An increasing trend in many postsecondary foreign language classes in North America is the presence of heritage language learners. Heritage language learners are speakers of ethnolinguistically minority languages who were exposed to the language in the family since childhood and as adults wish to learn, relearn, or improve their current level of linguistic proficiency in their family language. This article discusses the development of the linguistic and grammatical knowledge of heritage language speakers from childhood to adulthood and the conditions under which language learning does or does not occur. Placing heritage language acquisition within current and viable cognitive and linguistic theories of acquisition, I discuss what most recent basic research has so far uncovered about heritage speakers of different languages and their language learning process. I conclude with directions for future research.

Recent second language acquisition (SLA) research into the cognitive abilities implicated in implicit, incidental, and explicit learning, and in learning and performance on tasks differing in their information processing demands has prompted new theoretical frameworks for conceptualizing L2 aptitude. This research is reviewed and related to measures of abilities operationalized in existing aptitude tests, as well as to measures of abilities that are the focus of more recent research in cognitive psychology. Finally, prospects for developing aptitude tests to serve the purposes of predicting both early and advanced level language learning success are discussed in the light of the SLA findings and aptitude frameworks reviewed.

Language testing and assessment have moved center stage in recent years, whether for educational, employment, or sociopolitical reasons. More and more people are involved in developing tests and using test score outcomes, though often without a background or training in assessment to equip them adequately for this role. Simultaneously, increasing professionalization of the field has led to the generation of standards, ethical codes, and guidelines for good testing practice. Although these can help make assessment practices more transparent and accessible to a wider constituency, they also risk promoting a view of language testing as highly technical and specialized–best left to experts. These trends have implications for both policy and practice. This article reviews efforts to promote understanding of assessment within the field of applied linguistics and within education and society more broadly. The role of professional associations, academic institutions, and commercial organizations in developing assessment literacy is considered, as well as the contribution of published material and other types of training resources. This article reflects on how the international language testing community can encourage the sharing of the core knowledge, skills, and understanding that underpin good quality assessment as widely and accessibly for the benefit of all.

From the theoretical perspective of a sociocultural theory of mind, cognition and knowledge are dialogically constructed. Embedded in this theoretical framework, this chapter reviews research studies in which peer-peer dialogue is linked to second language learning as students engage in writing, speaking, listening and reading activities. The review takes the stance that the type of dialogue of particular significance in the language learning process is collaborative dialogue, or that which occurs when learners encounter linguistic problems and attempt to solve them together. In such conditions language is used both as a communicative and cognitive tool. From the studies reviewed, we conclude that peer-peer collaborative dialogue mediates second language learning. We also conclude that although the studies reported few adverse effects of peer collaboration, teaching learners how and why to collaborate may be important to enhance peer-mediated learning. The chapter calls for more research which provides clear evidence of the connections between peer-peer dialogue and second language learning and more studies which investigate longer term learning. Such studies linking peer-peer dialogue to language learning can be instructive for teachers, researchers, and learners, and make us all more aware of the process of learning a second language.

Applied linguistics is a field concerned with issues pertaining to language(s) and literacies in the real world and with the people who learn, speak, write, process, translate, test, teach, use, and lose them in myriad ways. It is also fundamentally concerned with transnationalism, mobility, and multilingualism—the movement across cultural, linguistic, and (often) geopolitical or regional borders and boundaries. The field is, furthermore, increasingly concerned with identity construction and expression through particular language and literacy practices across the life span, at home, in diaspora settings, in short-term and long-term sojourns abroad for study or work, and in other contexts and circumstances. In this article, I discuss some recent areas in which applied linguists have investigated the intersections of language (multilingualism), identity, and transnationalism. I then present illustrative studies and some recurring themes and issues.

This article revisits earlier proposals that language learning is, in essence, the learning of formulaic sequences and their interpretations; that this occurs at all levels of granularity from large to small; and that the language system emerges from the statistical abstraction of patterns latent within and across form and function in language usage. It considers recent research in individual differences, the psycholinguistics of language processing, and longitudinal studies of first (L1) and second (L2) language acquisition. The first section reviews studies of individual differences in phonological short-term memory (PSTM) and working memory (WM) and their correlations with vocabulary and grammar acquisition in L2. The second section summarizes evidence that language processing is sensitive to the statistical properties of formulaic language in terms of frequency and transitional probability. The third section examines the definition of formulas and formulaicity using different statistical metrics. The fourth section evaluates longitudinal research in L1 and L2 into the putative developmental sequence commonly proposed in usage-based approaches, from formula to low-scope pattern to creative construction. The final section weighs the implications of the statistical distributions of formulaicity in usage for developmental sequences of language acquisition. Zipf's law and the “phrasal teddy bear” explain the paradox whereby formulas seed language acquisition and yet learner language is formula-light in comparison to native norms.

This survey includes studies published mainly—but not exclusively—during the 1990s and focuses on literature that brings to the debate on world Englishes theoretical, conceptual, descriptive, ideological, and power-related concerns. The concept “world Englishes”—its genesis and its theoretical, contextual, and pedagogical implications and appropriateness—has been discussed during the past two decades in several programmatic studies and conference presentations (see B. Kachru 1994a). The concept, though not necessarily the term “world Englishes,” gradually evolved during the post-colonial period after the 1960s. It refers to the recognition of a unique linguistic phenomenon, and particularly to the changing contexts of the post-1940s. It was during this period that post-Imperial Englishes were being gradually institutionalized in the language policies of the changed political, educational, and ideological contexts of what were earlier the colonies of the UK and the USA. The earlier tradition of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic acquisition of English, its teaching, and its transformations were being reevaluated by some researchers. The major concerns of this reevaluation include the implications of pluricentricity (Clyne 1992), the new and emerging norms of performance, and the acceptance of the bilingual's creativity as a manifestation of the contextual and formal hybridity of Englishes. In other words, a critical evaluation of earlier paradigms was slowly initiated.

Applied linguists are increasingly conducting meta-analysis in their substantive domains, because as a quantitative approach for averaging effect sizes across studies, it is more systematic and replicable than traditional, qualitative literature reviews. Additional strengths, such as increased statistical power, moderator analyses, and model testing, have also contributed to its appeal. The current review describes typical stages of a meta-analysis in second language acquisition (SLA) research: (a) defining the research domain, (b) developing a reliable coding scheme, (c) analyzing data, and (d) interpreting results. Each stage has a host of equally reasonable decisions that can be made; each decision will influence the conduct of the meta-analysis, the nature of the results, and the substantive implications of findings for SLA. We highlight a number of benefits and challenges that inform these decisions. In general, when a meta-analysis in applied linguistics is well planned, employs sound statistical methods, and is based on a thorough understanding of relevant theory, it can provide critical information that informs theory as well as future research, practice, and policy.

Formulaic language is at the heart of corpus linguistic research, and learner corpus research (LCR) is no exception. As multiword units of all kinds (e.g., collocations, phrasal verbs, speech formulae) are notoriously difficult for learners, and corpus linguistic techniques are an extremely powerful way of exploring them, they were an obvious area for investigation by researchers from the very early days of LCR. In the first part of this article, the focus is on the types of learner corpus data investigated and the most popular method used to analyze them. The second section describes the types of word sequences analyzed in learner corpora and the methodologies used to extract them. In the rest of the article, we summarize some of the main findings of LCR studies of the learner phrasicon, distinguishing between co-occurrence and recurrence. Particular emphasis is also placed on the relationship between learners’ use of formulaic sequences and transfer from the learner's first language. The article concludes with some proposals for future research in the field.

It is generally accepted that we store representations of individual words in our mental lexicon. There is growing agreement that the lexicon also contains formulaic language (How are you? kick the bucket). In fact, there are compelling reasons to think that the brain represents formulaic sequences in long-term memory, bypassing the need to compose them online through word selection and grammatical sequencing in capacity-limited working memory. The research surveyed in this chapter strongly supports the position that there is an advantage in the way that native speakers process formulaic language compared to nonformulaic language. This advantage extends to the access and use of different types of formulaic language, including idioms, binomials, collocations, and lexical bundles. However, the evidence is mixed for nonnative speakers. While very proficient nonnatives sometimes exhibit processing advantages similar to natives, less proficient learners often have been shown to process formulaic language in a word-by-word manner similar to nonformulaic language. Furthermore, if the formulaic language is idiomatic (where the meaning cannot be understood from the component words), the figurative meanings can be much more difficult to process for nonnatives than nonidiomatic, nonformulaic language.

In the last twenty years or so, language teaching has changed to incorporate a higher proportion of meaning-based activities, in contrast to the era in which form was primary and a concern for meaning only followed the establishment of control over specific forms. Now, a wide range of classroom options are available for participant organization, content incorporation, and the units by which teaching is organized. In order to locate task-based work within such a range of options, it is necessary to address definitional issues at the outset, since many different contemporary options give task a central role. For the purposes of this chapter, a task is regarded as an activity which satisfies the following criteria:

Communicative language teaching (CLT) and task-based language teaching (TBLT) have been widely adopted in the Asia-Pacific region, with a number of Asian countries strongly promoting CLT and TBLT in their curricula and English language education policies. Despite their popularity, a number of challenges have arisen in connection with implementing CLT and TBLT in Asian classrooms. The challenges that have emerged include (a) conceptual constraints (e.g., conflicts with local values and misconceptions regarding CLT/TBLT); (b) classroom-level constraints (e.g., various student and teacher-related factors, classroom management practices, and resource availability); and (c) societal-institutional level constraints (e.g., curricula and examination systems). These constraints have led some to argue that successfully implementing CLT and TBLT in Asia requires adaptation to local environments, such that CLT and TBLT become embedded in local practices. Although there have been a growing number of reports of various CLT/TBLT implementation efforts in different Asia-Pacific regions, we still have only a limited understanding of how best to achieve contextually embedded adaptations and how they affect students’ English learning. After reviewing relevant studies, this article suggests potential options for moving forward, including (a) employing more contextually feasible and flexible interpretations of CLT and TBLT, (b) implementing decentralized or innovative language-in-education policies, and (c) creating communities of learning outside of the classroom as well as in the classroom.

Conversation Analysis (CA) as a mode of inquiry is addressed to all forms of talk and other conduct in interaction, and, accordingly, touches on the concerns of applied linguists at many points. This review sketches and offers bibliographical guidance on several of the major relevant areas of conversation-analytic work—turn-taking, repair, and word selection—and indicates past or potential points of contact with applied linguistics. After covering these areas, we include a brief discussion of some key themes in CA's treatment of talk in institutional contexts. Finally, we discuss several established areas of applied linguistic work in which conversation analytic work is being explored—native, nonnative, and multilingual talk; talk in educational institutions; grammar and interaction; intercultural communication and comparative CA; and implications for designing language teaching tasks, materials, and assessment tasks. We end with some cautions on applying CA findings to other applied linguistic research contexts.

This chapter presents a model of second language reading that illustrates the evolution of research and thought from the 1970s and 1980s, characterized as being influenced extensively by schema theory and psycholinguistics, and from 1990s thought and research that investigated the interdependence of language and literacy hypothesis versus the threshold hypothesis. The chapter then synthesizes the perspectives by acknowledging the necessary components of a contemporary L2 reading model, including L1 literacy level, L2 knowledge level, recognizing the interactions of background knowledge, processing strategies, vocabulary level, relationships between and among various cognate and non-cognate L1s and L2s, as well as the need to examine emerging L1/L2 readers in addition to adult L2 readers. The review argues for a compensatory processing conceptualization: one that recognizes that knowledge sources act in an interactive, synergistic fashion, not an additive one. Finally, the chapter notes a set of impediments to conducting research in the field: assessing subjects in languages unknown to researchers and the assessment of L1 literacy in an array of languages, and concludes with the recognition that second language reading is a critical area for research and scholarship well beyond the borders of applied linguistics.

This chapter examines differences in metalinguistic development between monolingual and bilingual children in terms of three subcategories: word awareness, syntactic awareness, and phonological awareness. In each case, some studies have reported advantages for bilingual children, but equally, other studies have found either no difference between the groups, or, in some cases, monolingual advantages. In the discussion of each of these areas, the kinds of tasks for which bilingual and monolingual children perform differently are identified. In none of these three subcategories of metalinguistic awareness do bilingual children exhibit a uniform and consistent advantage over monolinguals. An alternate conception of metalinguistic ability is proposed in which two cognitive processes, analysis and control, are directly responsible for task performance. These processes are involved in all metalinguistic tasks but to different degrees. Re-examining the results in this way reveals that bilingual advantages occur reliably on tasks that make high demands on control but are not evident in tasks that make high demands on analysis. The implications of this pattern for metalinguistic ability are considered.

Theoretical, empirical, and practical interest in pragmatic competence and development for second language (L2) learners has resulted in a large body of literature on teaching L2 pragmatics. This body of literature has diverged into two major domains: (a) a group of experimental studies directly testing the efficacy of various instructional methods in pragmatics learning and (b) research that explores optimal instructional practice and resources for pragmatic development in formal classroom settings. This article reviews literature in these two domains and aims at providing a collective view of the available options for pragmatics teaching and the ways that pragmatic development can best be promoted in the classroom. In the area of instructional intervention, this article reviews studies under the common theoretical second language acquisition paradigms of explicit versus implicit instruction, input processing instruction, and skill acquisition and practice. In the area of classroom practice and resources, three domains of research and pedagogical practices are reviewed: material development and teacher education, learner strategies and autonomous learning, and incidental pragmatics learning in the classroom. Finally, this article discusses unique challenges and opportunities that have been embraced by pragmatics teaching in the current era of poststructuralism and multiculturalism.

Globalization and digitization have reshaped the communication landscape, affecting how and with whom we communicate, and deeply altering the terrain of language and literacy education. As children in urban contexts become socialized into communities of increasing cultural and communicational connectivity, complexity, and convergence (Jenkins, 2004), and funding for specialist second language (L2) support declines, classrooms have become linguistically heterogeneous spaces where every teacher is a teacher of L2 learners.

This article has two purposes: The first is to give an overview of the concept of multimodal literacies, which utilize diverse media to represent visual, audio, gestural, spatial, and tactile dimensions of communication in addition to traditional written and oral forms (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009a). Since the New London Group's manifesto on multiliteracies in 1996, which merged language and literacy education agendas in L2 teaching, language arts, media literacy, and cultural studies, new basics have developed that apply to all classrooms and all learners. Second, this article reviews and reports on innovative pedagogical approaches to multimodal literacies involving L2 learners. These are grounded theoretically (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009a, 2009b; Kress, 2003, 2010; New London Group, 1996) and epistemologically (de Castell & Jenson, 2003; Gee, 2009, 2010; Kellner, 2004; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003, 2006).

Language teacher education programs are likely to be housed in departments of applied linguistics, education, or languages and literature: These three disciplines provide the knowledge base and opportunities for developing skills and dispositions for both prospective and experienced teachers. Until recently, applied linguistics (psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, language description, and language teaching and testing methodology) formed the core of language teacher education, not unexpected, since language teaching has historically been the primary focus of applied linguistics (Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford 1997, Crandall 1995; 1996). However, during the last decade, general educational theory and practice have exerted a much more powerful influence on the direction of the education of both preservice and inservice language teacher education, resulting in a greater focus on: 1) practical experiences such as observations, practice teaching, and opportunities for curriculum and materials development (Crandall 1994, Johnson 1996b, Pennington 1990, Richards 1990, Richards and Crookes 1988); 2) classroom-centered or teacher research (Allwright and Bailey 1991, Chaudron 1988, Edge and Richards 1993, Nunan 1989, van Lier 1988); and 3) teacher beliefs and teacher cognition in language teacher education (Freeman 1996; 1998, Freeman and Johnson 1998a, Richards and Nunan 1990). In fact, the last decade can be viewed as a search for a theory of language teaching and, by extension, of language teacher education at both the micro and macro levels (Freeman and Johnson 1998b, Johnson 1996a, Larsen-Freeman 1990, Richards 1990). Language teacher education is a microcosm of teacher education, and many of the trends in current language teacher education derive from theory and practice in general teacher education. These trends include at least four major shifts.

Collaborative writing is the joint production of a text by two or more writers. Despite the widespread use of collaborative writing in the world outside the second language (L2) classroom, the use of collaborative writing tasks in L2 classes, to date, seems relatively limited. The overarching aim of this article is to suggest that collaborative writing activities, if carefully designed and monitored, may form an optimal site for L2 learning. The article begins by providing a brief theoretical rationale for collaborative writing, drawing on both cognitive and sociocultural theories. It then reviews the small number of published studies that have investigated collaborative writing in different L2 contexts. This review provides empirical evidence that working jointly on producing a written text provides opportunities for language learning, but that factors such as task type, L2 proficiency, and the relationships that the learners form affect these opportunities and may also affect language-learning gains. The chapter then considers new directions in implementing collaborative writing: online collaboration via wikis. The article concludes by highlighting the factors that need to be considered in order to maximize the language-learning potentials of collaborative writing in face-to-face and online modes.

This chapter summarizes the findings of 32 years of research from all of our longitudinal studies to date, conducted in 36 school districts in 16 U.S. states, more than 7.5 million student records analyzed, following English learners (of all language backgrounds) as far as Grades K–12. These studies are very generalizable to all regions and contexts of the United States and have been replicated in other countries, answering questions regarding program effectiveness for policymakers in education. We have shown that English-only and transitional bilingual programs of short duration only close about half of the achievement gap between English learners and native English speakers, while high-quality, long-term bilingual programs close all of the gap after 5–6 years of schooling through the students’ first and second languages (L1 and L2). In addition, our studies answer the linguistic question of how long it takes student groups to reach grade-level achievement in their L2, and we have developed and refined our theoretical Prism model by collecting and analyzing program effectiveness data, basing the Prism model on our empirical findings.