The Cambrigde Guid to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language,

In This Issue doi: 10.5054/tq.2010.225324 & In their introduction to The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, Ronald Carter and David Nunan (2001) offer an interesting comparison between the profession of language teaching and other professions: One of the characteristics of professions such as medicine and law is that they have a body of knowledge upon which there is relative agreement, as well as agreed upon principles of procedures for generating and applying knowledge (although, of course, such knowledge can be and is disputed within the profession) While language pedagogy is nowhere near developing an agreedupon set of ‘rules of the game,’ there is a rapidly growing knowledge base (p 5) Expanding TESOL’s knowledge base has been, and perhaps always will be, both an exciting and a complex challenge For instance, whereas in professions such as medicine and law the methods for conducting research remain relatively constant, in TESOL they are ever-changing From the quantitative studies that dominated TESOL in its early years and continue to be a mainstay in the field, we have seen the move to a variety of qualitative research approaches, including, most recently, such areas as autoethnographic research and narrative research Reactions to the changing tides in TESOL research are strong and varied at the same time that our knowledge base for conducting TESOL research continues to grow Likewise, as many readers of this journal are well aware, today there are numerous aspects of the teaching and learning of English as an additional language on which the jury is still out, as the research findings remain conflicting, for example, the value of feedback on error in second language writing Here, too, we continue to enrich the knowledge base as researchers investigate those areas Furthermore, the range of issues explored continues to expand For example, there was no discussion in the earlier decades of the field of topics such as World Englishes and add-on TESOL certification, both of which are addressed in this issue This issue contains a diverse set of full-length articles, commentaries, short research reports, and reviews that add to, and in some cases problematize, TESOL’s knowledge base We begin with vocabulary teaching and learning, one of the areas in which empirical research appears to be bringing us much closer to clarity on the pedagogical approaches that may be of particular value The first two articles in this issue, by Kieran Andrew File and Rebecca Adams and by Sachiko Yasuda, are prime examples of such research The study by File and Adams contributes to the growing body of research suggesting that explicit instruction is more supportive of vocabulary learning than is incidental learning alone File and Adams found that both the teaching of vocabulary in TESOL QUARTERLY Vol 44, No 2, June 2010 219 isolation (without initial contextualization) and integrated with reading were decidedly conducive to vocabulary retention This is good news for language teachers Yasuda’s study addressed a lexicogrammatical aspect of English notoriously challenging to both teachers and learners—phrasal verbs The findings in Yasuda’s study suggest that explicit teaching of how meaning is embedded in idioms can boost learners’ metaphoric competence and hence their ability to process and learn phrasal verbs The third article, by Xuesong Gao, falls into the problematizing category Gao reports on a qualitative, longitudinal study of the contextual mediation of Mainland Chinese students’ efforts to improve English in their university in Hong Kong Conceptualizing this setting as a community of practice in which English is the medium of instruction for all of the students—local Hong Kong students, Mainland Chinese students, and international students from abroad—Gao identifies both successes and problems as the Mainland Chinese students endeavored to use English in and outside their classrooms In particular, he found that it ‘‘was never easy for them to establish and maintain social networks in the process of learning English’’ (this issue, p 290), thus raising important questions about English-medium contexts in which students from varied linguistic and cultural backgrounds interact Alice Chan’s article, also set in Hong Kong, takes up the venerable and still complex topic of errors in written English, in this case among both university and secondary school students Her quantitative study of errors in short compositions provides a new taxonomy of written errors for writing researchers to draw from and thus expands that research base At the same time, her findings that L1 influence and insufficient mastery of correct usage in English were primary causes of students’ errors strengthen our understanding of the factors at work as students compose in English Continuing the focus on Chinese students, Lawrence Zhang’s article moves to the topic of reading as he discusses his qualitative study of arts and sciences majors at a university in Mainland China and their use of metacognitive knowledge of reading Adapting aspects of language learning strategy use research to the field of reading, Zhang found that there was a ‘‘strong relationship between metacognition and EFL reading’’ (this issue, p 320), with the amount and quality of metacognitive knowledge varying among the more successful and less successful readers In a field—reading—where quantitative studies have long been dominant, Zhang’s qualitative look at EFL students’ experiences with reading adds knowledge to this domain of TESOL’s knowledge base In the Forum section, Jenelle Reeves addresses a topic that will be of interest to many working in the field of teacher education, particularly in those settings where the number of ESL students significantly, and rapidly, outstrips the supply of licensed ESL teachers Reeves looks at teacher education programs in the United States that offer an add-on teaching license in ESL to those already licensed in another area and, through an analysis of their course offerings and related learning experiences, points out problems with such programs The Teaching Issues section examines ways of applying perspectives on World Englishes (WE) to the classroom Paul Bruthiaux’s contribution explores complexities associated with incorporating WE into EFL classes in 220 TESOL QUARTERLY countries where resources are limited (e.g., Indonesia) He calls for a ‘‘consumer-oriented’’ approach in which the needs of learners in these countries receive foremost consideration (this issue, p 366) Aya and Paul Matsuda discuss ways of linking WE ideas and second language (L2) writing instruction Noting that ‘‘considering the pedagogical implications of WE in general is complex’’ (this issue, p 370), they discuss several difficulties that can arise when connecting WE and L2 writing instruction They also offer several concrete suggestions for making that link work Assessment is the general topic of our two Brief Reports and Summaries contributions Talia Isaacs and Pavel Trofimovich, working on the assumption that musical ability may be a variable in L2 learning, explore a new line of research: the relationship between learners’ musical ability and their evaluation of pronunciation in the L2 They found that listeners with the highest level of musical ability offered the most critical assessments of pronunciation in the L2 Cindy James looks at another variable in the assessment picture: the role of gender in performance on language tests She analyzed data from three years of the administration of the College Board’s ACCUPLACER ESL test at a university in British Columbia and found what previous research has shown: that gender does affect performance More specifically, as in prior research, female students scored higher than male students Also appearing in this issue are three reviews of books that all concern themselves to varying degrees with identity According to reviewer Deniz Ortactepe, Matthew Clarke’s Language Teacher Identities: Co-Constructing Discourse and Community makes a significant contribution to how teacher education is conceptualized by helping us view learning to teach language as the co-construction of a new identity Timothy Mossman’s review of the award-winning Cultural Globalization and Language Education introduces us to author B Kumaravadivelu’s argument for the value of global cultural consciousness in language learner identity formation In Luke Prodromou’s English as a Lingua Franca: A Corpus-Based Analysis, successful users of English are seen as capable of promoting their own personal identities, reviewer Ian MacKenzie informs us, through creative adaptation of cultural and stylistic resources to meet communicative exigencies Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to Sara Michael-Luna, who has just stepped down from her role as editor of the Research Digest, a section of our journal that Sara was committed to the development and oversight of for the past years REFERENCE Carter, R., & Nunan, D (2001) Introduction In R Carter and D Nunan (Eds.), The Cambridge guide to teaching English to speakers of other languages (pp 1–6) Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press Alan Hirvela and Diane Belcher Editors IN THIS ISSUE 221