The rationale for content-based instruction is that the content is often academic subject matter (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche 2003). Academic Encounters Listening and Speaking: Human Behavior is a contentbased textbook dealing with the topic of human behavior related to psychology and communication. The book contains four units: Health, development…[Read more]

The growing number of international students who come to study at American universities and the over 99,000 students who are specifically enrolled in English language programs (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2013) has revealed the need for well-developed and carefully tailored resources that prepare English-as-asecond-language (ESL)…[Read more]

Professor Norbert Schmitt is a professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. He started his career in Japan where he taught English as a Foreign Language and pursued his MA degree. He is mainly known for his work in all aspects of second language vocabulary including pedagogy, acquisition, and assessment.…[Read more]

Dr. Matthew Poehner is Assistant Professor of World Languages Education and Applied Linguistics at The Pennsylvania State University. He delivered a keynote address at the 2013 Second Language Studies Symposium titled Dynamic Assessment: Understanding Mediation. He was kind enough to speak with us after his talk.

The purpose of this paper is to present an overview of ESL reading test development and analysis in the context of a small-scale ESL classroom. We created 12 multiple-choice items for an ESL reading mid-term exam, administered the test in the Community English Program at Teachers College in fall 2008, and analyzed the test results to evaluate the…[Read more]

This qualitative study explores the perceived influence of literacy skills on speaking skills for young English learners in Taiwan. Reading and writing skills are often neglected for the sake of improving learners’ oral production. Previous research has shown a significant connection between oral production and literacy skills. The written m…[Read more]

Talk Time is an American ESL book for promoting communicative proficiency for beginning to intermediate students. Interactive and communicative activities such as information gap tasks promote the fluency in collaborative activities and task-based language learning. Interactive activities induce pushed output, the negotiation of meaning, and allow…[Read more]

This study examined incidental receptive and productive vocabulary gains within conversation class interactions. Sixteen Mexican learners of English attended four videotaped conversation lessons where 40 target words were incorporated into different types of exposure. Stimulated recall interviews with students highlighted the effect of cognates,…[Read more]

This research discusses the compliment responses of Chinese-speaking English learners in the United States by using the conversation analysis methods. I compared the examples collected for this study to Pomerantz’s (1978) data for compliment responses made by native speakers of American English. The participants were sixteen Chinese ESL l…[Read more]

Dr. Julie Sykes is Assistant Professor of Spanish and Hispanic Linguistics at the University of New Mexico. She delivered a keynote address at the Second Language Studies Symposium titled Digital gamemediated language learning: From ideas to implementation. This interview took place on 2/24/2012. Her website can be found at…[Read more]

Bill VanPatten is a Professor of Spanish & Second Language Studies at Michigan State University. His research interests include parsing and processing, input processing, the interface between morphology and syntax, and instructed SLA. He is the author or co-author of 8 eight books and almost 100 articles. He has also authored Spanish and French…[Read more]

Professor Rod Ellis is the deputy head of the Department of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He came to the U.S. as a Professor in the University’s Distinguished Professor visitor program. He stayed in the U.S. for five weeks. He is planning to visit the U.S. again in April 2013 for a week. At M…[Read more]

Thank you to Dr. Jenefer Philp, Senior Lecturer of Applied Language Studies and Linguistics, The University of Auckland, for granting this interview. Dr. Philp’s research focuses on second language acquisition and individual differences, interaction, and oral corrective feedback, as well as on child second language acquisition. She came to M…[Read more]

Thank you to Dr. Roy Lyster for accepting our invitation for SLS Working Papers. Dr. Lyster is Professor of Second Language Education, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, at McGill University. His research interests include second language acquisition in classroom settings in general, with a specific focus on immersion and content-based…[Read more]

I would like to thank Robert DeKeyser, Professor of Second Language Acquisition, University of Maryland, for agreeing to be interviewed for these working papers. Dr. DeKeyser’s research interests include SLA, interlanguage variability, individual differences in SLA, aptitude-treatment interaction, cognitive psychology of language acquisition, a…[Read more]

Research has shown that lexical tones pose considerable challenges for second language (L2) learners of Chinese (Wang, Jongman and Sereno, 2003; 2006) and accurate production in tones is crucial for intelligibility and comprehensibility of Chinese L2 speakers’ utterances (Chen, 1997). This study investigates the interrelationships among degree o…[Read more]

Thank you to John Norris, Professor of Second Language Studies, University of Hawai‘i, for agreeing to be interviewed for these working papers. Dr. Norris specializes in assessment and program administration in language education settings. He came to Michigan State University to give a plenary talk at the Second Language Studies Symposium on A…[Read more]

Thank you to Judith Kroll, Distinguished Professor of Psychology, Linguistics, and Women’s Studies, Penn State University, for agreeing to be interviewed for these working papers. Dr. Kroll specializes in psycholinguistics, bilingualism, and second language acquisition. She came to Michigan State University to give a plenary talk at the Second…[Read more]

The speech of nonnative, late English language learners usually exhibits an accent that results from transferring the phonological rules and segmental or suprasegmental features from their first language (L1) into their English speech. Second language (L2) learners may also create novel pronunciations of English sounds that are not part of their…[Read more]

ChinesePod is a language learning website that provides daily language course podcasts to teach spoken Mandarin Chinese to adult learners of Chinese as a second language (L2).