This volume brings together empirical research that explores interaction in a wide range of educational settings. It includes work that takes a cognitive, brain-based approach to studying interaction, as well as studies that take a social, contextual perspective. Interaction is defined quite… read more
Edited by Jenefer Philp, Rhonda Oliver and Alison Mackey
This new volume of work highlights the distinctiveness of child SLA through a collection of different types of empirical research specific to younger learners. Characteristics of children’s cognitive, emotional, and social development distinguish their experiences from those of adult L2 learners,… read more
Parents and other primary caregivers play a critical role in shaping the environment in which their children develop language and literacy skills. Relatively little, however, is known about caregiver involvement in their children’s foreign language learning, especially when using a self-guided… read more
This chapter takes the form of short answers to questions posed by graduate students. I lay out some of the questions that I have encountered most frequently during my two decades working with graduate students as an advisor, as a Director of Graduate Studies, and as an instructor of a number of… read more
This chapter examines the effects of metacognitive instruction on the provision and use of interactional opportunities in learner-learner interactions in the task-based EFL classroom. Learners (N = 39) drawn from three intact speaking classes in an intensive academic EFL program were divided into a… read more
Since its inception, the field of second language research has utilized methods from a number of areas, including general linguistics, psychology, education, sociology, anthropology and, recently, neuroscience and corpus linguistics. As the questions and objectives expand, researchers are… read more
IRIS is a digital database of materials used to collect data for second language research that went fully live in August 2012. At the time of writing (May 2013), there have been over 3,300 downloads of materials held on the site, and almost 11,000 visits, demonstrating a clear need for the… read more
In this study, learners carried out tasks and traditional practice activities in an authentic instructional context: English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Japan (n = 37). Learners’ production on pre- and posttests was analyzed to investigate second language (L2) development with respect to the… read more
One claim of Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis predicts that more cognitively complex tasks will promote greater uptake and retention of linguistic forms enhanced by interactional feedback such as recasts. The present study tested this claim by examining whether the task design variable ± visual… read more
In this chapter we examine children’s interaction during authentic lessons involving tasks in L2 classrooms, comparing the effects of teacher guidance for 5–7 year olds (n = 22) and 11–12 year olds (n = 20). Three experimental conditions representing a continuum of teacher guidance were examined:… read more
This paper presents an overview of what has come to be known as the Interaction Hypothesis, the basic tenet of which is that through input and interaction with interlocutors, language learners have opportunities to notice differences between their own formulations of the target language and the… read more
