Given the exponential growth in the popularity of early foreign language programs, coupled with an emphasis of evidence-based instruction, assessing young learners’ (YLs) foreign language abilities has moved to center stage. This article canvasses how the field of assessing young learners of foreign languages has evolved over the past two decades. The review offers insights into how and why the field has developed, how constructs have been defined and operationalized, what language proficiency frameworks have been used, why children were assessed, what aspects of their foreign language proficiency have been assessed, who was involved in the assessment, and how the results have been used. By surveying trends in foreign language (FL) and content-based language learning programs involving children between the ages of 3 and 14, the article highlights research into assessment of and for learning, and critically discusses areas such as large-scale assessments and proficiency examinations, comparative and experimental studies, the impact of assessment, teachers’ beliefs and assessment practices, young learners’ test-taking strategies, age-appropriate tasks, alternative and technology-mediated assessment, as well as game-based assessments. The final section of the article highlights where more research is needed, thus outlining potential future directions for the field.

Two decades ago, a personally-addressed ten-page survey printed on salmon-colored stock appeared in my campus mailbox. An accompanying letter explained that the sender was a student collecting data for a graduate-level thesis and included contact information for the thesis advisor … in marketing. It was the one and only ‘Consumer Durable Goods Study’ I would ever receive as an applied linguist.

The assessment of students in the classroom has been going on since time immemorial. What is comparatively recent, however, is the systematic study of classroom-based assessment (CBA). The term ‘CBA’ has been putatively linked to Michael Scriven's (1967) work on formative and summative evaluation. However, current interest in such assessment and how it is enacted has, to a large extent, been prompted by shifts in educational policy in various contexts and evolving education systems. This, in turn, has led to the increase in research activity that is detailed in the timeline that follows. At the same time, considerable effort has been exerted by various governments and professional associations into the development of CBA frameworks, but as publications related to these are not strictly research documents, a separate list of examples is provided as supplementary material.

The growing concern for ethics in applied linguistics may be attributed to attempts to stem the rising incidence of ethical lapses in order to ensure that the core ethical principles of (1) respect for persons, (2) yielding optimal benefits while minimizing harm, and (3) justice are preserved. Following a brief historical review of this topic, and building on the growing commitment to carry out ethical applied linguistic research, we map out seven research tasks that will enhance our understanding of how to extend this expanding research agenda. By inviting applied linguists to evaluate their methodological practices and those of their peers, we also argue for the need to develop the ethical dispositions of emerging applied linguists, with a view to create a more robust field.

This study replicates Bitchener and Knoch (2010), which reported that written corrective feedback (WCF) targeting two single-rule English article functions (first mention a and subsequent mention the) is effective. The current replication study repeats the original study in most respects but adds to the assessment of the intervention's efficacy by recording the impact of focused WCF on all functional article uses, and not just on the two uses targeted by the WCF. The results of the replication study partially confirm Bitchener & Knoch's results and introduce some further differentiated findings. It is concluded that while the focused WCF leads to increased accuracy in the targeted functions of articles, the same WCF may negatively impact the remaining non-targeted article functions, especially for the group that received the most explicit WCF in the form of metalinguistic explanation.

This article updates the trends and developments of Japanese as a second language (JSL) research since Mori and Mori (2011) by reviewing nearly 200 selected empirical studies published in English or Japanese between 2010 and early 2019. The first section of this review examines the cognitive aspects of second language (L2) Japanese development, focusing on vocabulary and kanji (i.e., Chinese characters transferred into Japanese) learning, syntactic development, and the issues surrounding reading and writing. The second part investigates sociocultural issues in L2 Japanese development and use, including pragmatic development, multilingual/translingual perspectives, and multilingual youth. The third section explores the role of affective variables (primarily learner motivation) in L2 Japanese development. The last section considers various pedagogical issues, including corpus-based studies and the development of materials and resources, instructional designs and classroom studies, technology-enhanced language learning and new instructional models, critical approaches to teaching Japanese and content-based instruction. The review of these themes illuminates trends and emerging areas of interest in post-2010 L2 Japanese research inspired by current developments in applied linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA) research, as well as unique features of Japanese language and sociocultural contexts.

In her article, Icy Lee (2019, pp. 524–536) discusses the differences between comprehensive written corrective feedback (CWCF) and focused written corrective feedback (FWCF). She argues that teachers should concentrate more on focused feedback, and highlight and correct only a few grammar errors or issues with organisation, for example, instead of marking every single mistake made by a student. In this paper, I will critically analyse the points she makes and argue that her opinions, while valid in many respects, are not substantiated enough to persuade teachers to follow her lead.

In her position article, Lee (2019) compellingly argues for focused written corrective feedback (FWCF) and offers clear guidelines for teachers to shift their feedback approach. As English language teaching practitioners in Chinese universities, we share Lee's view against any unthinking adherence to comprehensive written corrective feedback (CWCF) and advocate principled feedback practice. Our response begins by presenting the common ground between Lee's and our stance, followed by problematizing her ‘less-is-more’ argument. Finally, following Lee's guidelines, we propose a few context-specific suggestions to help university teachers in mainland China and other contexts better implement FWCF.

In her article, Graham (2017) concludes ‘that very little of the research regarding the teaching of listening has made it into the classroom in England, not least in a positive way’ (p. 117). She suggests that teachers rarely delve into the process of second language (L2) listening in class; instead, listening comprehension is treated more as a test than a task. She continues that there is an over-application of the widely shared findings that pre-listening tasks aid listening comprehension – particularly tasks which involve predicting the vocabulary which will be heard during the listening task. Given the suggestion that learners find listening tasks difficult has been addressed within schools simply by making such tasks easier, Graham feels a more pedagogically apt approach might be to examine more closely what has made the task difficult and to modify teaching to address this.