implications for practice and research. A systematic search generated 50 empirical studies that met our inclusion criteria for the current review, which revealed four major themes: (1) teacher WCF practices in L2 writing classrooms, (2) L2 learner responses to WCF, (3) stakeholders’ beliefs and perspectives on WCF, and (4) WCF-related motivation and emotions. Based on the reviewed evidence, we propose pedagogical implications for enhancing teacher WCF practices and student learning, as well as potential avenues for further exploration. This article contributes to a nuanced understanding of current empirical advances in naturalistic research on WCF in L2 writing, providing insights to inform WCF pedagogy and new lines of inquiry.

This paper explores Chalmers and Glasziou's (2009) notion of ‘research waste’ from healthcare research to examine what it can offer the field of applied linguistics. Drawing on examples from both disciplines, we unpack Macleod et al.'s (2014) five research waste categories: (1) asking the wrong research questions, (2) failing to situate new research in the context of existing research, (3) inefficient research regulation/management, (4) failing to disseminate findings, and (5) poor research reporting practices. We advance this typology to help applied linguists identify and reduce avoidable research waste and improve the relevance, quality, and impact of their research.

In this article, which is based on my AAAL 2023 plenary talk, I argue that researchers may be contributing to widening the never-ending gap between research and practice. At least, there is such a possibility given that researchers, including myself, have rarely investigated their own beliefs and practices related to classroom teaching. In the first part, I overview research of the research–practice relationship and problematize the epistemological clash between two groups of professionals, that is, teachers and researchers. In the second part, I focus on researchers as a profession who have significant potential in contributing to education. In the third part, I share concrete ways of tackling researchers' obstacles in communicating with practitioners if, and when, they wish to be useful for real-world education, including: (a) adjusting the nature of research, and (b) improving communication methods. In conclusion, I propose a model in which the research–practice relationship can be more equitable, effective, and mutually beneficial.

The increasing recognition of the limitations of physical mobility programs has led Foreign Language departments to consider online approaches such as Virtual Exchange (VE) and Blended Mobility as alternatives in international education. These online approaches have the potential to promote inclusion and diversity by providing opportunities for student cohorts who are unable to participate in traditional mobility programs. However, there are still challenges and barriers that need to be addressed, related to foreign language competence, digitalization, and structural gaps in educational systems. In this paper, I review the arguments and the evidence for and against the belief that VE can be a force for greater inclusion in international learning, before going on to explore the issue of equity of engagement in VE projects.

This written version of a plenary to the Language Testing Research Colloquium relates research into second language speaking task performance to language testing. A brief review of models of communicative competence and of speaking is provided. Then, two major areas within testing are discussed: the concepts of difficulty and ability for use. The next section covers research into spoken task-based performance, covering effects from task conditions, and from task characteristics. In addition, the measurement of such performance is described and briefly compared with performance rating in testing. Then, the final section relates the task research findings to language testing. A framework for testing spoken performance is outlined, and the general claim made that effective sampling through tests, in order to generalise to real-world performance, can usefully draw on findings from second language task research, as well as the distinction between Conceptualiser and Formulator processes.

Interest in second language (L2) speech comprehensibility, or listeners’ perceived ease or difficulty of understanding a given utterance, has seen continual growth since Munro and Derwing's (1995) seminal publication in Language Learning. While recognizing the body of knowledge that has developed in the 25 plus years since Munro and Derwing's study, in the present paper we look to the future as we consider what an active and informative research agenda might look like for the next 10–15 years. In this regard, we propose four primary areas of future research, including a need to: (1) extend inquiry beyond a primary focus on L2 English speech, (2) explore comprehensibility more thoroughly as a social construct, (3) investigate the effects of more targeted task manipulations, and (4) delve deeper into the effects of comprehensibility-oriented instruction. We additionally discuss the need for more replication in L2 comprehensibility research while also promoting several scholarly disciplines we feel can greatly inform future research, such as task-based literature.

In recent years, interest in using captioned videos for second language learning has grown immensely, partly owing to the explosion of available materials and the rapid increase in viewing platforms. The captioning affords many learners access to authentic videos ordinarily out of their reach, and teachers often employ the videos to help improve their learners’ listening. However, there is the view that learners mainly just read the captions, and that the viewing largely enhances their reading skills, instead. There is an increasing amount of research investigating this issue, much of which needs to be further verified through replication. This article outlines how three key relevant studies may be replicated, with an emphasis on examining the impact of the captioned viewing on the learners’ listening. Two of the studies, by Taylor (2005) and Winke et al. (2013), examine viewers’ processing strategies, which can include the use of the audio, caption and visual modalities. The other study, by Rodgers and Webb (2017), examines how viewing over the long term impacts learners’ comprehension.

Ronald P. Leow is Professor (Applied Linguistics) in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Language Program Director of Spanish Language Instruction at Georgetown University. He has initiated and published (over 100 articles and chapters) in several strands of research that include language curriculum development, research methodology, cognitive processes and depth of processing in language learning, (written and computerized) corrective feedback, textual enhancement, reactivity, and CALL. He has contributed to the field his 2015 Model of the L2 Learning Process in ISLA (in Explicit learning in the L2 classroom: A student-centered approach, Routledge) and his 2020 Feedback Processing Framework (in R. M. Manchón (Ed.), Writing and language learning. Advancing research agendas, John Benjamins) to provide a cognitive account for how L2 data and feedback are processed by L2 learners. His i10-index is 58 with over 6,500 citations.

John Flowerdew is a Visiting Chair at the University of Lancaster and a Visiting Research Fellow at Birkbeck, University of London. He was previously a Professor at City University of Hong Kong and at the University of Leeds, UK. His research is in the fields of Applied Linguistics and Discourse Analysis. His books include Academic listening: Research perspectives (CUP); Research perspectives on English for academic purposes (with M. Peacock) (CUP); Second language listening: Theory and practice (with L. Miller) (CUP); Academic discourse (Longman); Discourse in English language education (Routledge); Signalling nouns in discourse: A corpus-based discourse approach (with R. W. Forest) (CUP); Discourse in context (Bloomsbury); The Routledge handbook of critical discourse studies (with J. Richardson); Discipline-specific writing: Theory into practice (with T. Costley) (Routledge), and Introducing English for research publication purposes (with P. Habibie (Routledge).