TESOL Quarterly

Anna Mauranen is professor of English philology at the University of Tampere. Her main research is in corpus linguistics, text, and discourse analysis. She has compiled a corpus of translated Finnish and been involved in a contrastive Finnish-English corpus and the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English. Her publications include corpus linguistics and text linguistic work (e.g., Cultural Differences in Academic Rhetoric, Peter Lang, 1993).

The present study builds on recent uptake research (Ellis, Basturkmen, & Loewen, 2001a, 2001b; Lyster & Ranta, 1997) by exploring the relationship between negotiated interaction, a type of focus on form episode, and learner uptake. The study explores whether a negotiation routine's complexity affects learner uptake and if this uptake affects lexical acquisition in a synchronous computer-mediated environment. The data are chatscripts of task-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) interaction among intermediate-level learners of English (n = 24). Results suggest that the complexity of negotiation routines does not influence learner uptake. Findings also suggest that there is no relationship between degree of uptake (none, unsuccessful, and successful) and the acquisition of target lexical items. These results suggest a possible diminished role for uptake in SLA in a CMC environment. The pedagogical application of these findings includes a word of caution to classroom teachers to adjust their expectations about the relationship between learner uptake and acquisition. In attempting to explain the acquisition of target vocabulary items during task-based CMC interaction, teachers should focus on the nuances of negotiated interaction as well as more subtle indications of acquisition rather than learner uptake per se.

File and Adams (2010) conclude that their data confirms the superiority of form-focused vocabulary instruction over incidental acquisition. In our view, their data actually confirms the reality, robustness, and possible superiority of incidental acquisition.

The TESOL Quarterly welcomes evaluative reviews of publications relevant to TESOL professionals. In addition to textbooks and reference materials, these include computer and video software, testing instruments, and other forms of nonprint materials.

Salah Troudi teaches applied linguistics and language education at the School of Education and Lifelong Learning at the University of Exeter, England. His research interests include teacher education, critical applied linguistics, and language policies. He coordinates the doctor of education in TESOL program in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Two successful non-English-major EFL learners at Beijing Normal University took part in a think-aloud and an interview session, respectively, on how they handled vocabulary learning during and after reading. Results show that, like successful learners everywhere, these learners (a) saw vocabulary as but one aspect of language learning that needs to be integrated with language use, (b) demonstrated high levels of self-initiation and selective attention, and (c) employed a wide range of vocabulary-learning strategies. The two learners also displayed revealing differences in learning style. Their highly flexible, skilful integration and execution of strategies may be due to a combination of Chinese conceptions of learning, traditional schooling, and literacy practice, the prevailing methods for teaching and learning English in China, the demands of the vocabulary-learning task, and individual learning style.

This paper explores in a speculative fashion the process and characteristics of becoming bicultural. The basic argument is that becoming bicultural is an eclectic process which results in an idiosyncratic mixture of the two ( C1 and C2) cultures with one basic "cultural competence" but with two sets of "socio-cultural performance" (in Keesing's 1974 terms).

This article reports on the results of a research study which investigated the perception of English speech sounds by Hong Kong Cantonese English as a second language speakers. A total of 40 university English majors participated in one categorial discrimination task and two second language (L2) minimal pair identification tasks, which aimed at discerning the participants' perception of different English speech sounds. The results show that certain English speech sounds trigger more perception problems than others, but perception problems do not necessarily correspond to documented production difficulties. It is argued that learners' preconception of word pronunciations may be a contributing factor for their perception problems. The position of a sonorant consonant may also play a role in perception, but positional effects do not seem to be as significant in the perception of obstruents as in that of sonorant consonants. It is suggested that remedial teaching on both perception and production should go hand in hand to enhance learners' L2 phonology acquisition.

The second language classroom has long been a center of research interest. In the last several years, attempts to examine the second language classroom—to clarify how the language classroom experience differs from what is available outside the classroom and how language classrooms differ among themselves—have been increasingly guided by a shared set of goals and premises. Classroom process research is based on the priority of direct observation of second language classroom activity and is directed primarily at identifying the numerous factors which shape the second language instructional experience. The result has been a marked departure from earlier research on the nature and effects of classroom instruction in a second language.Selected studies in three areas are reviewed: the linguistic environment of second language instruction, patterns of participation in the language classroom, and error treatment. Also reviewed are recent applications of introspective (mentalistic) research to the problem of describing the second language classroom experience.