Research on networked language learning is now entering its second decade. While earlier research tended to focus on the linguistic and affective characteristics of computer-assisted discussion in single classrooms, more recent research has increasingly focused on long-distance collaboration. This type of learning environment is challenging to arrange, because it involves diverse learners who operate with different cultural backgrounds, communicative expectations, and rhetorical frameworks. These features, as well as the fact that the communication takes place both inside and outside of class and on students' own schedules, also pose special research challenges. This chapter summarizes what knowledge has been gained about learning and instruction in long-distance online exchanges, focusing on three key themes: (a) linguistic interaction and development, (b) intercultural awareness and learning, and (c) development of new multiliteracies and their relations to identity. In each area, research has indicated that there is no single effect of using online communication, but rather that processes and results vary widely depending on a range of logistical, pedagogical, and social factors.

The aim of this chapter is to provide a critical overview of the issues and research conducted since the most recent state-of-the-art article published in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics by David Singleton (2001). First, we summarize what research has said about the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) in cognitive science and neurobiology, then we review recent findings of age-related studies since 2000 focusing on what late beginners and adults can achieve, and how early and later beginners compare in bilingual programs. The second part of the presentation explores language policy and classroom implications of the CPH for foreign language teaching. As English has become the lingua franca, early programs have mushroomed all over the world. However, besides overwhelming enthusiasm, more recently critical voices can also be heard. On the one hand, early exposure is often seen as a key to success and a solution to all problems in language education; on the other hand, it may be perceived as a threat to first language development and identity. Finally, we explore areas for further research.

The second-generation Web has amplified and extended new ways of online communication. Millions of people now interact through blogs, collaborate through wikis, play multiplayer games, publish podcasts and video, build relationships through social network sites, and evaluate all the above forms of communication through feedback and ranking mechanisms. This article analyzes the emergent semiotics of what has been called Web 2.0 by focusing on three critical elements of language use and communication: audience, authorship, and artifact. Drawing on recent theoretical and empirical work, this article considers the significance of transformations in these three areas for both research and teaching.

To provide the most effective instruction possible, teachers of a second language (L2) should learn to identify and comprehend significant individual differences in their students. Many excellent teachers have learned to do some of this intuitively, but explicit understanding of individual-difference dimensions can enhance the work of all teachers. Among the most important such variations are differences associated with nine factors: aptitude, motivation, anxiety, selfesteem, tolerance of ambiguity, risk-taking, language learning styles, age, and gender. All of these variables and many more have been shown to be related to L2 learning in various ways. In fact, Gradman and Hanania (1991) identify 22 individual-difference variables that can affect success in learning a new language.

Digital communication technologies both complexify and help to reveal the dynamics of human communicative activity and capacity for identity performance. Addressing current scholarship on second language use and development, this review article examines research on identity in digital settings either as a design element of educational practice or as a function of participation in noninstitutionally located online cultures. We also address new frontiers and communication in the digital wilds, as it were, and here we focus on cultural production in fandom sites and the processes of transcultural authoring and community building visible in these settings.

This chapter builds on prior reviews of reading theory, research, and assessment published in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics and uses them and additional current research to develop a set of 10 instructional implications for second language reading. The review draws upon both L1 and L2 research to demonstrate support for instructional approaches that (1) ensure fluency in word recognition; (2) emphasize the learning of vocabulary; (3) activate background knowledge; (4) ensure acquisition of linguistic knowledge and general comprehension; (5) teach recognition of text structures and discourse organization; (6) promote development of strategic readers rather than mechanical application of strategy checklists; (7) build reading fluency and rate; (8) promote extensive reading; (9) develop intrinsic motivation for reading; and (10) contribute to a coherent curriculum for student learning. There is empirical support for each of these implications, although at the same time, additional research related to many is needed to further identify aspects of effective L2 reading instruction in particular settings. While further research alone does not guarantee improved reading pedagogy, it provides one means of identifying specific aspects of reading abilities and testing alternative instructional practices and is thus a crucial component in the search for more effective outcomes.

Christie (1992), in the previous year's volume of the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, reviewed literacy initiatives in Australia which drew on systemic functional linguistics, focusing on three themes: differences between speech and writing, written genres, and the study of spoken language. This paper is designed to complement her review, highlighting ongoing research within the same general theoretical framework, and focusing on the general question of modeling context in educational linguistics.

This chapter reviews recent empirical evidence for universal and orthography- or language-specific processes in the development of basic reading skills in school age children, suggesting that universal and orthography- or language-specific processes should be considered in tandem. The review focuses on three different aspects of reading, phonological processing, rapid naming, and morphosyntactic complexity, targeted in recent research on development of word recognition skills. Studies on L1 school children and studies of children who learn to read concurrently in their L1 and/or in a second language (L2) are examined within the context of variations in orthographic transparency. When children learn to read, characteristics of the spoken language interact with characteristics of the orthography. The chapter concludes that (a) individual differences in phonological processing skills, verbal memory, and rapid naming predict the development of reading in L1 and L2 children in various alphabetic and nonalphabetic languages; and (b) individual differences on such prerequisite skills can indicate smooth or problematic acquisition of L2 reading skills in children, regardless of oral language proficiency. However, task demands associated with learning to read in different orthographies vary and yield steeper or more moderate learning slopes. Regardless of the language and orthography combinations under study, children can develop reading strategies that help them read.

All previous papers on language assessment in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics make explicit reference to validity. These reviews, like other work on language testing, use the term to refer to the quality or acceptability of a test. Beneath the apparent stability and clarity of the term, however, its meaning and scope have shifted over the past years. Given the significance of changes in the conception of validity, the time is ideal to probe its meaning for language assessment.

The paper analyzes research published over the last five years. The first part looks into policy documents, types of programs, and surveys to identify (a) reasons why an early start to learning languages is seen as beneficial and under what conditions; (b) possible threats; and (c) the aims and expected outcomes that are predicted by various models. The second part discusses studies on learners, including what they do in classrooms, how they perform on tasks, how their languages interact, and how they develop in different skills. A separate section reviews individual differences in the affective, cognitive, and strategic domains, as well as the role of learners’ socioeconomic status and their learning difficulties. In the third part, we draw on classroom observation and interview studies to discuss teachers’ roles, proficiency and uses of languages, and beliefs and practices. In the fourth part, we focus on the assessment of young learners; more specifically, we review what the construct of assessment is, what various assessment frameworks include, what international and national examinations exist, and what assessment for learning involves. Finally, in the last section we review implications for further research.

In this review of research, various aspects of collaboration are discussed to understand more completely the phenomenon of jointly constructed activity in pedagogical contexts. This chapter presents the parameter for collaborations, differentiates collaboration from interaction, and reviews studies organized into three themes: collaboration and community, collaboration and language development, and collaboration and identity. Concepts taken from sociocultural theory provide an overarching explanatory framework of learning in the collaborative setting. These concepts include goal-directed activity, human relations, mediation, history, and culture. Consideration for emergent directions for research on collaboration and language learning are presented.

This discussion provides current perspectives on the use of Chinese as a lingua franca among the Han peoples of greater China. As a national lingua franca, Mandarin Chinese or pŭtōnghuąChinese morpho-syllables intended to be read in pŭtōnghuą or Mandarin are represented in pìnyīn; those which are meant to be read in Cantonese are represented in Jyutping () with two numbers in superscript indicating the tone contour (Fan et al., 1997). is unsurpassed in terms of the number of speakers. It is however not yet widely spoken in many dialect areas of China. This is why the promotion of pŭtōnghuą among dialect speakers continues to be an important part of the language policy and planning of the People's Republic. In Taiwan, as a result of some four decades of hegemonic enforcement of the National Language Movement until 1987, an absolute majority of the Taiwanese can understand and speak Mandarin, but Southern Min continues to be commonly used in the southern parts of the island, partly because for many Taiwanese, language choice is closely bound up with national and ethnolinguistic identity. In the two special administrative regions of China, Hong Kong, and Macao, Cantonese continues to serve as a lingua franca among the Chinese there. It is the only dialect which has attained a level of prestige that rivals that of the standard national language, and which has evolved written forms of its own that are commonly used in informal genres of media discourses.

This review surveys research on second language vocabulary teaching and learning since 1999. It first considers the distinction between incidental and intentional vocabulary learning. Although learners certainly acquire word knowledge incidentally while engaged in various language learning activities, more direct and systematic study of vocabulary is also required. There is a discussion of how word frequency counts and information on word meaning from computer corpora can inform the selection of words to be studied, with a particular focus on spoken vocabulary. This leads to a consideration of learner dictionaries and some research evidence on how effectively students can use them to understand the meanings of words. Then classroom research on teaching vocabulary is discussed. Another significant topic is the design of computer-based language learning programs to enhance opportunities for learners to expand their vocabulary knowledge. Finally, a summary of recent work on vocabulary testing is presented.

This article briefly summarizes key developments in formulaic language research over the past 5 years, before exploring certain assumptions typically made, regarding the coherence of formulaicity as a phenomenon, the significance of frequency as a property, and the location of subtypes of formulaic language along various continua. It is argued that we do not yet have the full measure of how different features associated with formulaicity fit together. The challenge lies in reconciling the range of evidence types within an explanation that is rooted not only in usage itself, but in the underlying motivations that determine usage.

Over the last few decades, task-based language teaching (TBLT) has garnered increasing attention from researchers and educators alike. With a strong and growing body of research demonstrating the efficacy of tasks to support and facilitate second language development and performance (e.g., Keck, Iberri-Shea, Tracy-Ventura, & Wa-Mbaleka, 2006), TBLT has become a leading pedagogical approach. Similarly, computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has also grown as a field, with the use and integration of technology in the classroom continuing to increase (Petersen & Sachs, 2015). As these fields have matured, a reciprocal relationship has developed (Lai & Li, 2011), with the literature on tasks and technology seeking to not only examine how technology might support and facilitate language learning, but how TBLT might serve as a framework to more thoroughly investigate CALL. In light of the expanding research on tasks and technology, this review article aims not only to provide a current state of the art of how technology-mediated TBLT facilitates and supports second language development and performance, but also to describe how technology can contribute to our understanding of how features of TBLT, such as task design features and task implementation, influence the success of second language acquisition. Suggestions for possible research agendas in technology-mediated TBLT are also made.

Increasingly aware of the “critical” turn in our disciplines, we offer a partial survey of scholarship in two key realms—English for academic purposes (EAP) and globalization—where the term “critical literacy” has particular relevance. We begin by addressing some key concepts and ideological tensions latent beneath the term “critical.” We then address the pedagogical priorities that arise from this conceptualization, in particular, the use of texts to distance individual and group identities from powerful discourses. Next, we review studies that demonstrate how different teachers and researchers have engaged in unraveling and cross-questioning the rhetorical influences of various texts types, including multimodal ones. In the final section, we discuss the intertwined processes of homogenization and diversification arising from the economic, cultural, and political strains of globalization with particular emphasis on their implications for critical literacies and language education.

This survey article looks first at the changing demands of the workplace in a globalized economy. The new work order creates a new word order, and the workforce has become a “wordforce” (Heller, in press) with new genres of language and communication. These changes have taken place at a time when global flows of people, from less wealthy and secure societies to more wealthy and secure ones, have created multilingual workplaces. Both sets of changes challenge the traditional notion of second language socialization, and this is the focus of the next section. The workplace represents a complex, dynamic setting where migrants experience a double socialization: into the hybrid discourses of the workplace, which all newcomers experience, and into the specific language and cultural practices that realize these discourses. The new language requirements of the workplace produce for migrant workers and professionals a “linguistic penalty” (Roberts & Campbell, 2006) since the communicative demands of the selection process may be greater than those of the job itself. The last section of the article is concerned with language socialization in multilingual settings where language socialization into the dominant language is only part of the story. There is a contrast between the low status multilingualism of migrant workers, and staff in globalized and international organizations who are being socialized into new lingua franca interaction. The article concludes with an example of how the complex linguistic and technical environment of a high-tech multilingual company produces radically different conditions for language socialization which challenge how this notion can be used in the 21st century.

Pronunciation, long on the periphery of applied linguistics research and pedagogy, continues to grow in importance because of its central roles in speech recognition, speech perception, and speaker identity. Pronunciation-related issues such as comprehensibility, accent, and the mutual intelligibility of varieties of world Englishes are central to many questions in applied linguistics. This calls for a sophisticated understanding of how technological tools that have long been used to shed light on phonological categories can be applied to teaching. Research into computer-assisted pronunciation teaching (CAPT) suggests that both researchers and pronunciation teachers increasingly make use of technology to answer key questions, to ensure that claims are defensible, and to develop theories and practices that more closely match acoustic reality. This article reviews three key areas where computer technology and pronunciation intersect: (1) appropriate pedagogical goals and the measurement of improvement; (2) the ability of CAPT to give useful, automatic feedback; and (3) the use of technology in diagnosing pronunciation errors. This article concludes with recommendations for key technological competencies needed by any researcher or teacher who examines pronunciation-related issues.

For the last decade, conversation analysis (CA) has increasingly contributed to several established fields in applied linguistics. In this article, we will discuss its methodological contributions. The article distinguishes between basic and applied CA. Basic CA is a sociological endeavor concerned with understanding fundamental issues of talk in action and of intersubjectivity in human conduct. The field has expanded its scope from the analysis of talk—often phone calls—towards an integration of language with other semiotic resources for embodied action, including space and objects. Much of this expansion has been driven by applied work.

After laying out CA's standard practices of data treatment and analysis, this article takes up the role of comparison as a fundamental analytical strategy and reviews recent developments into cross-linguistic and cross-cultural directions. The remaining article focuses on applied CA, the application of basic CA's principles, methods, and findings to the study of social domains and practices that are interactionally constituted. We consider three strands—foundational, social problem oriented, and institutional applied CA—before turning to recent developments in CA research on learning and development. In conclusion, we address some emerging themes in the relationship of CA and applied linguistics, including the role of multilingualism, standard social science methods as research objects, CA's potential for direct social intervention, and increasing efforts to complement CA with quantitative analysis.

Both in the research literature on tasks and second language learning and in the pedagogical literature on task-based language teaching (TBLT), the role of the teacher has received scant attention. In this article, the role of the teacher in TBLT is approached from three perspectives: (a) the teacher as mediator of the students’ language development, contributing to the effectiveness of TBLT as a pedagogical approach to second language education; (b) the teacher as a key figure in the implementation of TBLT, and thus as a change agent in the innovation of second language education; and (c) the teacher as researcher, and thus as an active contributor to the development and further refinement of TBLT as a researched pedagogy.