English

Understanding Communication in Second Language Classrooms

That which is public in second language classrooms includes everything that we can perceive, including our students’ use of language, […]

Formal and informal discourse markers There seem to be so many discourse markers used in spoken English that it is

Although heavy emphasis is typically placed on word formation, especially inflection and derivation, in most ESL/EFL curricula, only a small

I will devote this post to the question of Standard English in light of John Simon’s claim that “language can always

A Few Thoughts on Task-Based Instruction
I appreciate Belgar and Hunt’s (2002) attempts to integrate a task-based syllabus into the English as a Foreign Language curriculum of the Japanese university where they worked. No doubt, as the researchers pointed out, the students involved benefited from this
Focus on Grammar
Although the field of language education has seen many advances during the last two decades, especially when it comes to acknowledging the roles social interaction and cultural identity play in the language teaching and learning process, I fear the same
Learning to Teach
Left: Richard preparing a “lesson” for great aunt Evelyn (October, 1980: Beckley, West Virginia) Right: Richard and sister Crissy working on a “test” using Aunt Evelyn’s manual typewriter (December, 1983: Beckley, West Virginia) Below: Betty McDorman (image from 1978 Coal
Focus on Pronunciation and Fluency
When I studied phonetics and phonology for the first time in the early 1990s, the academic focus was almost entirely on the segmental aspects of the language’s sound system. We reviewed the articulatory and acoustic traits of each consonant and
The Dilemmas of Language Assessment
I would like to share my experiences with language assessment in my current instructional context–an intensive English program for international students at a large language school in Miami, Florida. We conduct formal assessments using a full-length simulated TOEIC (a norm-referenced