There has been an increased interest in teaching and learning Chinese language across many schools in Aotearoa / New Zealand (NZ). Chinese language teachers, particularly those new to the Aotearoa/NZ schools and education system, are confronted with (1) an educational environment that calls for learner-centred pedagogies and (2) an increasingly diverse classroom that requires these teachers to adopt pedagogical strategies that address and cater for diversity. In response to these needs, this article discusses a case study of a research-informed professional development (PD) workshop designed to support Chinese language teachers to (1) identify ways that diversity manifests in the Aotearoa/NZ classroom and (2) figure out how to design for learning whilst accounting for diversity in Aotearoa/NZ. The workshop promoted a discussion on diversity from an inclusive, heterogeneous perspective, and introduced teachers to contemporary conceptual ideas connected to ‘teaching-as-design’, and to the Activity-Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD) framework. Teachers (N = 19) were randomly assigned to groups of three to five. Groups were encouraged to collaborate on the design of learning tasks that incorporated TBLT (Task-Based Language Teaching) and addressed diversity in the classroom. Analysis of their design activities and produced artefacts reveals that teachers’ understanding of diversity comprised many characteristics, they held a positive attitude towards being responsive to diversity, and were able to experiment with new design concepts and ideas using the ACAD toolkit. In particular, teachers were able to successfully expand the design of their learning tasks to include social and material design elements to address learner diversity. Findings also reveal teachers’ emerging awareness of their dual role as facilitators and as teacher-designers.

With ongoing debates about the nature and constituents of effective online writing instruction, little is known about the beliefs and practices of online writing instructors. Most studies conducted on language teachers’ beliefs focused primarily on examining the relationship between teachers’ beliefs and practices based on static views, which are represented as a simplified linear or dual relationship. Complexity theory (CT) goes beyond this reductionist framework by understanding not only the components of teachers’ beliefs and practice systems but also how these components interact and mutually inform each other, creating new entities. Guided by CT perspectives, this article reports and analysis data from a multiple-case study on two experienced Saudi university English as a foreign language (EFL) writing instructors’ beliefs and practices concerning online writing instruction (OWI). Data collection included three sources: semi-structured interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis. The study findings revealed that, first, the belief systems of the two instructors incorporated various interrelated and interactive beliefs and sub-beliefs in three main areas: online writing, OWI, and online writing assessment and feedback giving; second, the complex dynamic interactions between the diverse constituents of both instructors’ beliefs and practice systems played an influential role in determining whether instructors were ready to engage with and adapt pedagogical practices for OWI. The overall findings revealed two distinct belief systems within the two cases concerning engagement with OWI: one humanistic-oriented and the other structural-oriented. The study proposes a series of pedagogical and professional best practices relevant to online writing instruction.

Learning about the factors that play a positive or negative role in language teachers’ dissatisfaction, stress and exhaustion, and challenge their identity as a teacher might provide teaching programs with suggestions on how to prevent teacher burnout. This study investigated whether teachers’ mindsets about stability or malleability of teaching ability (fixed and growth mindsets) and self-efficacy predicted their burnout and professional identity beliefs. The participants of the present study were 166 English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers. The teachers completed self-report scales on teaching mindsets, burnout, professional identity, and self-efficacy. The results of path analysis showed that fixed teaching mindsets productively predicted emotional exhaustion and depersonalization while growth teaching mindsets and teacher self-efficacy positively predicted personal accomplishment and teacher professional identity. The implications for future research in the field are presented.

This study investigated the influence of practice distribution (i.e. spacing between practice sessions) on successful vocabulary learning by examining two different time distributions, i.e. 1-day spacing (1-DS) vs. 7-day spacing (7-DS) using a freely available computer-assisted language learning programme (Quizlet). The study achieved high ecological validity through a classroom-based study with low proficiency second language (L2) English language learners at an Omani college of technology. The sample consisted of 96 participants in control ( n = 33), 1-DS ( n = 34) and 7-DS ( n = 29) groups. The control group was a test-only group with no explicit practice activities for the target words (34 nouns). Meanwhile, the 1-DS group (one day spacing between each practice session) and 7-DS group (seven day spacing between each practice session) received four 20-minute practice sessions using Quizlet to learn the target words. The participants completed baseline tests, including vocabulary level tests (VLTs), and working memory tests (WMTs), alongside performance tests at three time points (pre-test, immediate post-test, delayed post-test). The results revealed that the two experimental groups (1-DS, 7-DS) both scored significantly and equally higher than the control group at post-test, indicating that the spacing of practice sessions did not mediate learning success through this computer-based vocabulary practice. The technique feature analysis (TFA) model by Nation and Webb was applied to identify the key features of Quizlet activities, which may contribute to its effectiveness for vocabulary learning. The results revealed that the activities met a high percentage of the TFA criteria, which may account for the significant learning gains achieved by both the 1-DS and 7-DS groups.

Emotional research in foreign language learning has bloomed recently, and yet there has been a call for attention to a broader spectrum of emotions experienced by learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Whilst emotions and self-regulated learning (SRL) are both believed to play important roles in EFL learning, little is known about their interplay. To fill the void, the study intends to map out an overall status quo of Chinese university EFL students’ academic emotions and SRL strategy use and sophisticated interrelationships between them using structural equation modelling (SEM). Findings showed that the Chinese participants demonstrated a medium level of positive emotions, a low level of anger, a medium level of shame and anxiety, and a low to medium frequency use of SRL strategies in English learning. ANOVA results detected gender differences in SRL strategy use, with females outperforming males in using self-evaluation and persistence strategy types, together with grade level influences in anxiety level with seniors feeling less anxious than juniors and sophomores. Furthermore, SEM results suggested that enjoyment had positive relationships with SRL strategy use; anger and shame had negative relationships while anxiety had ambivalent relationships with SRL strategy use. Important implications are discussed.

A growing body of research, especially on second language (L2) English, has shown the positive effects of explicit pronunciation teaching. However, some beliefs which prevent explicit pronunciation teaching still remain, notably, the belief that regular speaking during class time is enough to improve pronunciation outcomes. This article analyses the evolution of L2 Spanish vowels in four students at an Australian university. An analysis of 1,387 vowels from the first, third and sixth semesters of a Spanish major with no particular focus on explicit pronunciation teaching shows minimal change in the quality of the students’ vowels, indicating very little improvement in pronunciation across their six-semester language major. The results suggest that speaking during class is not enough to improve L2 Spanish pronunciation and support explicit pronunciation teaching in the language classroom.

Grounded in Vygotskian sociocultural theory (SCT), this study examines Korean as a foreign language (KFL) students’ emerging conceptual development of honorifics through their participation in concept-based language instruction (C-BLI). Seven participants were recruited from a second-semester elementary Korean class at a U.S. college, and various data were collected to trace the students’ unfolding development-in-activity of three interrelated subconcepts of Korean honorifics; namely, power, distance, and formality. Qualitative findings suggest that, overall, students gained a deeper conceptual understanding and sociopragmatic awareness of using Korean honorifics through the development of these interrelated subconcepts and their participation in the goal-directed activities of C-BLI. In particular, the qualitative findings reveal that students’ prior rules-of-thumb-based conceptualizations of honorifics transformed into more semantic, systematic, coherent, and complete understandings as students are in the process of becoming more self-regulated in planning and monitoring their mental and physical activity and their linguistic choices. This study points to the crucial importance of not only the quality of materials design but also how intentional and explicit instruction can be applied to second language teaching–learning processes.

This commentary focuses on three methodological concerns regarding Bryfonski and McKay’s (2019) meta-analysis of existing works on the effectiveness of task-based language teaching (TBLT). These are (1) loose inclusion criteria, (2) oversimplified outcome effect size calculation, and (3) neglect of influence of moderators. To rectify these issues, we conducted a new meta-analysis to build on the strengths of their work while correcting some flaws by aiming to afford more rigorous and valid insights for education practitioners, researchers, and decision makers. While Bryfonski and McKay (BM) reported a strong positive effect ( d = 0.93), our results point to a more modest effect of TBLT on second language achievement ( g = 0.61). Different from BM’s claimed four moderators of the main effect (i.e. program region, institution type, needs analysis, and cycles of implementation), our meta-regression results indicate that only sample size and teacher-as-researcher suffice to account for the heterogeneity of the effect sizes. Given the reduced number of acceptable primary studies, our revised results should be interpreted with caution.

Collocational knowledge is central to communicative competence, but many second language (L2) learners struggle to acquire this aspect. To address this limitation, the present study investigated if textual enhancement and frequency manipulation would affect incidental learning of collocations from reading. Fifty-four first language (L1) Cantonese speakers read two English stories in which 12 adjective–pseudonoun collocations appeared either three or six times. The target collocations were coloured in red under the enhanced condition. Participants’ attentional processes were examined using their eye-movements during reading and stimulated recall comments prompted by their own eye-movements. After reading, unannounced immediate and delayed posttests were administered. The results showed that increased frequency led to greater visual attention to the target collocations in terms of both duration and counts of eye-fixations. Increased frequency further led to better performances on the immediate form and collocation recognition tests. The effects of colouring increased first fixation durations, only when the target collocations appeared six times. Colouring was also linked to higher immediate collocation recognition and delayed meaning recognition and collocation recall scores. Stimulated recall comments revealed that participants noticed the pseudonouns and sometimes utilized their collocate adjectives to infer the meaning of the pseudonouns. The findings of this study demonstrate that textual enhancement and frequency manipulation may affect distinct aspects of collocational learning.

There is growing consensus that the provision of Written Corrective Feedback (WCF) on second language (L2) writing is beneficial for long-term L2 development. Yet, while WCF may help improve linguistic accuracy, there is no evidence that it promotes the development of linguistic complexity. Further, WCF is also often laborious and time-consuming for the provider. One intervention that may mitigate the above is learner exposure to comparator (model) texts. Studies have demonstrated that the use of comparators can lead to noticing and uptake in immediate revisions. However, no attempt has been made to ascertain the longer-term effect of comparators on the complexity and accuracy of new pieces of writing. Using a pre-, post-, delayed post-test design, this study examined the effects of two interventions on the complexity and accuracy of revisions, and on new pieces of writing. One group received comprehensive WCF on an initial draft and a second received comparators. A third group received neither. All groups revised their draft and produced new pieces of writing. It was found that comparators had a significant effect on the lexical complexity of revisions and on the accuracy of new texts on the same topic but of a different genre. Furthermore, both comparators and WCF had a significant effect on the accuracy of revisions, and WCF led to a significant increase in the use of subordination in revisions.