Aim To recognize doctoral thesis research that makes a significant and original contribution to the field of SLA and/or FL teaching and learning.

Award Cambridge University Press books to the value of £500.

Second language teacher education (SLTE) has undergone considerable change over the past 25 years. The question of how language teaching is learnt and how programmes of professional preparation can contribute to this process now elicits quite different answers. A new agenda of theory and practice has emerged as SLTE has incorporated many of the ideas and practices of reflection (Schön 1983). At the same time, it has drawn increasingly on feeder fields of research and practice such as teacher cognition and professional cultures. These have augmented, and to some extent displaced, the original roots of SLTE in Applied Linguistics and Psychology, and a new knowledge base (Freeman & Johnson 1998) has been established, contributing to the formulation of theory about language teachers' learning-to-teach, and its practices. The focus of this review is on the extent to which the new agenda has influenced SLTE practices in recent years. It examines accounts of activities teacher educators and student teachers engage in during SLTE programmes in formal learning experiences. The paper identifies a thriving practitioner research culture in SLTE but argues that much more research is required to establish the true extent to which new conceptualisations of the process of learning-to-teach second languages guides SLTE practice.

The goal of this article is to make research on English language teaching and learning published locally in Israel more widely available. Given that so many Israeli researchers are internationally trained and maintain wide connections, it necessarily omits much important work that appears in European and US journals. It focuses on shorter studies, commonly unfunded, that university teachers in EFL programs or in teacher training programs at smaller colleges conduct in their own time. It represents a wide range of good quality research, ‘glocal’ in that its local production does not compromise potential contributions to global concerns. The main themes treated are the early start of teaching English, the development of an integrated methodology, detailed studies of the teaching of lexicon and writing, specialized studies of dyslexia, computer-assisted instruction, English for academic purposes, and teaching Israeli students who already know some English from home or visits abroad. The overall quality of the research is high, matching all but a few top international journals.

Second language acquisition (SLA) is a relatively new field of enquiry. Before the late 1960s, educators did write about L2 learning, but very much as an adjunct of language teaching pedagogy, underpinned by behaviourism, the then-dominant learning theory in psychology. In this view, the task facing learners of foreign languages was to rote-learn and practise the grammatical patterns and vocabulary of the language to be learnt, in order to form new ‘habits’, that is to create new stimulus–response pairings which would become stronger with reinforcement. In order for the ‘old habits’ of the L1 not to interfere with this process by being ‘copied’, or transferred, into the L2, researchers embarked on thorough descriptions of pairs of languages to be learnt, in order to identify areas that are different and would thus be difficult.

The paper reviews eight topics in the area of second language critical pedagogy: (i) historical inheritances and lines of development associated with critical pedagogies; (ii) advocacy (and the need for critical language teachers to engage in it); (iii) the diverse institutional contexts that could be explored for critical language pedagogy; (iv) the range of languages within which critical approaches have been explored; (v) EFL critical pedagogy; (vi) the broad range of categories of oppression addressed by critical language pedagogy; (vii) materials for critical language pedagogy, and (viii) the role of the ‘imaginary’ in encouraging critical language pedagogy. I suggest that these constitute matters which, if given attention by critical language pedagogy specialists, could enhance the perceived practicality and/or relevance of the area.

Teaching poetry in second language (L2) classrooms raises theoretical and practical questions about how best to treat literature when target language and culture is also being negotiated. Current pedagogy derives from disparate sources, including the experientially-driven practices of individual teachers, the quantitative and qualitative research methodologies of Second Language Acquisition, and the aesthetic, historical, and philosophical traditions of literature and cultural studies. This paper surveys the knowledge base that shapes literature pedagogy, examines the conceptual implications of two common approaches (close reading and genre-based treatments), and argues for new teaching objectives.

Held at the Association canadienne de linguistique appliquée/Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics Conference, Ottawa, Canada; 27 May 2009.

Over the past few decades perspectives on second language (L2) pronunciation have evolved from pessimistic appraisals of the capabilities of L2 learners and doubts about the value of instruction to a view of pronunciation teaching as an effective and important part of language pedagogy. Earlier research on the teaching of pronunciation dwelt extensively on the identification of learners' errors (mainly consonants and vowels) through comparative analyses. Until recently, little had been established about the effectiveness of pronunciation teaching, and pedagogical techniques were based more on speculation and theoretical notions than on empirically well-justified principles. More recent work addresses a broader range of issues relating not only to L2 phonological acquisition, but to the social implications of speaking with an accent and engaging with interlocutors, both native and non-native speakers of the L2. Among these are the relationship between accent and intelligibility, cognitive processes underlying phonological learning, the evaluation of L2 speech using impressionistic and acoustic techniques, prosodic influences on perception of accented speech, the role of ethnic affiliation and identity in L2 speakers' oral production, and the identification of misguided applications of knowledge about pronunciation by businesses and governments. These lines of work, along with empirical investigations of pronunciation instruction, engender a more sophisticated view of L2 phonological learning and teaching. Though further research remains to be done, important achievements have been made in identifying reasonable, achievable goals in the pronunciation classroom, establishing appropriate instructional foci, and evaluating outcomes. The presenters in this colloquium highlighted the major achievements of recent years and identified some of the important problems that remain.

The National Institute of Education in Singapore (which is part of the Nanyang Technological University) is the leading national pre-service and in-service teacher training tertiary institution. It offers diploma, undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. The academic departments are called Academic Groups (AGs). The English Language and Literature (ELL) AG has over 70 academic staff with very diverse research interests. The sheer size of the AG results in several clusters of research interests in language teaching methodology and curriculum, language teacher training, language learning, literacy issues, classroom discourse, and sociolinguistic issues of relevance to Singapore and other parts of Asia. In this report, I highlight some of the recent research, completed in the years 2008–2009.

Held at the Association canadienne de linguistique appliquée/Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics Conference, Ottawa, Canada; 28 May 2009.

With the 50th anniversary of Robert C. Gardner and Wallace Lambert's seminal paper ‘Motivational variables in second language acquisition’ (Gardner & Lambert 1959), we paused to reflect on the contributions the work has inspired and the state of the art in the study of motivation research.