1.1 Cognitive and social perspectives revisited

It was ten years ago that Firth & Wagner (Reference Firth and Wagner1997, Reference Firth and Wagner1998) mounted a challenge to the prevailing individual/cognitive view of second language acquisition (SLA), arguing for a more social/contextual frame of reference. There was a clear implication in Firth & Wagner's arguments that SLA had become private property, owned by those subscribing to the dominant individual/cognitive view, hence their provocative 1998 title: SLA property: No trespassing! (Firth & Wagner Reference Firth and Wagner1998: 91). It seemed appropriate ten years later to reflect on this debate, and a number of papers have been published, of which I single out Larsen-Freeman (Reference Larsen-Freeman2007). She sets out the parameters of the initial debate and claims that Firth & Wagner were ‘challenging the foundational concepts of learner, non-native speaker, and interlanguage, on which the field of SLA had been established three decades earlier’ (p. 776). Her authoritative and well-balanced paper reviews the arguments in favour of Firth & Wagner, those offering partial support for them, and those opposed. It provides also a helpful tabulation of the two views side by side, under headings such as ‘role of context’, ‘nature of language’, ‘nature of learning’, ‘primary research focus’ and others. She makes no claim that during these ten years the two views have been reconciled but offers chaos/complexity theory, in which language is understood as a complex, adaptive system, as one possible means of reframing our understandings of the two views. An excellent piece of scholarship, this should be read by those wishing to inform themselves about the debate and its aftermath.

1.2 Sociocultural perspectives

Also taking stock of SLA theory since Firth & Wagner (Reference Firth and Wagner1997, Reference Firth and Wagner1998) are Swain & Peters (Reference Swain and Deters2007). They set out four concepts which they claim are compatible with a socially-oriented view of SLA: sociocultural theory of mind, situated learning, post-structuralism, and dialogism. The development of socioculturally-informed notions such as these respond well to the challenge set by Firth & Wagner of enlarging the ontological and empirical parameters of SLA. What they call ‘New SLA theory’ offers a ‘broader perspective of the nature of language itself, by having a broader database’ (p. 831) and calls on researchers to pay attention to the stories of learners and to observe them as they proceed through their complex worlds.

1.3 Explicit positive assessment

Another study reflecting a sociocultural perspective is by Waring (Reference Waring2007), who argues that in sociocultural theory ‘participation’ plays a major role in learning – hence the particular interest in instructional practices which enhance or inhibit opportunities for student participation in their lessons. The study is set in adult ESL (English as a Second Language) classrooms, and the specific focus is on ‘use of explicit positive assessment’ (EPA) while commenting on the homework the students had done. Given the problems of motivating L2 learners in many different contexts, one can readily understand that many teachers consider it important to praise their students for coming up with a correct utterance. However, although not disputing the potential value of EPA, Waring's study sounds a cautionary note, since it was found that EPA could in fact deny students opportunities for expressing problems or exploring alternative correct answers. In short, EPA could signal something like ‘Case closed’ (p. 580), nothing further to say on this matter. Where this occurred, the students’ subsequent utterances might well have shown that, although receiving praise from the tutor, they had in fact not fully understood, so EPA might have closed the case prematurely. The writer surmises that one way forward might be to treat correct answers as being almost as problematical as incorrect ones, e.g. by asking students to explain their thinking behind their (correct) answer. If the explanation were convincing, this might benefit the class as a whole; if it were unconvincing, then the student would have more to learn.

1.4 Noticing

‘Noticing’ has attracted the attention of researchers for several years, e.g. Schmidt (Reference Schmidt1990), who viewed noticing as an important process for interlanguage development, not necessarily always conscious but requiring attention to form. The excellent study of ‘noticing’ by Mennim (Reference Mennim2007) is set in a real leaning context of Japanese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students taking their course at university. It allowed the students to make their own decisions as to which forms to attend to, and is longitudinal in nature, covering a period of nine months. This allows time for particular forms to develop, which Mennim rightly considers superior for this purpose to research which is short-term and cross-sectional. The report contains valuable sections on noticing oral output, noticing in learner autonomy and (in relation to the study's own findings) noticing and language development. The students were given some initial training in how to notice, records of their noticing were kept over the nine-month period, as were periodic recordings of their output. Over the period in question their accuracy in the use of their chosen forms improved considerably.

Also investigating ‘noticing’ was Hanaoka (Reference Hanaoka2007) in respect of two groups of Japanese EFL students at a women's university in Japan, in relation to the students’ own (written) output. One group was high-proficiency and the other intermediate. The students were engaged in four-phase writing tasks consisting of writing a story in response to a picture prompt, comparing their writing to two native-speaker models, immediate revision, and delayed revision. At issue was what the students would notice in their own written output and in that of the native speakers (NS), and the extent to which they would be able to take positive account of such ‘noticing’ in their revisions. Both groups showed themselves capable of useful ‘noticing’ but the high-proficiency students noticed significantly more features than did the intermediate students when comparing their original output with that of the NS. It was concluded that ‘output might play a useful role in helping learners identify the language features they need and facilitate subsequent learning of these features’ (p. 476) through their spontaneous focus-on-form activity in meaningful L2 writing.

1.5 Form- and meaning-focused instruction

For many years an aspiration of SLA research has been to integrate or at least link form-focused and meaning-focused instruction. The route chosen by Zhao & Bitchener (Reference Zhao and Bitchener2007) was through an investigation of focus-on-form during meaning-focused activities, with a particular interest in what they called incidental form-focused episodes (FFEs). The students were adult ESL learners in New Zealand from a variety of ethnic and L1 backgrounds, and data were collected from both teacher–learner (T–L) and learner–learner (L–L) interactions. Their study did indeed show that incidental FFEs occurred regularly in both T–L and L–L meaning-focused interactions. Teachers and learners provided roughly similar amounts of information on language difficulties encountered during FFEs, but uptake occurred more frequently in L–L interactions. It was concluded that students of this sort were well able to respond to each other's errors, to show a high level of ‘uptake’ and of ‘acknowledgement’ in FFEs, and to be ‘able to initiate opportunities for accessing target-language data for the immediate resolution of their language difficulties as well as for their L2 acquisition and learning’ (p. 446).

1.6 Processing instruction

It is over 25 years since the input hypothesis gained prominence – e.g. Krashen (Reference Krashen1982). According to Sheen (Reference Sheen2007) most innovations based on this have not led to learners’ acquisition of accurate grammar, except in the case of VanPatten and colleagues – e.g. VanPatten & Cadierno (Reference VanPatten and Cadierno1993) – through their research on processing instruction (PI). Sheen does not seek to add anything new to our knowledge of PI. A different purpose is to provide a clear summary of the essential components of PI and the empirical evidence which supports it, and in this I believe it succeeds admirably. In addition, in its conclusions it leaves proper room for teachers’ own judgement. If busy teachers are able to find the time to read summaries of relevant research, then I would recommend this article for their attention.

1.7 Memorisation and imitation

‘Good learners’ is a topic which under one name or another features regularly in SLA research. A salutary contribution to this field is provided by Ding (Reference Ding2007), who interviewed three highly successful, prize-winning Chinese learners of English in China. All three attached high importance to text memorisation and imitation (e.g. of teachers or voices on tape). When at school, these methods were forced upon them, but over time they came to appreciate their merit. They ascribed their high achievement not to high aptitude but to hard work. They considered that learning by heart and imitation increased their awareness of collocations and sequences of words, and helped them to make use of these in their output and to attend to detail. The writer concluded that it helps considerably if learners develop a rich repertoire of formulaic expressions.

1.8 Elicitation and reformulation

Two strategies of feedback in interaction – elicitation and reformulation – were the object of Nassaji's (Reference Nassaji2007) study, in the case of adult intermediate-level students who had arrived in Canada from a variety of different countries. Reformulation implies re-phrasing the learner's utterance into an acceptable form, while elicitation implies not providing a reformulation but instead pushing the learner to reformulate. It was found that the students were able to successfully modify their output roughly one third of the time, following reformulations and elicitations, though reformulations occurred roughly twice as often. The likelihood of both strategies being associated with accurate reporting was increased when they were accompanied by explicit verbal or intonational prompts, and also if there was a sense of saliency. It was concluded that ‘the usefulness of interactional feedback depends to a large degree on its explicitness and the extent to which it is able to draw the learner's attention to form’ (p. 539).

2.1 Motivating

Much of the research on motivation has focused on its nature and on the extent to which it is present in particular individuals. The study by Cheng & Dörnyei (Reference Cheng and Dörnyei2007), however, is concerned with the process of ‘motivating’. The instrument which they used with 387 Taiwanese teachers of EFL drew on the one developed by Dörnyei & Csizér (Reference Dörnyei and Czisér1998) in Hungary. The Taiwanese teachers were asked to consider a list of motivational strategies and to state how important or otherwise they felt these were and how often they made use of them. The strategies fell into a number of categories, e.g. ‘proper teacher behaviour’, ‘recognise students’ effort’, ‘promote learners’ self-confidence’, ‘creating a pleasant classroom climate’, ‘present tasks properly’, ‘increase learners’ goal-orientedness’, ‘make the learning tasks stimulating’, ‘familiarise learners with L2-related values’, ‘promote group cohesiveness and group norms’, ‘promote learner autonomy’ – each of which is instanced by a number of specific examples. It was found that there was a consistent pattern of response across both the Taiwanese and Hungarian studies which the researchers considered to imply that motivational practices can operate across cultures. On the other hand, the similarity across cultures was not uniform, in that ‘promoting learner autonomy’ was considered unimportant and ‘recognising students’ efforts and hard work’ was considered highly important by the Taiwanese teachers to a greater extent than those in Hungary. A thoughtful discussion is provided of these areas of difference, and of other strategies on which Taiwanese teachers reported relatively low frequency of use.

2.2 Self-efficacy and self-regulation

In their research on intermediate-level students of French at College in the USA, Mills, Pajares & Herron (Reference Mills, Pajares and Herron2007) were particularly interested in the concept of self-efficacy and its relation to attainment in French. Self-efficacy and other motivational self-beliefs had come into prominence in the 1980s, e.g. Bandura (Reference Bandura1986), and have been of interest in language-motivation research ever since. The paper by Mills and colleagues provides a helpful overview of self-efficacy in the research literature, in relation to concepts such as social cognitive theory, gender, academic achievement and foreign language learning. A number of possible predictors of French attainment were drawn up, including self-efficacy to obtain grades in French, anxiety in listening to and reading French, French-learning self-concept, and self-efficacy for self-regulation. It was in fact the latter which was found to be the best predictor of intermediate-level French language attainment. Encouragement could be taken from the general self-efficacy research which claims that self-regulation is in fact teachable, and the study conveys a positive message for the potential value of language-strategy training, in that if learners can be trained in self-regulation, this will feed positively into their self-efficacy, and the combination of self-efficacy and self-regulation will enable them to achieve higher attainment in the foreign language they are learning.

2.3 Falling numbers

The large-scale survey by Coleman, Galaczi & Astruc (Reference Coleman, Galaczi and Astruc2007) is set in the context of sharply declining numbers at secondary school in England taking a foreign language beyond the compulsory stage, which ends at Grade 9. Data were collected from over 10,000 students at Grades 7, 8 and 9, which constitute the only three years in which at the time of writing FL education is compulsory in English state schools. The components of motivation which emerged most clearly from the survey were instrumental, integrative, achievement orientation, effort and perceived language aptitude. Although the level of motivation shown by the students was considered by the researchers as modestly positive, they surmised that if the decline in numbers is to be halted, then a higher level of motivation is likely to be needed while a language is compulsory at Grades 7–9 – all the more so, since motivation fell from Grade 7 to Grade 8 and (less sharply) from Grade 8 to Grade 9. The report identifies some important factors which seemed associated with positive motivation, e.g. schools ‘which have formally opted to implement a mission for language learning’ (p. 270) and also those which had volunteered to take part in a key national initiative. This led the writers to the conclusion that ‘declining motivation is a slightly less worrying phenomenon where the school environment supports language learning’ (p. 270).

2.4 Comparison over ten years

Many studies of L2 motivation are ‘one-off’, whereby the researcher(s) descend on an educational establishment, obtain a sample of motivational data from a fairly small group, depart in order to write up their report, and do not return. By contrast, a feature of the paper by Heining-Boynton & Haitema (Reference Heining-Boynton and Haitema2007) is that, far from being one-off, it covers a ten-year period and also a large sample, in this case FLES (Foreign Languages at Elementary School) learners at elementary school in the USA. The ten-year span enabled motivational dispositions of the same students to be compared. Analysis of the combined data showed that students’ perceptions of languages other than English, of foreign cultures, and of the impact of FL study on their education, tended to be favourable. At the same time, though, there were some signs of increasing disenchantment with the notion of learning a foreign language. Where such disenchantment occurred, for both female and male students it seemed associated with a decline in liking the teacher, in inclination to continue FL study and in willingness to use the FL outside the classroom. Also associated with disenchantment was the perception that FL study at elementary school was less integral to the school curriculum than so-called ‘core’ subjects such as mathematics, language arts and science, making FL study by contrast seem rather peripheral.

2.5 Perceived relevance

One important component of language-related motivation which may be implied by many research studies but perhaps surprisingly does not seem to feature as a main topic is the notion of ‘perceived relevance’. This, however, is the focus of a study by Rose (Reference Rose2007), who explored what seemed relevant to her EFL students in Finland. Her notion of ‘relevance’ is taken from Keller's (Reference Keller1987) ARCS model of Attention, Relevance, Confidence and Satisfaction. The context was a College which provides vocational education at upper secondary and adult levels, in many cases for students with poor health, disabilities or social problems and thereby in need of support. In her thoughtful study, some of the most interesting conclusions relate to the researcher herself, who came to understand that ‘relevance’ is best understood as only one component among others. For her, the study underlines the importance of taking student views seriously and engaging them in regular dialogue.

3.1 Benefit of retrieval

A good example of combining ‘experimental’ and ‘situated’ research is Barcroft's (Reference Barcroft2007) study involving L1-English students at university learning Spanish. They were presented with 24 word–picture pairs; then twelve pairs were viewed with a six-second gap between the visual and its word, while there was no such gap for the other twelve pairs. The assumption was that in the case of the twelve pairs where there was a gap, this would provide the students with an opportunity to retrieve the words from memory, and the intention was to see if this process of retrieval would bring benefit. Following three sets of post-test (immediate, one-day and one-week delay) the retrieval condition was found to yield the higher scores. I find this study impressive at two levels: first, it has a simple design, addresses a key pedagogical issue and has clear pedagogical implications; and secondly, it also provides an authoritative theoretical background to help the inquiring reader understand what the underlying processes may be.

3.2 Emotional depth

Corrigan (Reference Corrigan2007) is surely right in arguing that ‘learning a word is not an all-or-nothing proposition’ (p. 212). Words may be known superficially or more deeply; or they may be known in terms of propositional or cultural or personal meaning, to give only some obvious examples of the complexity of vocabulary knowledge. Her study focuses on the notion of affective meaning within deep vocabulary knowledge. It provides a detailed theoretical background to vocabulary knowledge and leads to conclusions which may have relevance to language teaching. She claims, for example, that it suggests the importance not only of teaching categories of vocabulary such as adjectives or verbs but also of focusing on the emotional and other sorts of relationship between them. When students are learning vocabulary in relation to narrative texts, for example, it can be beneficial if they try to think of the different sorts of interactions in which the characters will engage and of ‘the types of emotions or mental states they are likely to experience as they are interacting’(p. 236).

3.3 Understanding polysemous words

According to Morimoto & Loewen (Reference Morimoto and Loewen2007), learners in the initial phase of their learning need to come to terms with some 3,000 items of vocabulary, most of which are likely to be high-frequency. They claim, however, that high-frequency words can pose problems of meaning because they may have acquired a wide range of interpretations (hence the term ‘polysemous’). In their quasi-experimental study there were 58 Japanese High School students of English, and two polysemous terms were in focus: the verb ‘break’ and the preposition ‘over’. There were two treatment groups: ISBI (image-schema-based instruction) and TBI (translation-based instruction), plus one control group. Would ISBI, based on visualisation and cognitive semantics, prevail over a more conventional TBI? Tests of acceptability judgement and of production were set at three stages: pre-test, post-test 1 (after two days) and post-test 2 (after two weeks). The results showed a positive effect for instruction, in that both ISBI and TBI were superior to the control group, but there was little difference between the two treatment groups. This prompts me to surmise that if each of the two treatments has something to offer, then maybe there might be a Treatment 3 consisting of ISBI + TBI?

3.4 De-contextualised and contextualised approaches

To what extent does context make it easier to learn L2 vocabulary? Webb (Reference Webb2007a) claims that there is little research evidence to suggest that it does. Indeed, he claims that de-contextualised tasks such as learning L1–L2 word pairs have proved more successful than contextualised tasks such as incidental reading. However, he also argues that maybe this is because those aspects of learning through context have rarely been measured, and his study is designed to investigate the effects of context not only on vocabulary learning but also on grammatical functions, syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations, orthography, and meaning and form. The students were Japanese learning EFL in Japan. Central to the study was a comparison between learning from L1–L2 word pairs (de-contextualised) and learning from glossed sentences (contextualised). The de-contextualised approach was not found to be inferior. It was surmised that a benefit of word pairs might be that they help adult learners make a link between L1 meaning and L2 forms, whereas a more contextualised approach might direct them more to meaning at the expense of form. However, a concluding thought was that the two modes are not necessarily antagonistic – e.g. learning word pairs might help adult learners at Beginners level acquire high-frequency vocabulary in order to reach the stage at which they could acquire further vocabulary through more contextualised approaches.

3.5 Effect of repetition

In a study closely related to, and nicely building on, Webb (Reference Webb2007a) above, Webb (Reference Webb2007b) focuses on the effects of repetition on incidental vocabulary learning (comparing 1, 3, 7 and 10 exposures). The results clearly showed a favourable effect, and it was concluded that ‘if learners encounter unknown words ten times in context, sizeable gains may occur. However, to develop full knowledge of a word, more than ten encounters may be needed’ (p. 46). A pedagogical implication was that learners would be likely to benefit from an extensive reading programme with graded readers designed to include sufficient repetition in context for significant vocabulary growth to occur.

4.1 Digitally-supported listening

The majority of research articles on ICT have featured lessons in secondary or post-school education. It is pleasing therefore to encounter a study by Verdugo & Belmonte (Reference Verdugo and Belmonte2007) based on the listening comprehension of Spanish children aged 6 learning EFL. The study drew on six state primary schools in Madrid, in each of which there was a control group receiving conventional EFL teaching and an experimental group whose instruction included an ICT-supported component making use of a website featuring 69 stories. Each story was analysed according to the language functions and the main points of grammar, vocabulary and sound-system it contained. Evaluation of both groups’ progress was by means of a pre- and post-test arrangement. The pre-test showed both groups to be similar in English, though with the experimental group slightly behind, but in the post-test there were significant though not massive differences in favour of the experimental group. The writers offer some interesting thoughts to account for the superiority of the ICT-enhanced group, e.g. that the use of digital stories may have promoted concentration and helped focus the children's attention on the oral input; and possibly also that each child would play the story several times. Although there were some initial difficulties in making autonomous use of the web-facility, these were fairly quickly resolved with the co-operation of teachers and fellow students.

4.2 Beyond prefabrication

Surveys of research on languages at primary school across the European Union – e.g. Blondin et al. (Reference Blondin, Candelier, Edelenbos, Johnstone, Kubanek-German and Taeschner1999) – have indicated that a feature of children's foreign language has often been the extensive production of prefabricated phrases but with little manipulation of the constituent elements. The study by Pinter (Reference Pinter2007) shows nonetheless that children even with a relatively low level of FL proficiency can show creativity and spontaneity. Her subjects were two boys aged 10 who had been learning English at primary school in Hungary for two years, and the study focuses on their interactions and their expressed views about this. A key to spontaneity and creativity was task repetition, but with the task varied slightly each time. The children were asked to do several sets of ‘spot the differences’ tasks, and the changes in their behaviour were observed and analysed from their first to their final attempts over a period of three weeks. They showed that they could engage spontaneously with each other, provide mutual assistance, and learn to appreciate what the task was really about. They proved capable of going beyond the production of fixed phrases in order to express meanings fluently in a less restricted manner, so that their interactions ‘became a fast-moving game that they tackled with confidence’ (p. 201). It was concluded that this type of task can work well with children at a relatively low level of FL proficiency and with little or no intervention from the teacher.

4.3 Outcomes of different types of pairing

Also interested in pair interactions were Watanabe & Swain (Reference Watanabe and Swain2007), this time with adult Japanese learners of ESL in Canada. An aim was to ascertain what sorts of outcome might arise from different types of pairing according to the learners’ ESL proficiency. Four core participants interacted in pairs with higher-proficiency and lower-proficiency partners. The analysis was of pair interactions and also language-related episodes (LREs). It was found that pairs learn more if the intention is collaborative. Different benefits of the pair-work arose, depending on whether the interaction was core + higher or core + lower proficiency partner. The core + higher pairs produced a higher frequency of LREs, but the core + lower pairs generated the higher post-test scores. It was also concluded that teachers should not assume that the only way of pairing students is by the same level of proficiency. On the contrary, grouping learners at different levels of proficiency can support their L2 learning – in which case it becomes important for teachers to be aware of the sorts of outcome that might arise from the different types of pairing which might occur.

4.4 Task familiarity

Also working with children in pairs (in this case 40 ESL children aged 7–8 years at elementary school) were Mackey, Kanganas & Oliver (Reference Mackey, Kanganas and Oliver2007). Their interest was in how the children would perform in pairs when doing different sorts of task, in particular those that were familiar or unfamiliar in respect of content and procedures. It was found that tasks which were unfamiliar in both content and procedures were associated with more clarification requests, more confirmation checks and more corrective feedback; tasks that were familiar in procedures were associated with more opportunities to use feedback; and tasks that were familiar in both content and procedures were associated with more actual use of feedback. In order to help readers understand what might have been involved, there is a helpful discussion of the concepts of content familiarity and procedure familiarity, each illuminated by examples from actual classroom paired activity. The findings might possibly help teachers raise their explicit awareness of task familiarity (in relation to both content and procedure) and the sorts of outcome which might be anticipated.

4.5 Code-switching and identity

According to Ellwood (Reference Ellwood2007), the language-learning classroom is an excellent forum for constructing and acting out new forms of the self. Her qualitative study of students from Asian and European backgrounds learning English in Australia shows how identity issues feature not only in the main business of teaching and learning as intended by the teacher, but also in what she terms ‘instances of side-play’ (p. 553) which involved code-switching by the students into their particular L1 and which tended to be concealed from the teacher. The three main instances of code-switching were: expressing frustration with one's own learning and trying to get ‘on board’ in the lesson; criticising the teacher; and desiring to become a global, international person (involving discourses of boundary-crossing, open-mindedness, multilingualism and international understanding – an identity which seemed to gather little recognition by the teacher). The writer points to ‘the importance of avoiding normative positioning of students’ (p. 554) and to remain open to the complex and not-fixed nature of students’ identities, which are influenced by a range of social and biographical factors.

4.6 Desktop videoconferencing

The study by Lee (Reference Lee2007) was based on one-to-one desktop videoconferencing between 18 different pairs of students at university level and an expert speaker. The aim was to use the technology to create a supportive, non-threatening environment in which each pair would co-construct meanings in real time in order to fulfil their allotted tasks. It was concluded that desktop videoconferencing has great potential for the development of students’ oral skills in that it draws on both audio and video, engages participants actively, and creates an environment for genuine language use. At the same time, some useful lessons were learnt as to how to make the process work effectively. These included careful design of tasks, appropriate selection of linguistic context and inclusion of sufficient network training, e.g. teaching students how to project their voice and to make good use of body language and facial expression, in order to realise the potential which the medium offered.

5.1 Theoretical background to reading research

Reading in an additional language is a complex process, and there could be no more distinguished a guide than Koda's (Reference Koda2007) outstanding text which sets out the theoretical background to L2 reading on the basis of extensive published research evidence. Unlike L1 reading, L2 reading, it is argued, involves two languages which continuously interact with each other and which constantly require the reader to make adjustments in accordance with the demands of each particular language. The article considers the specific ways in which L2 reading is constrained by language-specific demands both within and between languages, but it also discusses reading universals which set the framework for all learners in all languages and which circumscribe the amount of variation in learning-to-read which learners have available to them. A comprehensive list of topics relevant to L2 reading is addressed, each supported by a range of recent research studies. Examples of such topics are: linguistic knowledge in reading development, linguistic knowledge in text-information-handling, linguistic knowledge in reader-model-building, reading universals, metalinguistic awareness in reading acquisition, facilitation benefits from prior literacy experience, interaction between L1 and L2 literacy experiences, linguistic distance between the two languages, and several more. This is not an easy read but is well worth the effort.

5.2 Topic familiarity and working memory

Two concepts which have to be taken into account when trying to understand L2 reading are ‘topic familiarity’ (TF) and ‘working memory’ (WM), the object of Leeser's (Reference Leeser2007) study featuring 94 adults learners engaging with future tense morphology in L2 Spanish. TF was found to play a strong role in helping the learners come to terms with the target structures, and this applied to all three measures that were used: comprehension, form recognition and tense identification. WM was also shown to be associated with comprehension and form recognition, but in interestingly divergent ways. It benefited comprehension if the learners were familiar with the particular topic. On the other hand, it benefited form recognition, only if the learners were not familiar with the topic. It seemed that familiarity with the particular topic was obstructing WM from helping the learners recognise the target forms. The writer offers some insightful thoughts on why this might be so.

5.3 Topic familiarity and incidental vocabulary acquisition

Topic familiarity is also a focus of the study by Pulido (Reference Pulido2007a), in which she considers the potential of TF for facilitating the relationship between text comprehension and incidental vocabulary acquisition. In other words: what role does background knowledge play in the relationship between the comprehension of a passage and those activities which serve to process input and retain word-meanings? She concludes that learners develop a greater retention of linguistic elements such as orthographic forms and the meanings of new items of vocabulary insofar as they become more efficient in converting input to intake during their L2 reading. However, this is not a straightforward matter, since a daunting series of activities are at play at more or less the same time, such as pattern recognition, lexical access, concept activation, syntactic analysis, propositional encoding, prior knowledge activation, information storage and comprehension monitoring. In view of such a challenge, one might ask, how do we manage? Pulido's authoritative article helps. A brief pedagogical section is included, in which it is argued that the study lends support to the provision of comprehensible input and to the promotion of comprehended input, on the grounds that ‘the greater the level of comprehension, the greater the chances of making form–meaning connections for new items encountered through reading’ (p. 185). As a consequence, she argues, it would make sense to design reading activities which activated strategies for the processing of texts at the macro- and micro-levels.

Pulido (Reference Pulido2007b) also features topic familiarity along with passage sight vocabulary in relation to their impact on lexical inferencing. By ‘passage sight vocabulary’ is meant vocabulary knowledge associated with the particular text that is being read. If learners have a large passage sight vocabulary and are able to decode efficiently, then they can focus their mind on those elements in the passage that are new. This enables the construction and integration of ideas from context and the utilisation of their long-term memory, which in turn increases the chances of making successful inferences as to the meaning of new words which they encounter in the text.

5.4 Learning to read totally different script systems

It is quite an achievement to learn to read in another language, even if that language shares a similar if not identical romanised script (e.g. learners with L1 English learning to read German). What, then, is the situation with those learning an L2 which has both a sound system and a written system which are based on completely different principles from their L1? The fascinating study by Cheung, Chan & Chong (Reference Cheung, Chan and Chong2007) features Grade 4 pupils in six Hong Kong primary schools learning English. The fascination is all the greater in that Cantonese, the main language of Hong Kong, has more tones and more elaborated written characters than does the Mandarin Chinese of Mainland China. In reading aloud in Cantonese and in English, for example, in what ways can children proceed from the two very different sets of written symbol to the two very different modes of pronunciation (Cantonese having seven different tones)? This excellent article reveals what was achieved and suggests where the problems lay.

5.5 Speech act recognition

It is plausible to assume that NS of a particular language are often, though not necessarily always, able to understand the intentional speech acts which underlie utterances which they hear or read. The study by Holtgraves (Reference Holtgraves2007) was designed to establish the extent to which this is possible in the case of an additional language which an individual is learning. Participants were aged 19–20 at university in the USA, representing a range of different countries and L1s. A key difference between the NS and the NNS group lay in their capacity to achieve quick online comprehension, which meant that ‘recognition of the speaker's intention occurs when the utterance is comprehended rather than reflects a post-comprehension process’ (p. 598). NS were able to recognise the speech acts online whereas the NNS were not, though this could be achieved later in the post-comprehension process, suggesting a degree of automaticity for L1 recognition that L2 learners find difficult. However, as the writer claims, context is important, and possibly recognition can be speeded up if L2 learners are enabled to extract meaning of speech acts both from the utterance and the context.

5.6 Types of feedback

Working with EFL students at university in Japan, Murphy (Reference Murphy2007) made use of an online reading programme which contained two key features, each offering two possibilities. These were: ‘manner of study’ with a choice of pair or individual work; and ‘type of feedback’ with a choice of evaluative feedback (EF) or knowledge of correct response (KCR). EF consisted of providing online hints about correct answers so as to stimulate reflection and/or discussion. Judging ‘type of feedback’ on its own, there were no statistically significant differences between the two types in terms of reading performance. However, there were interesting interactions between ‘manner of study’ and ‘type of feedback’. Students receiving EF benefited most when working in pairs, while students receiving KCR benefited most when working individually, and the lowest scores were by students receiving EF and working alone. Given the potential value of EF, there is a thoughtful discussion of how this might best be provided in online reading activity.

5.7 Transfer of reading attitudes

Yamashita's (Reference Yamashita2007) study focuses on the extent to which reading attitudes (RAs) transfer from L1 to L2 and on the role played by L2 proficiency in this, in the case of adult EFL learners in Japan. L1 and L2 RAs were found to be different but L1 RAs significantly influenced those for L2. There was, however, no clear indication that L1 RAs increased as L2 proficiency rose. It was not surprising that in respect of emotional variables such as comfort and anxiety the learners showed more positive feelings when reading L1 than L2, and there is a useful discussion of likely differences between L1 and L2 reading, e.g. L1 readers being more able to focus on content while L2 readers need to concentrate on processing the linguistic elements and as a result tend to read more slowly and cover less ground. In addition, there is an exemplary section conveying the pedagogical implications of the research.

5.8 Formative feedback

The main focus of McGarrell & Verbeem's (Reference McGarrell and Verbeem2007) paper is ‘between-draft revision’, in the case of students’ L2 writing. They see this as a deep-level process in comparison with merely drawing attention to surface errors. Essential to ‘between-draft revision’ are teachers who adopt an inquiring stance which encourages students to negotiate meanings as these emerge. The type of feedback thereby provided is formative, dialogic and within a process view of writing, as opposed to feedback that is evaluative, end-point and based on writing-as-product. A range of good examples of this type of feedback are provided, leading to the claim that it motivates students towards revising their initial drafts.

5.9 The old and the new

The paper on children's ESL writing in Hong Kong by Lo & Hyndland (Reference Lo and Hyndland2007) is a well-conducted action research study of an important topic which offers a balanced perspective. The setting was an all-girls primary school with L2 English as medium of instruction. The focus is the introduction of a new writing programme which differed from the traditional one in that it took more account of the children's own socio-cultural context, sought to provide a genuine audience, linked writing to other language skills, and aimed at stimulating the children's writing motivation and engagement. It was found that the new programme was indeed associated with increased motivation and engagement, and also that hitherto underachieving pupils’ achievement was raised. Of particular interest, though, were the high-achieving pupils, because they experienced some loss of accuracy. The writers were aware of the desirability of helping students achieve greater accuracy but they did not consider that what had happened was necessarily undesirable. They surmised that perhaps the high-achieving students were so used to the traditional formula of learning and practising towards the tests that ‘the removal of a form of language scaffolding they knew how to manipulate represented a threat to them’ (p. 231), and they went on to surmise that in fact these high-achieving students were learning how to experiment and become flexible with their written language, in which case some initial drop in accuracy might be expected.

5.10 Literacy in bilingual children

In professional forums I have often heard it claimed that bilingualism promotes children's general literacy development. Perhaps, however, this over-simplifies the matter. Fortunately, clarification is to hand in the form of Bialystok's (Reference Bialystok2007) authoritative overview of the acquisition of literacy in bilingual children. Three pre-requisites are posited for the acquisition of literacy: competence in the spoken language, understanding of the symbolic concept of print and metalinguistic awareness. By reviewing a number of studies of the extent to which literacy development is similar or different between monolingual and bilingual children, she claims that bilingualism is sometimes an advantage (concepts of print), sometimes a disadvantage (spoken competence) and sometimes makes little difference (metalinguistic awareness). She concludes that ‘bilingualism is clearly a factor in children's development of literacy but the effect of the factor is neither simple nor unitary’ (Bialystok Reference Bialystok2007: 45).

6.1 Integration

In his overview of strategy research, mainly in the UK, Grenfell (Reference Grenfell2007) argues that ‘ideas and concepts derived from strategy research have tended to be used in a rather ad hoc way – often with confusing results’ (p. 18). He points to a range of factors which have contributed to the confusion, including a mistaken view of communicative language teaching, much of which was not in fact based on communicative activity at all but was behavioural. He recommends that strategy instruction should not be treated as an additional component that somehow has to be fitted into an already busy schedule but that it should be integrated into a strategic way of thinking and of teaching. In this, there would be a move beyond teaching a particular quantity of strategies towards a greater emphasis on quality, and it would be important to take account both of learner cognition and also of the social dimension so as to reflect the learner's environment.

6.2 Strategy research

One of the reasons for the confusion about strategies referred to by Grenfell (above), according to Macaro (Reference Macaro2007), has been their loose definition, with terms such as ‘strategies’ and ‘processes’ used almost interchangeably. Rather than seeking to establish a definitive list of strategies which exist in their own right and can be applied across all contexts, it is preferable to think of strategies in relation to particular skills and to the tasks which reflect these, and then to seek to gauge the extent to which strategies are transferrable. Some valuable thoughts are offered on the extent to which the relationship between strategies and variables such as proficiency, attainments and success can be viewed as causal, and on how such relationships might be investigated. A further important point for further research is raised – the relationship between knowledge and strategy development.

6.3 Self-efficacy

A main focus of Graham's (Reference Graham2007) study was self-efficacy in the listening comprehension of students of French aged 16–17 in ten UK secondary schools. There were three conditions: an HS (high-scaffolding) group which received strategy-training (ST) plus detailed feedback on their listening strategies and on their reflective diaries; an LS (low-scaffolding) group which received ST; and a comparison group which received no ST. There was some evidence that the ST was helpful and that the HS group benefited most in their self-efficacy for listening, but not by as much as had been anticipated. The report contains brief but pertinent sections on ‘assessing self-efficacy’, ‘initial awareness-raising’ and ‘reflection and strategy feedback’. It also reaches a balanced conclusion that ST plus feedback focusing on the relationship between strategy use and successful listening ‘is a promising method for improving both listening performance and students’ deep-seated feelings about listening. Giving such feedback, however, is time-consuming and requires a detailed understanding on the part of the person giving the feedback . . .’ (p. 91). The report concludes with some highly useful suggestions for classroom pedagogy.

6.4 A learning community

Coyle's (Reference Coyle2007a) perceptive study of the development of learner strategies is sociocultural in essence, assuming the interdependence of social and individual processes as learning is co-constructed by teacher and students. While working with 11-year-old children beginning German at secondary school in England, it proved possible to identify three components of learning strategies: classroom culture, scaffolded learning and creation of learning opportunities. The research led to a set of factors being developed which seemed to contribute to these. For example, ‘classroom culture’ was supported by high teacher expectations, humour, particular ways of dealing with error, and time (e.g. for thinking out loud, supporting others, or inventing new language). Scaffolded learning was supported by individual spaces, modelling, progression/recycling and asking questions. Creating learning opportunities was supported by spontaneity, transfer (using what one already knows) and explanation.

6.5 Beginner teachers

Beginner L2 teachers is an under-researched topic, but an admirable contribution is made by Watzke (Reference Watzke2007) in his study of nine FL teachers in the initial stage of their career. Using a grounded theory approach, the writer is able to explain change in the teachers’ FL pedagogical knowledge by reference to four main categories: prior knowledge that frames instructional decisions, attitudes towards teacher control in the classroom, instructional goals for daily lessons, and responding to student affect. The beginner teachers felt a priority need to control their classes and to come to terms with the school curriculum, and for those reasons to try out practices which ran counter to those advocated in their professional preparation. There is an excellent discussion of how teachers might develop professionally beyond this position.

6.6 Communicative language teaching (CLT)

In recent years there has been much argument against and for communicative language teaching (CLT), e.g. Bax (Reference Bax2004) and Liao (Reference Liao2005). The study by Hiep (Reference Hiep2007) is focused on the beliefs held by teachers in Vietnam and who generally showed positive attitudes towards CLT. They favoured it, not because it was modern and progressive, nor because it was what the country's educational policy-makers wanted, but because they considered it best reflected their students’ needs. Certainly, CLT brought with it a range of problems, e.g. constraints of high-stakes examinations, large-sized classes, cultural views of what teachers and students should and should not be doing, and limited expertise in constructing communicative tasks. However, these limitations were considered as not nearly sufficient to justify its demise. I feel I should add a personal reflection here. In my view, the literature on CLT, whether about it, or for it or against it, has never been entirely convincing, and for a note on the confusion which can ensue, see Grenfell (Reference Grenfell2007) in section 6.1 above. Against that background, the views of the teachers in Hiep's admirable study are worthy of respect.

6.7 Autonomy through self-access

The Confucian view of education which is still evident in China, including Hong Kong, implies top–down development as knowledge is passed down the generations. Nonetheless, the Hong Kong government decided that secondary school students needed to learn to become more autonomous, and L2 English was an obvious area. Miller, Shuk-Ching & Hopkins (Reference Miller, Shuk-Ching and Hopkins2007) provide an excellent small-scale study of the development of SALL (self-access language learning) based initially in three schools. One chose to implement SALL through classroom activity; a second chose project work; the third chose to develop a SAC (self-access centre). The researchers concentrate on the SAC and outline how it functioned. The data come from two teachers and nine students and show how key concepts of inclusion, training and student involvement were addressed. The teachers had made two key strategic decisions: one was to establish the SAC, and the other was to involve the students in its running, with the consequence that an ethos of SALL quickly pervaded the SAC and encouraged the students to develop a strong sense of equal ownership.

6.8 Time distribution

Overwhelmingly, the main approach to the distribution of time in L2 provision is ‘a lot of a little’, sometimes called ‘drip feed’. However, the reason for adopting this mode is probably a reflection of curricular timetabling necessity rather than pedagogical desirability. The study by Serrano & Muñoz (Reference Serrano and Muñoz2007) investigates this area by following closely three different time-distributions with adult ESL learners attending a university language school in Spain. The three distributions all had the same amount of time overall (110 hours) but differed in the distribution of this time. They were ‘extensive’ over 7 months, at four hours per week; ‘semi intensive’ over 3–4 months at 8–10 hours per week; and ‘intensive’ over five weeks at 25 hours per week. The students in all three distributions improved their performance over their allotted time. However, ‘semi-intensive’ and ‘intensive’ proved clearly superior to ‘extended’, showing significantly improved performance on all four tasks which were used as measures of progress. There is a highly useful overview of the research literature on time distribution, both in general education and then in L2 teaching. More studies of this are needed in a wider variety of contexts.

6.9 Strategies and other variables

The study by Magogwe & Oliver (Reference Magogwe and Oliver2007) focuses on strategies in relation to other variables and, pleasingly, it is set in Botswana, a country which has not featured strongly thus far in international Applied Linguistics research. According to the authors, English is of major importance in Botswana for education and for careers, but many students are not proficient in it as L2. Their investigation drew on three age-groups: students at primary school, secondary school and in tertiary education, which allowed language learning strategies to be related to age, with additional variables being proficiency and self-efficacy beliefs. In fact, a dynamic relationship was found between students’ reported use of language learning strategies and these other variables. Unsurprisingly, proficient students made most use of strategies and there was some relationship between self-efficacy beliefs and overall use of strategies. In addition, however, there were some interesting indications, e.g. that particular strategies (such as social strategies) might be culturally more appropriate than others; and that low proficiency students possessing high self-efficacy beliefs tended to use strategies more often than those with lower self-efficacy beliefs, which might be a hopeful sign for improved proficiency in due course.

7.1 Telecollaboration

In Basharina's (Reference Basharina2007) study the students were Japanese, Mexican and Russian learners of English at university, engaged in WebCT bulletin board telecollaboration with each other on a 12-week project. Three sorts of issue arose which were interpreted by the writer as ‘contradictions’ in terms of Activity theory. The three sorts of contradiction were: intracultural, intercultural and technology-related. Within Activity theory, contradictions are viewed as potential sources of collaborative development which can help create new forms of activity. In the event, whereas the intracultural contradictions were quickly resolved, the intercultural ones were not, and as a result some of the students formed negative attitudes, with interesting differences becoming evident between the three nationalities. The writer concludes that it is not reasonable to expect educational institutions in different countries to align their cultures-of-use to the extent that all intercultural contradictions can be resolved, but considers it possible to help students at least gain an awareness of how material conditions and educational paradigms can influence the ways in which different groups perceive and interact with each other.

Also focusing on telecollaboration was O'Dowd (Reference O'Dowd2007) in the case of EFL students at university in Germany interacting with counterparts in Ireland and USA learning German. The aims were to establish to what extent telecollaboration can facilitate intercultural competence and to identify such skills and knowledge as students and teachers might need in order to make the particular telecollaboration work effectively. It was concluded that telecollaboration does have considerable potential in that it provides learners with inputs, e.g. via email, web-based message boards and video-conferencing, which differ considerably from what is found in textbooks. It was found to be helpful if the telecollaboration included explicit dialogues which offered comparisons of the respective cultures and promoted a dynamic exchange of student views. It was also helpful if a combination of different online tools was used, rather than relying on one mode alone, e.g. email and video-conferencing could usefully complement each other in various ways. In order to make the telecollaboration work successfully, it would be important to provide students with explicit guidance and training and to help teachers become familiar with the various roles which the new medium entailed for them: for example, teacher as organiser, as intercultural partner, as model and coach and as source or resource.

7.2 Tracking different pathways according to personality type

Several of my previous annual surveys have featured reports which focus on the computer's ability to track the routes which learners take while working through language-learning applications. Hwu's (Reference Hwu2007) report adds to this emerging body of knowledge. A distinguishing feature was the highlighting of two key learner variables: language abilities as measured in a placement test and personality preferences. The latter were located on a dimension ranging from Sensing (calling for carefulness, thoroughness and sound understanding) to Intuition (calling for quickness of insight and seeing relationships). The objective of the particular application was to teach the use of two Spanish past-tense forms to fifth-semester students at university in the USA. The two types of personality preference, as well as students’ differing reading levels, were associated with differences in the ways in which the students preferred to work through the application. Intuitive students were mainly found to favour a cognitive learning strategy by developing their own understanding of the two tense forms, whereas Sensing students tended to adopt a memory-based strategy. However, it was also found that these differing behaviours did not significantly influence students’ attainment, suggesting that a population of students with differing types of personality could indeed follow different pathways in order to fulfil the same learning task. The writer suggests, however, that further studies would be needed to ascertain whether or not one particular strategy was better in the long run possibly because of deeper processing. The report concludes with some useful implications for software design.

7.3 Culture-related ICT

The study by Levy (Reference Levy2007) does not so much present new research as suggest a research-based pedagogical framework on to which different sorts of culture-related ICT activities may be plotted. The framework embraces five different culture perspectives: (i) elemental, (ii) relative, (iii) group membership, (iv) contested, and (v) individual. Each of these is amply discussed and exemplified by reference to published research. The framework also illustrates five specific projects which reflect a range of technologies such as email, discussion forum and web-based. The framework brings these together into the one system, which also incorporates pedagogical or learning strategies such as ‘explore stereotypes’, ‘compare C1 and C2’ (i.e. Culture 1 and Culture 2), ‘incremental refinement of understanding of C2’, ‘challenge the comfort zone relative to NS norms’, and ‘explore NS norms of interpretation in relation to specific communicative events’. Thus, the framework allows teachers to locate their own particular ICT cultural project and to see what it is likely and less likely to entail. There can be little doubt concerning the potential of ICT for facilitating cultural learning, in part through an L2, and I find this framework a helpful way of making sense of the challenge.

7.4 Keeping track of technologies

Already, an impressive range of technologies has been developed which carries the potential to facilitate language learning. Stockwell (Reference Stockwell2007) lists these as interface design and authoring; data management, access and portability; AI (artificial intelligence) and tutoring systems; automatic speech recognition; natural language processing; speech synthesis; learner profiling; and cognitive agent systems. In order to establish the extent to which such technologies were in fact used, whether those using them were aware of the potential and whether the particular technology was suitable for the particular purpose for which it had been used, a comprehensive review was undertaken of all articles published in the four main CALL research journals over a period of five years. The survey enabled a list to be drawn up of the main language areas which had been covered (these were grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, reading, writing, listening and speaking) and of the particular technologies which had been adopted in relation to each language area in turn. It also proved possible to identify developments which occurred during the five years in question: the technologies for supporting vocabulary learning, for example, had developed in the direction of complex AI systems. An implication of the study was considered to be the importance of helping busy language teachers keep abreast of the technologies which were becoming available and make informed judgements on the suitability of such technologies for achieving particular language-learning goals.

8.1 Challenging a deficit model

In theory at least, minority language parents possess a linguistic, social and cultural capital on which they might be able to draw in order to enhance the development of their children's literacy, but does this necessarily happen? In exploring this issue, the study by Peterson & Heywood (Reference Peterson and Heywood2007) addresses the potential barriers, among which was a deficit model resting on the assumption that culture and socio-economic status tend to create an environment inimical to children's literacy development. However, the participating schools successfully challenged the deficit model and showed that minority language parents need not be impeded by their culture or socio-economic status from exercising a positive influence. A number of practical ideas were developed, such as the use of dual-language books, learning at least some aspects of the languages of the students at school and encouraging minority language parents to read to their children in the parents’ first (minority) language.

8.2 Cosmopolitan citizenship

Two valuable articles in their different ways address issues of cosmopolitan citizenship which have implications for languages education. Guilherme's (Reference Guilherme2007) main theme is the dominance of World English and the conflicting ideologies which can accompany this, e.g. English viewed as a basic tool for life which empowers those who learn it as L2; or English as an agent of oppression which is antagonistic to linguistic, social and cultural diversity and as a loaded language which gives its speakers greater access to power. A possible way forward, according to the writer, is to view English as a common language (not as a lingua franca) from a Critical Pedagogy perspective helping people to ‘become cosmopolitan citizens without implying the loss of our cultural or ideological roots or the transformation of English into a neutral, disengaged or unaffiliated medium’ (p. 72). I find the notion of critical pedagogy attractive, as when schools which are linking with each other across a number of countries critically assess which languages are to be used and for what purposes, rather than allow one dominant language to take over.

Starkey (Reference Starkey2007) focuses on a different sort of tension, this time in policies for language education, between those that promote intercultural communication and those that identify languages with particular national cultures. Quite often, for example, language teaching materials reflect a stereotyped version of a national culture rather than intercultural values, and may present an unreal and anaesthetised version of the society in question. Languages teachers with personal experience of mobility, minorities and cultural diversity may feel frustration if asked to work with such material. It is argued that there is good sense in language teachers engaging in dialogue with teachers of citizenship and multicultural education, in order that they may develop a notion of cosmopolitan citizenship which links the local, the national and the global.

8.3 Community language provision

The survey of community languages at school level in England, Scotland and Wales by McPake, Tinsley & James (Reference McPake, Tinsley and James2007) shows a situation of ‘super-diversity’ (p. 108) – an increasing number of students with more than one language and a very wide range of these languages. They define community languages as ‘all languages in use in a society, other than the dominant, official or national language’ (p. 109), and in the UK examples are Urdu, Panjabi, Cantonese, Polish, Italian and British Sign Language (BSL). Rightly, the writers claim that this wide variety of languages is of potential benefit to each country, but the formal education system makes provision for them only to a limited extent, and much may depend on particular speech communities making their own provision at weekends or in the evening through complementary education in order to pass at least some of their language and culture on to their children. The survey finds that teachers have major professional development needs, with many being untrained volunteers, particularly those in the complementary system. Some promising signs were identified, e.g. attempts to link mainstream and complementary provision and the emergence of a national awareness-raising campaign in order to help staff in schools and the wider public better understand the benefits of multilingualism. However, radical and potentially valuable developments such as Content and Language Integrated Learning in particular community languages seemed only a distant prospect.

9.1 Research overview

It was a pleasure to read Lazaruk's (Reference Lazaruk2007) excellent overview from Canada, the undisputed home of immersion. Without seeking to break particularly new ground, the review presents a balanced, well-informed, and up-to-date picture of key findings from French immersion research. It highlights the gap between reception and production skills; discusses students’ levels of proficiency in English and their general academic achievement; sets out a range of cognitive benefits of bilingualism such as mental flexibility, divergent, thinking, metalinguistic awareness and communicative sensitivity; and comments also on the communicative, cultural and economic opportunities which become available to students who have benefited from an immersion education. Although the main thrust of the paper is to present evidence from research on the outcomes of immersion, there is an interesting section which sets out a neurolinguistic theory of bilingualism, claiming that bilinguals understand their L2 directly rather than via their L1 and which posits two language sub-systems which interact with a single non-linguistic system.

9.2 SEN and learning difficulties

A question which is regularly asked about immersion is: ‘Yes, but is it suitable for students with special educational needs (SEN) or learning difficulties (LD)?’ There has not been a convincing answer based on research evidence, which makes the paper by Genesee (Reference Genesee2007) welcome, since it reviews the results of published research studies with regard to (i) the suitability of French Immersion for students with SEN or LD, and (ii) such interventions which have been adopted for meeting their needs. The findings are not clear-cut, but it was interesting to note that where a direct comparison was possible between SEN or LD students receiving French immersion and those in English-only programmes, those being educated through immersion were not shown to be handicapped in their English or their academic development and, in addition, showed the advantage of a higher level of proficiency in French.

9.3 Development of language functions

An attractive feature of the immersion study by García (Reference García2007) is that it is grounded in Halliday's (Reference Halliday1975) well-known theory of the development of language functions in children: instrumental, regulatory, personal, heuristic, informative and interactional. The writer had observed the use of these functions by children in their L1 and also in full L2 immersion, but she wished to ascertain whether the same functions could be developed among children in a low-immersion EFL context (low-immersion being understood as a maximum of one hour per day in the target L2). Two classes of five-year-old children were chosen, each with a different teacher, and a control-experimental design was favoured, in which the teaching of the experimental group incorporated special techniques for encouraging children's discourse initiations. It was concluded that the activation of such initiations did indeed have a positive influence on the children's capacity to express the functions in question, and that the five-year-olds showed a particular inclination to express their personal world.

9.4 ‘No loss’ in L1

Most immersion research has featured children whose L1 and immersion L2 share similar if not identical romanised scripts, e.g. L1-English children immersed in L2 French. But what will happen in the case of children whose L1 has a writing system that is fundamentally different from the writing system of their immersion L2? Knell et al. (Reference Knell, Siegel, Haiyan, Lun, Miao, Wei and Yanping2007) have produced an admirable study which bears directly on this question, focusing as it does on Chinese children in China receiving half of their elementary school curriculum through the medium of English. The stakes seemed high, in that by the end of Grade 2, Chinese children are reported as being expected to be able to read 1600–1800 different Chinese characters, of which they should be able to write 800–1000. So, would the English-immersion children be at a disadvantage in respect of their learning of the written characters of their L1 Chinese? The study was able to compare such children with their peers attending the same elementary school but receiving their education through their L1 Chinese. Among the curricular areas undertaken in English by the immersion children were English language arts, moral education, art, physical education, music and science. The immersion and comparison groups were both tested for word identification, phonological awareness and vocabulary in English and Chinese, and also for English-oral proficiency and letter-name knowledge. The findings offer encouragement for immersion, in that the immersion children were significantly better in English vocabulary, word identification and oral proficiency, and seemed to have incurred no loss in respect of their learning of Chinese characters.

9.5 Two-way immersion

Two-way (or, dual) immersion in principle offers rich possibilities for the equitable and reciprocal development of children's immersion L2, by allowing children with one particular L1 to interact in that L1 with other children (with a different L1) for whom it is an L2 – and vice versa. Hickey (Reference Hickey2007) provides an authoritative overview of research, especially in the case of children's L1 as minority language. Her study is set in the mainly Irish-speaking communities of the west of Ireland, featuring 60 children aged 3–5 attending Irish-medium pre-schools in which L1 Irish children are mixed with L2 Irish children and in which the informal setting allows children to move around and choose who they will talk to. Her study illuminates different patterns of interaction, e.g. (i) child from Irish-only home interacting with majority of children from English-only homes and learning Irish as L2, (ii) child from Irish-only home interacting with majority of children from Irish–English language homes, and (iii) child from Irish-only home interacting with majority of children from Irish-only homes. The findings led the writer to express concern about the future of the minority language, in that children with L1 Irish tended to choose the majority language (English) as the main means of communication with their peers. One possibility for protecting the use of Irish was to separate the L1 Irish and L2 Irish children, which did allow much more Irish to be used by the L1 Irish children. There is an interesting discussion of the social and linguistic implications which arise.

Another immersion study concluding with ‘no loss’ in first or dominant language is presented by Bae (Reference Bae2007), in this case featuring English and Korean dual-immersion at elementary school level in the USA, and focusing in particular on children's writing in respect of coherence, grammar, content and text-length. The dual immersion group consisted of two sub-groups: children of Korean-language background who were not strong in English and children who were proficient in English. They were complemented in the study by a third group: children in another school who were proficient in English and not undergoing dual immersion. The results showed that both of the dual immersion sub-groups showed clear development in English-writing skills over the three years of the study (one year kindergarten plus Grades 1 and 2 at elementary school) and no differences between these sub-groups by the end of Grade 2; and, moreover, no loss in written English when compared with the English-proficient children receiving their all-English education in the other school. A strong feature of the study is its careful sampling and design, which lends substance to the conclusions.

9.6 Generalisability and sustainability

A study by Johnstone (Reference Johnstone2007) discusses four national policy initiatives on languages in Scotland in terms of their sustainability and generalisability. One of these initiatives features the UK's first project on early immersion in a foreign language, in this case French. There is already a distinguished tradition of immersion in the UK through Welsh-medium, Irish-medium and Gaelic-medium education at primary school, but these are not foreign languages. The French-immersion project was set in a city primary school in an area of substantial socio-economic disadvantage, but nonetheless the outcomes were consistent with the researched outcomes of early immersion generally, e.g. no loss in the L1 (in fact, there was a clear gain, when compared with children in the same school not receiving the immersion programme) and no loss in their more general learning. Given the socio-economic setting, of equal interest was the beneficial effect of the immersion programme on the self-image of the pupils and their parents. The project had been initiated on the basis of special financial support from the local authority and the government and attracted highly favourable comment from a succession of Ministers. However, when the financial climate began to change, the future of the project was increasingly in doubt, and there were strong feelings from parents that they were in danger of being left rather ‘high and dry’.

10.1 No L1 loss

CLIL (content & language-integrated learning) or CBI (content-based instruction) have been attracting interest for several years now and indeed CLIL is central to the European Commission (2003) Action Plan for languages. A merit of the CLIL study by Seikkula-Leino (Reference Seikkula-Leino2007) is that with admirable clarity she sets out what CLIL and immersion have in common and how they differ. Her own study is set in Finland and features 217 pupils at Grades 5 and 6 in a Finnish comprehensive school, of whom 116 were in CLIL classes, with the remainder receiving their education mainly through L1 Finnish. The findings are complex and suggest that the over-achieving children tended to be in the non-CLIL classes; nonetheless, the study did show that the CLIL pupils’ skills in their L1 Finnish did not suffer and on the whole it offers those who might wish to explore the potential of CLIL some supportive research-based evidence.

10.2 Classroom processes

As Pessoa et al. (Reference Pessoa, Henry, Donato, Tucker and Lee2007) rightly argue, CBI has had strong professional advocacy but has thus far not benefited from extensive research. They offer a valuable qualitative study of CBI classroom processes in the case of two teachers of Spanish with Grade 6 students at a suburban middle school in the USA. The main focus was on four aspects of classroom discourse: language-related and content-related talk, conversational features of interpersonal communication, use of English as L1, and teacher feedback and error correction. Although the sample was too small to permit generalisation, it nonetheless yields interesting insight into differences in attitude between the two teachers, one of them tending to focus on problems and the other being more positive. These differences seemed to be reflected in the actual classroom processes that occurred and in the outcomes of these processes. This is a useful study because to my mind it shows that CBI/CLIL is not simply a formula but is dependent very much on the classroom environment which the teacher helps to create.

10.3 L1/L2 alternation as metalinguistic device

It is pleasing to note that lack of high-quality research on CLIL is being addressed. Coyle (Reference Coyle2007b) sets out a possible research agenda for CLIL pedagogies and there is an insightful article by Serra (Reference Serra2007) based on a longitudinal study of CLIL in three Swiss primary schools in which German-speaking pupils received some 50% of their curriculum, especially mathematics, through the medium of Italian or Romansh. Of particular interest is the use of what the writer calls L1/L2 alternation as a metalinguistic device which also facilitates the processing of content. Re-phrasings did not seem to interfere with learning, and it was found that the children's development of mathematics proceeded at the same pace and produced results which did not suffer in comparison with those in monolingual classes.