This article examines the role of cultural awareness (CA) and intercultural awareness (ICA) in classroom theory and practice. CA and ICA can be roughly characterised as an awareness of the role of culture in communication with CA focused on national cultures and ICA on more dynamic and flexible relationships between languages and cultures. There will be a consideration of findings from CA and ICA research that have not been well applied, those that have been well applied and those that have been over-applied to classrooms. In particular, it will be argued that CA and ICA are more prevalent in pedagogic theory, and to a lesser extent policy, than they are in practice. While the cultural dimension to language learning is now fairly mainstream, where elements of CA and ICA are applied or translated into the classroom they typically take the form of comparisons between national cultures, often in essentialist forms. There is still little evidence of classroom practice that relates to the fluid ways cultures and languages are related in intercultural communication, especially for English as a lingua franca or other languages used on a global scale.

This new strand in the journal provides a space for contributors to present a personal stance either on future research needs or on the perceived current applications of research in the classroom. Like much of our current content, it echoes the historical uniqueness of this journal in terms of its rich and expert overview of recent research in the field of L2 teaching and learning. However, this new strand takes such research as its starting point and attempts to look forward, using these findings both to debate their application in the language learning classroom and also to suggest where research would be best directed in the future. Thus, the objective of both types of paper is eminently practical: contributors to the research agenda will present suggestions for what research might usefully be undertaken, given what is currently known or what is perceived to be necessary. In the research into practice papers there will be critical appraisal both of what research is, and is not, getting through to the language learning classroom, policy making, curriculum design, evaluation of teaching and/or assessment programmes, and practical suggestions made for improving such outcomes.

This article is a personal view of the application of research on vocabulary to teaching and how there are three different types or categories of relationship between that research and the teaching to which it is applied: first, where the research is not applied or not applied well, second, where it is reasonably well applied, and third, where it is over-applied. For each of these three categories, I look at what I consider to be the most important areas of research and suggest why they fit into that category. The topics covered include planning vocabulary courses, distinguishing high frequency and low frequency words, extensive reading, the deliberate learning of vocabulary, academic vocabulary and vocabulary teaching.

Despite different epistemologies and assumptions, all theories in second language (L2) acquisition emphasize the centrality of context in understanding L2 acquisition. Under the assumption that language emerges from use in context, the cognitivist approach focuses on distributions and properties of input to infer both learning objects and process of acquisition. The interactionist approach views context more narrowly by analyzing how a particular linguistic item is attended and processed during a task-based interaction, and how it becomes intake as learning outcomes. For socially-oriented theories such as the sociocultural theory and language socialization, learning is fundamentally situated in context. Through mediated participation in learning as social practice, learners come to appropriate linguistic knowledge. Context is also fundamental in the complex, dynamic systems theory, which views learning as a non-linear, adaptive process emerging through an interaction of resources and individuals within a given context. All of these theories give the central power to context to describe and explain L2 learning. Context serves as the site where acquisition is examined. Context also helps explain the process and outcomes of acquisition.

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).

In this article, the authors reflect on the ways research on Virtual Exchange (VE) has had an impact on language education practices and, conversely, areas in which research has been underexplored, misapplied or perhaps even over applied by VE practitioners in formal education settings. Starting from a brief historical overview of VE, the text first outlines the features widely accepted as key aspects of this pedagogical approach before considering to what extent research results can be identified in VE implementation. Principal topics covered are the main aims regarding language development when VE is applied, assessment of language development through VE and VE and intercultural competence. While the article is not intended as a comprehensive review, it provides insight into the main foci of VE research and how these findings are reaching the language classroom (primary, secondary and university).

Practitioner research is a flourishing area with a significant body of theoretical and empirical research, but often researchers remain isolated, unaware of impactful work by colleagues in related fields. Exploratory Practice (EP) is one innovative form, uniting creative pedagogy and research methods. The potential contributions have hitherto been neglected. EP's emphasis on puzzling and understanding is a means of demystifying occluded practices which place learners, teachers and researchers as co-investigators at the heart of the research-practice nexus. EP's radical positioning of learners as co-researchers, alongside teachers, teacher educators and others, means crossing boundaries – (re-)negotiating identities, in language learning/teaching/researching – thus raising epistemological challenges for the field. The contribution of this state-of-the-art article is to provide a meta-analysis of these themes and challenges, critically analysing the complexities involved as the paradigms of research, practice and practitioner research shift from research-as-practice towards practice-as-research.

The notion of mediation has been the object of growing interest in second language education in recent years. The increasing awareness of the complex nature of the process of learning – and teaching – stretches our collective reflection towards less explored areas. In mediation, the immediate focus is on the role of language in processes like creating the space and conditions for communication and/or learning, constructing and co-constructing new meaning, and/or passing on information, whilst simplifying, elaborating, illustrating or otherwise adapting input in order to facilitate the process concerned. At a deeper level though, the notion of mediation embraces a broader spectrum of dimensions and connotations. Mediation has been defined as a ‘nomadic notion’ (Lenoir 1996) insomuch as it is at the core of a variety of scientific disciplines and the term ‘mediation’ is used in different senses in different contexts.

This paper argues that the vertical spread of computer-assisted language learning (CALL), i.e., a spread throughout language materials and curricula, makes it difficult to draw a clear distinction between CALL and other language materials. In view of the emphasis that teachers, researchers, and administrators have placed on evaluating CALL, I argue that some valuable lessons about materials evaluation can be drawn from reflection on issues in CALL evaluation. In particular, I discuss the opportunities for professionals to reconsider assumptions held about comparative research, draw upon research perspectives and methods from applied linguistics in materials evaluation, and include critical perspectives which examine the opportunities that materials offer language learners to engage in language and culture learning.

This article examines current research on the role and importance of lower-level processes in second language (L2) reading. The focus is on word recognition and its subcomponent processes, including various phonological and orthographic processes. Issues related to syntactic and semantic processes and their relationship with word recognition are also discussed. When examining the role of these processes, an important focus is also on cross-linguistic variables and the various ways in which they facilitate or impede the development of L2 reading skills. The review concludes with a discussion of the implications of the issues addressed for L2 reading instruction and directions for future research.

There is a wide body of research that shows how vitally important teachers are to successful learning processes. What they do, think, feel and believe are central to what happens in their classrooms, and, essentially, what happens to their learners. It is perhaps, therefore, surprising that the field of language learning psychology has focused so predominantly on the psychology of learners with so little attention devoted to teachers in comparison. In this talk, I argue it is time that we take a much closer look at language teachers’ psychology to the same degree of complexity and diversity as learner psychology has been examined. I begin by outlining the importance of teacher psychology, the links between teacher and learner psychology as well as the particular challenges facing language teachers. In the second part of the talk, I reflect on how a relational perspective can help us to appreciate the centrality of teacher psychology as well as how teacher psychology can be conceptualised through such a theoretical lens.

In Part 1 of this two-part review article (Alderson & Banerjee, 2001), we first addressed issues of washback, ethics, politics and standards. After a discussion of trends in testing on a national level and in testing for specific purposes, we surveyed developments in computer-based testing and then finally examined self-assessment, alternative assessment and the assessment of young learners.

In this second part, we begin by discussing recent theories of construct validity and the theories of language use that help define the constructs that we wish to measure through language tests. The main sections of the second part concentrate on summarising recent research into the constructs themselves, in turn addressing reading, listening, grammatical and lexical abilities, speaking and writing. Finally we discuss a number of outstanding issues in the field.

Ever since Karen Price's ground-breaking work in 1983, we have known that same-language subtitles (captions) primarily intended for the deaf and hearing-impaired can provide access to foreign language films and TV programmes which would otherwise be virtually incomprehensible to non-native-speaker viewers. Since then, researchers have steadily built up our knowledge of how learners may make use of these when watching.

The question remains, however, whether, and to what extent, watching subtitled programmes over time helps develop learners’ language skills in various ways. Perhaps surprisingly, this question of long-term language development has still not been fully addressed in the research literature and we appear to be in a largely ‘confirmatory’ cycle. At an informal level, on the other hand, there are countless stories of learners who have been assisted in learning a foreign language by watching subtitled or captioned films and television.

I shall review the contributions of key research studies to build up a picture of the current state of our knowledge and go on to outline, first, the current gaps in research and, second, some encouraging new approaches to learning by autonomous ‘users’ of foreign-language Internet media and same-language subtitles across languages, now more widely available.

Recently, a large number of vocabulary tests have been made available to language teachers, testers, and researchers. Unfortunately, most of them have been launched with inadequate validation evidence. The field of language testing has become increasingly more rigorous in the area of test validation, but developers of vocabulary tests have generally not given validation sufficient attention in the past. This paper argues for more rigorous and systematic procedures for test development, starting from a more precise specification of the test's purpose, intended testees and educational context, the particular aspects of vocabulary knowledge which are being measured, and the way in which the test scores should be interpreted. It also calls for greater assessment literacy among vocabulary test developers, and greater support for the end users of the tests, for instance, with the provision of detailed users' manuals. Overall, the authors present what they feel are the minimum requirements for vocabulary test development and validation. They argue that the field should self-police itself more rigorously to ensure that these requirements are met or exceeded, and made explicit for those using vocabulary tests.

In 1998, Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaki & Kim published a monograph describing measures used in assessing writing development. Despite more recent research on linguistic development (e.g., Bulté & Housen 2012; Verspoor, Schmid & Xu 2012; Connor-Linton & Polio 2014), the volume is still a valuable resource and good starting point for anyone wanting to select measures of fluency, accuracy, and complexity for second language (L2) writing research. The volume, however, was limited to research on language development within the context of writing, and this is certainly one way to think about writing development. A recent edited volume by Manchón (2012), however, has greatly expanded conceptions of writing development showing that it involves much more that linguistic development, for example, genre knowledge (Tardy 2012) and goal setting (Cumming 2012) as well. Writing development can also focus on various aspects of the writing process and how writers’ change their approach to text production as they become more expert writers (e.g., Sasaki 2004; Nicolás-Conesa, Roca de Larios & Coyle 2014). This expansion of focus, of course, makes development more difficult to define.

This article discusses research into the role of audio-visual input for second language (L2) or foreign language learning. It also addresses questions related to the effectiveness of audio-visual input with different types of on-screen text such as subtitles (i.e., in learners’ first language) and captions (i.e., subtitles in the same language as the L2 audio) for L2 learning. The review discusses the following themes: (a) the characteristics of audio-visual input such as the multimodal nature of the input and vocabulary demands of video; (b) L2 learners’ comprehension of audio-visual input and the role of different types of on-screen text; (c) the effectiveness of audio-visual input and on-screen text for aspects of L2 learning including vocabulary, grammar, and listening; and (d) research into L2 learners’ use and perceptions of audio-visual input and on-screen text. The review ends with a consideration of implications for teaching practice and a conclusion that discusses the generalizability of current research in relation to suggestions for future research.

As applied linguists know very well, how we use language both constructs and reflects our understanding. It is therefore important that we use terms that do justice to our concerns. In this presentation, I suggest that a more apt designation than multilingual or second language acquisition (SLA) is multilingual or second language development (SLD). I give a number of reasons for why I think SLD is more appropriate. Some of the reasons that I point to are well known. Others are more current, resting on a view of language from a complex systems perspective. Such a perspective rejects the commodification of language implied by the term ‘acquisition’, instead imbuing language with a more dynamic quality, implied by the term ‘development’, because it sees language as an ever-developing resource. It also acknowledges the mutable and interdependent norms of bilinguals and multilinguals. In addition, this perspective respects the fact that from a target-language vantage point, regress in learner performance is as characteristic of development as progress. Finally, and most appropriately for AILA 2011, the term second language development fits well with the theme of the congress – harmony in diversity – because it recognizes that there is no common endpoint at which all learners arrive. For, after all, learners actively transform their linguistic world; they do not merely conform to it.