This article explores three current, influential English language teaching (ELT) curriculum approaches to the teaching of English in public-sector schools at the primary and secondary level and how the theory of each approach translates into curriculum practice. These approaches are communicative language teaching (CLT), genre-based pedagogy, and content and language integrated learning (CLIL). For consistency across approaches, the theoretical underpinnings of each will be briefly described according to a matrix of curriculum factors including:

• • the view of language and language acquisition underlying the approach

• • how learners’ needs are construed

• • the nature of the content and materials

• • the teacher's role

• • the context

• • how language is assessed

This is followed by a discussion of research on how each approach is implemented in primary and secondary contexts, the extent to which the theory is put into practice and factors that influence its success in the classroom. Implications for the future of curriculum development in ELT will be discussed. These implications address the viability of CLT in primary and secondary schools, the role of knowledge about language in curriculum implementation, and teacher roles and identity.

East and Southeast Asia represents a linguistically and culturally diverse region. For example, more than 700 languages are spoken in Indonesia alone. It is against this backdrop of diversity that the ten countries that comprise Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) have recently signed the ASEAN Charter which, while calling for respect for the region's languages, cultures and religions also officially nominates English as ASEAN's working language. In this article, we examine the language education policies of the region and consider the implications of these policies for the maintenance of linguistic and cultural diversity on the one hand and the promotion of English and the respective national languages on the other. As ASEAN is closely connected to the three major countries of China, Japan and South Korea, as indicated by the ‘ASEAN + 3’ forum, we also include these countries here. We stress that, as space forbids an in-depth treatment of the language education policies of each of the 13 countries, we have chosen to describe and discuss in some depth the policies of 5 countries (China, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam), as these provide a cross-section of language policy contexts and approaches in the region. We add brief notes on the policies of the remaining countries.

Foreign language (FL) aptitude generally refers to a specific talent for learning a foreign or second language (L2). After experiencing a long period of marginalized interest, FL aptitude research in recent years has witnessed renewed enthusiasm across the disciplines of educational psychology, second language acquisition (SLA) and cognitive neuroscience. This paper sets out to offer a historical and an updated account of this recent progress in FL aptitude theory development and research. As its subtitle indicates, the paper centres on three major issues: following the introduction and clarification of basic concepts, Section 1 traces the early conceptions of FL aptitude dominated by John Carroll's pioneering work. Section 2 summarizes and examines more recent theoretical perspectives and FL aptitude models proposed by researchers from multiple disciplines that have significantly broadened the conventional research traditions associated with Carroll's original conception. Based on the research synthesis of current FL aptitude models, Section 3 suggests the directions FL aptitude theory and research might take in coming years. We conclude that a working memory perspective on FL aptitude presents one promising avenue for advance, as does the development of new aptitude tests to predict speed of automatization, implicit learning and greater control over an emerging language system. In addition, it is argued that issues of domain-specificity versus domain-generality for aptitude tests may lead to aptitude theory and research becoming more central in applied linguistics.

Motivation is recognized as a vital component in successful second language learning, and has been the subject of intensive research in recent decades. This review focuses on a growing branch of this research effort, that which examines the motivational effects of language teaching. This is pertinent because, despite enhanced mobility and expanding access to foreign languages online, most learners’ early encounters with the second language (L2) still take place in classrooms, and these encounters may shape attitudes and determine students’ willingness to invest further in the L2. Four main types of research are reviewed: first, that which deliberately seeks to identify and evaluate strategies to motivate L2 learners; second, that which has tested the validity of psychological theories of motivation by applying their precepts in L2 classrooms; third, that which assesses the motivational effects of a pedagogical innovation or intervention; fourth, research on what has been too often the unintended outcome of language education, namely learner demotivation. The review highlights the complexity of the relationship between teaching and learner motivation but an attempt is made to articulate some emerging verities and to point towards the most promising avenues for future research.

This state-of-the-art review is based on the fundamental idea that political economy should be adopted as a frame for research and discussion in applied linguistics as part of a general social turn which has taken hold in the field over the past three decades. It starts with Susan Gal's (1989) early call for such a move in sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, that is, for ‘investigations of the links among language structure, language use, and political economy’ (Gal 1989: 346), and moves from a consideration of theoretical bases to the discussion and critique of concrete examples of research. Thus, after a fairly detailed discussion of political economy and the key constructs neoliberalism and social class, the paper moves to a review of research in three broad areas. First, it focuses on how issues and constructs from political economy have been incorporated into discussions of education, work and leisure by a growing number of sociolinguists. This is followed by a review of research which has focused specifically on social class as a central organising construct and then a third section on political economy in language teaching and learning research. The review ends with a consideration of the future of political economy in applied linguistics research.

The construct ‘awareness’ is undoubtedly one of the more difficult constructs to operationalize and measure in both second language acquisition (SLA) and non-SLA fields of research. Indeed, the multi-faceted nature of awareness is clearly exemplified in concepts that include perception, detection, and noticing, and also in type of learning or learning conditions (implicit, explicit, incidental, subliminal), type of consciousness (autonoetic, noetic, anoetic), and type of awareness (language, phenomenal, meta-cognitive, situational). Given this broad perspective, this article provides, from a psycholinguistic perspective, a timeline on the research that addresses the role of awareness or lack thereof in second/foreign language (L2) learning.

This timeline looks at explicit uses of corpora in foreign or second language (L2) teaching and learning, i.e. what happens when end-users explore corpus data, whether directly via concordancers or integrated into CALL programs, or indirectly with prepared printed materials. The underlying rationale is that such contact provides the massive contextualised exposure needed for language learning, but in a more controlled way than purely haphazard exposure via regular reading or listening, thus promoting or enhancing noticing, language awareness, autonomy, and ultimately producing ‘better learners’. It interweaves with many other notions in language teaching, from authenticity and autonomy to induction and constructivism, taking in much of what we know about language from corpus linguistics itself – its fuzzy, probabilistic nature and the importance of lexical patterns, collocations, chunks, frequencies and distributions. Commonly known as data-driven learning or DDL (Johns 1990), the approach goes back several decades; yet despite its impressive pedigree, a frequent lament is that it remains a marginal practice. Teachers may not be aware of DDL if it is absent from their initial training, or may see it as a research activity confined to higher education. While corpus consultation may appear too demanding for school-age learners, there are connections with the web searches that are already a frequent practice for many. Though lack of uptake is sometimes attributed at least in part to a dearth of empirical research, this claim is increasingly difficult to defend, as witnessed by the number of entries in this timeline and the hundreds of others not included. For a balanced discussion of the limits of DDL as well as what it can reasonably achieve, see Kaltenböck & Mehlmauer-Larcher (2005).

After an extended period of being on the periphery, numerous advancements in the field of second language (L2) pronunciation over the past decade have led to increased activity and visibility for this subfield within applied linguistics research. As Derwing (2010) underscored in her 2009 plenary at the first annual Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching (PSLLT) conference, a record number of graduate students researching L2 pronunciation and subsequently launching into academic positions at international universities assures L2 pronunciation a bright future in research and teacher training. Other indicators of momentum include the focus of a Language Teaching timeline on the topic of pronunciation (Munro & Derwing 2011), the appearance of multiple encyclopedia volumes or handbooks of pronunciation (e.g. Levis & Munro 2013; Reed & Levis 2015), and the establishment of the specialized Journal of Second Language Pronunciation in 2015, which constitutes a milestone in the professionalization of the field and ‘an essential step toward a disciplinary identity’ (Levis 2015: 1).

The advocacy of task-based language teaching (TBLT) has met with resistance. The critiques of TBLT and the misconceptions that underlie them have already been addressed in Ellis (2009) and Long (2016). The purpose of this article is to move forward by examining a number of real problems that TBLT faces – such as how a ‘task’ should be defined, the nature and timing of the ‘focus-on-form’ required, how to determine task complexity and sequence tasks, the role of explicit instruction, the timing of focus on form and the teacher training needed to ensure effective uptake of TBLT – and to also consider what solutions are possible. Disagreements exist regarding the relative merits of task-based and task-supported language teaching. I will propose that a hybrid/modular syllabus that allows for a balance between an object-oriented and a tool-oriented view of language teaching offers the most promising way forward.

A widely accepted orthodoxy is that it is impossible to do replication studies within qualitative research paradigms. Ontologically and epistemologically speaking, such a view is largely correct. However, in this paper, I propose that what I call comparative re-production research—that is, the empirical study of qualitative phenomena that occur in one context, which are then shown also to obtain in another—is a well-attested practice in ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA). By extension, I further argue that researchers who do research on second and foreign language (L2) classrooms inspired by the conversation analysis-for-second-language acquisition movement should engage in comparative re-production research in order to make broad statements about the generality or prototypicality of the qualitative organization of particular practices across languages, cultures and institutional contexts.

There is current research consensus that second language (L2) learners are able to adequately comprehend general English written texts if they know 98% of the words that occur in the materials. This important finding prompts an important question: How much English vocabulary do English as a second language (ESL) learners need to know to achieve this crucial level of known-word coverage? A landmark paper by Nation (2006) provides a rather daunting answer. His exploration of the 98% figure through a variety of spoken and written corpora showed that knowledge of around 8,000–9,000 word families is needed for reading and 6,000–7,000 for listening. But is this the definitive picture? A recent study by van Zeeland & Schmitt (2012) suggests that 95% coverage may be sufficient for listening comprehension, and that this can be reached with 2,000–3,000 word families, which is much more manageable. Getting these figures right for a variety of text modalities, genres and conditions of reading and listening is essential. Teachers and learners need to be able to set goals, and as Cobb's study of learning opportunities (2007) has shown, coverage percentages and their associated vocabulary knowledge requirements have important implications for the acquisition of new word knowledge through exposure to comprehensible L2 input. This article proposes approximate replications of Nation (2006), van Zeeland & Schmitt (2012), and Cobb (2007), in order to clarify these key coverage and size figures.

Multilingualism is now seen as the norm rather than the exception in an age of migration and supranational entities, and where minority language rights and the consequent educational policies have become more common. The field of applied linguistics reflects that transition: second language acquisition (sla) research is slowly being replaced by research on multilingualism, which includes third language (L3) acquisition. Indeed, there is a growing list of studies that are ‘normalizing’ third language acquisition by studying bilinguals learning a new language but not considering bilingualism a variable (e.g. Stafford, Sanz & Bowden 2012; Lado et al. 2014; Pérez-Vidal 2014; Cox & Sanz 2015). In this modern global context, researchers have produced empirical research on L3 acquisition that can be divided into three main categories depending on its focus: (a) classroom studies conducted in bilingual communities and schools with students learning a third language as part of the school curriculum (Cenoz 2013); (b) research on cross-linguistic influence investigating sources of transfer from L1 or L2 into the L3 (e.g. Sanz, Park & Lado 2014) and other possible directions for transfer (González Alonso et al. 2016); and (c) laboratory research – that is, studies outside of classroom or immersion contexts, in which dependent and independent variables can be tightly controlled by the researcher – conducted within a cognitive approach, the focus of this timeline. Despite its potential diminished ecological validity, this last strand is characterized by the robustness of its design and its improved overall validity, and by the manipulation of external conditions and the measurement of internal variables related to cognition.

Second language (SL) teacher educators tirelessly teach others how to teach. But how often do we actually define teaching? Without explicit definitional activity on this fundamental concept in second language teaching (SLT), it remains implicit and intuitive – the opposite of clear, productive understanding.

I therefore explore the question, ‘What is teaching?’ in this paper. First, I establish the claim that the SLT literature rarely defines teaching explicitly, in part because of its technical ‘how-to’ focus. Second, I offer a heuristic definition of teaching as evolutionarily adaptive behavior (TEAB) – as existing in humans because it enables adaptation to varied and complex ecosocial circumstances. In contrast, animals have quite modest adaptive powers, so it may come as a surprise that TEAB is not uniquely human. Therefore, third, I review research comparing animal and human teaching in order to help us understand the latter better. Fourth, I describe teaching as studied by anthropologists – as it varies across human groups. Formal teaching is relatively rare from an anthropological perspective, and relatively recent at that. Fifth, I employ the results of this definitional exercise to exploratorily examine what happens in SLT classrooms. Finally, I discuss implications and future directions for the ideas presented here and conclude.

Most recent publications related to listening comprehension research deal with listening strategy instruction, metacognitive instruction or multimedia applications. This paper discusses one study from each of these three domains – Graham & Macaro (2008), Vandergrift & Tafaghodtari (2010) and Brett (1997) – and presents the need and possibilities for replication, along with a few minor, but interesting, variations that could help test the robustness of the original study. After providing some background to each of the three domains, we overview the respective studies and propose approaches to replication (both approximate and conceptual) along with the accompanying benefits.

That learners who want to develop good pragmatically-appropriate speaking skills in a language also need to develop good pronunciation is beyond dispute, and yet research continues to report that both areas still have low visibility in the curriculum and are often treated as poor relations in the classroom. Many teachers are still wary of what they see as specialist areas, a perspective that encourages their neglect in the curriculum, in assessment and in teacher training programmes. In this plenary I go back to basics and focus on what learners need to accomplish outside the classroom with the language they are learning. Drawing on studies that have explored the communicative needs of immigrants to Australia from language backgrounds other than English, I will illustrate the importance of both pronunciation and pragmatics in their lives. I will then consider the implications for how we can approach both skills proactively in the classroom in an integrated way that is capable of developing students’ repertoire of speaking skills for effective and appropriate use outside.

The field of language teaching and learning is in dire need of replications of vocabulary and comprehension research with diverse populations of learners. We propose for replication one large-scale vocabulary intervention carried out successfully in a middle-school with monolingual and multilingual students. This study was carried out several years ago, was published in the Reading Research Quarterly, and has been generously cited since then. The findings and the instruments from this study have been leveraged in subsequent extension studies by the same group of researchers, but have not been replicated in different contexts. We offer multiple reasons and methods of replicating this study in high school and adult contexts in which there is a serious need for learners to comprehend technical or academic materials using deep, nuanced foundations of vocabulary.

In this article, I present an agenda for researching help options for second language (L2) listening in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) environments. I outline several theories which researchers in the area draw on, then present common points of concern identified from a review of related literature. This serves as a means to establishing the need for this research agenda and also informs the approach suggested for the six research tasks I propose classified under four themes: learner perceptions and experiences; comparisons of different conditions; learner variables; and learner training.

This article is a personal view of the application of results from three areas of research that I believe are relevant to developing second language speaking in the classroom: task repetition, pre-task planning and communication strategies. I will discuss these three areas in terms of level of research application – where research is not applied well (task repetition), where it is reasonably well applied (pre-task planning), and where it may have been over-applied (communication strategies). For each area I briefly review the relevant research to highlight how teachers can potentially apply the research findings to scaffold learning processes in speaking. I will also suggest how much of the research is getting through to teachers and being taken up in day-to-day teaching of English. I draw mainly on my own extensive experience as a teacher educator for over 20 years working with pre-service English teachers of bilingual students in Singapore schools and in-service teachers attending professional development courses or pursuing Master's degree studies, as well as college English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers from the People's Republic of China receiving postgraduate teaching certification in English language teaching (ELT) and higher degree qualifications in my university each year. I will also include some observations about classroom practice based on a survey of selected course books.

Learning a new sound system poses challenges of a social, psychological, and cognitive nature, but the learner's decisions are key to ultimate attainment. This presentation focuses on two essential concepts: choice, or how one wants to sound in the target language; and limits, or various challenges to one's goals vis-à-vis accent. Qualitative and quantitative data underscore the relevance of autonomy as a guiding principle from which to explore related constructs such as self-determination, motivation, decision-making and self-concept. I also review several prominent limits on phonological attainment to counterbalance and contextualize the aspect of choice. Suggestions are given for both teaching and research that prioritize autonomy with reference to a complexity perspective.

Language description is a fundamental requirement for second language (L2) syllabus design. The greatest advances in language description in recent decades have been done with the help of electronic corpora. Such language description is the theme of this article. The article first introduces some basic concepts and principles in corpus research. It then reviews some recent corpus studies of relevance to the teaching of English for specific purposes (ESP) writing. The speech focuses on four different types of corpora: expert professional corpora, expert student corpora, L2 learner corpora, and lingua franca corpora. It also discusses application of the corpus approach, including indirect applications and direct applications. In a final section, it presents some caveats of the corpus approach for future language teaching research.