Current TESL issues (Teaching English as a Second Language) in an interactive fashion enriched with distinctive keywords and tags and comment forms to discuss the issues
Speech Acts Speech acts are carried out over various turns and their exact shape takes into account interlocutor reactions. In other words, conversation is co-constructed by both interlocutors, which is something that can never be simulated with DCTs. Speech acts are certainly the most researched area of pragmatics, and they are arguably the most social, …
Evidence-Centered Design Evidence-centered Design was developed by Mislevy. It is important that we see the tasks or items that we design for tests as part of a larger picture, and one approach to doing this in a systematic way is ECD, a methodology for test design and construction developed at Educational Testing Service (ETS). ECD is …
Input Processing Theory Input Processing Theory VanPatten’s Input Processing Theory is based on the standard information processing viewpoint. Namely, working memory is limited in capacity (at least in terms of each modality), making it difficult for learners to attend concurrently to different stimuli in the input. He identified ‘detection’ as the key attentional process, noting …
Infants’ Language Learning | TESL Issues Infants’ Language Learning | TESL Issues All normal children appear to contain within themselves the ability to create a language in spite of wide variations in experience. External auditory simulation is available to the fetus, although attenuated. Mother’s voice is a prominent sound in the amniotic environment, experience with …
Genie and Critical Period Hypothesis Genie Born in 1957, Genie experienced extreme deprivation beginning at about twenty months of age when she was confined to a dark room in the back of a house, harnessed to a potty seat by day and strapped in a sleeping bag in a caged crib at night, until she …
Individual Differences Individual Differences Learners clearly differ enormously in their preferred approach to L2 learning, but it is impossible to say which learning style works best (Ellis, 2008). One of the major problems is that the concept of ‘learning style’ is ill-defined, apparently overlapping with other individual differences of both an affective and a cognitive …
Socio-Educational Model of L2 Learning Socio-Educational Model by Gardner reflects the results of work begun at McGill University in Montreal in the 1950s and still carried on today. Gardner’s model was developed to explain L2 learning in classroom settings, in particular the foreign language classroom. It exists in several versions. The model seeks to interrelate …
Acknowledgements Acknowledgements is a section in which people who have helped with the research are thanked. Researchers often wish to thank: Their participants Any colleague who may have read earlier drafts of the work and offered suggestions or feedback Any assistant, including students, colleagues, or co-workers, who may have helped with data collection, materials development, …
Error Analysis Error Analysis (EA) The history of error analysis dates back from the late 1960s. Corder spelt out the theoretical rationale and empirical procedures for carrying out an error analysis. Corder noted that errors provided the researcher with evidence of who language was learnt, and also that they served as devices by which the …
Form-Focused Instruction Form-Focused Instruction Traditionally, language pedagogy has emphasized form-focused instruction. The Grammar-Translation Method and the Audiolingual Method both involve attempts to teach learners grammar, differing only in how this is to be accomplished (Ellis, 1997). Form-focused Instruction is in contrast with ‘naturalistic learning’. It intends to examine whether instruction could change the natural order …