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The past 40 years have witnessed significant developments in ELT research, reflecting the changes in learners’ language needs and the extensive development of various language learning/teaching methods in different times and places. The aim of this study is to provide a systematic and comprehensive account of changing ELT methods (oral-structural approach, communicative language teaching and task-based language teaching) in Hong Kong’s secondary education between 1975 and the present. By adopting Richards and Rodgers’s (2014) framework (approach, design and procedure), it examined how ELT theories have been transformed into local curricula (1975, 1983, 1999 and 2002/07) and commercial textbooks (Longman, Oxford University Press) via detailed content analysis. The findings suggest that research into ELT methods in Hong Kong over the past decades has generally directed the designs of the language curricula. Changes in the textbooks, however, have been relatively limited, although considerable attempts have been made to align textbook design with ELT trends. By considering various constraints in the theory-to-practice process, this study offers suggestions for future research and language teaching, particularly regarding the recent debate over the choice between the ‘weak’ and ‘strong’ versions of task-based language teaching in EFL contexts, and the post-methods perspective in language teaching.

Communicative language teaching and language teaching research suggest forms for desirable and effective grammar teaching. This study investigates to what extent these suggestions are integrated into teaching materials. On the basis of prior studies, we developed a list of both qualitative and quantitative criteria to determine the position of grammar in foreign language course books. This list was then applied to course books for German as a foreign language that are used in Finland and the Netherlands to examine the role grammar plays in these materials. Our results show that many similarities exist between the Dutch, Finnish, and global course books with regard to the location and integration of grammar, and the instructional approach adopted. However, a striking difference was found in the Finnish materials: they provide more grammar exercises and generally a lower progression rate than the Dutch and global materials. We relate this to the typological distance between German and Finnish. In general, even though the analysed teaching materials all follow the rationale behind communicative language teaching, they are traditional in the sense that grammar inhabits a prominent position in the course books. On the other hand, we have observed pedagogical innovations with respect to grammar teaching, such as inductive grammar presentation, a spread of the learning load as well as self-evaluation tools for learners.

The New Zealand school curriculum was last revised in 2007, at which time a new emphasis was placed on culture in language teaching. The practice of intercultural language teaching is implicit in the curriculum document and explicit in the curriculum guide, which features a set of principles for intercultural communicative language teaching (iCLT). This article presents a study on the extent to which New Zealand language teachers’ beliefs and practices are aligned with intercultural language teaching (ILT). A questionnaire administered to New Zealand language teachers included a number of items used in a seminal seven-nation comparative study conducted by Lies Sercu and her colleagues, as well as other items developed from relevant literature. Expanding on previous studies’ use of item-by-item analyses, multi-item scales to measure alignment of New Zealand teacher’s beliefs and practices with ILT were developed, which yielded good internal reliabilities. The findings revealed an apparent mismatch between beliefs and practices, with teachers being favourably disposed towards ILT but not practising the approach in their classrooms. Interpretation of the data using concepts from teacher cognition research suggested that the differences represented tensions between teachers’ abstract, theoretical beliefs and their concrete, practical beliefs. We argue that supporting teachers’ applied knowledge of developing intercultural communicative competence (ICC) will allow them to recognize that those beliefs need not be discordant.

This paper first presents and then discusses the attitudes towards and perceptions of education officers regarding introducing a school-based continuous assessment of speaking in the Botswana General Certificate of Secondary Education (BGCSE) ESL examinations as provided for in the BGCSE English syllabus in Botswana. Three categories of education officers that are responsible for developing and evaluating syllabuses, teaching supervision (quality assurance), and assessment of the BGCSE ESL curriculum in senior secondary schools in Botswana were interviewed, using an interview guide. The findings indicate that there are two opposing views held by the various categories of education officers regarding the importance of speaking in English in the Botswana linguistic situation. While on the one hand Curriculum Development and Evaluation (CD & E) officers and Senior Education Officers (SEOs) generally regard English speaking in the Botswana linguistic situation to be just as important as reading or writing, Examinations, Research and Testing Division (ERTD) officers did not think that speaking in English was that important.

To extend the reach of the second language (L2) classroom, learners may be given opportunities to interact with native speakers through contact assignments or volunteer work organized through their L2 program. An underlying assumption of these practices is that `real-world' and classroom experience offer different but complementary opportunities for oral interaction. The nature of the difference is not well documented, however, which makes it difficult to assess the relative contributions that interaction in the two environments may make to the language learning process. In this study, we compared selected aspects of oral interaction experienced by two advanced adult L2 speakers of English in two contexts: one where they were students in a nine-week communicative ESL class and another where they were volunteer tutors in a three-week summer program for academically at-risk English-speaking children. The findings revealed differences in the types and quantities of activities during which oral interaction occurred, the frequency with which they were completed, and the degree of attention that the participants paid to language during communication. Overall, these differences reflected the different roles the L2 speakers assumed in the two contexts: that of language `learner' in the classroom and of language `user' outside the classroom.

This study seeks to document teachers’ conceptions of communicative language teaching (CLT) and to compare their conceptions with a composite view of CLT assembled, in part, from researchers’ accounts of the distinctive features of CLT. The research was prompted by a review of the relevant research literature showing that, though previous studies in this area have pointed to some significant differences between teachers’ and researchers’ conceptions of CLT, the results are still inconclusive. In this study, usual methods for accessing teachers’ understandings of CLT, such as observation and questionnaire, have been replaced by one that examines teachers’ practical theories that guide their use of CLT approaches in classrooms. Semi-structured interviews and video-stimulated recall interviews were used to gain access to teachers’ practical theories of CLT. The interview data show that while these teachers collectively have internalized most of the elements of communicative approaches, there are many individual variations. The data also show that these teachers have integrated aspects of communicative approaches into an overall view of teaching that incorporates many features not normally mentioned in the second language literature.

Reporting a classroom investigation within the framework of Exploratory Practice (EP) as set out in the introductory paper to this issue, this paper illustrates first how EP offers a successful and coherent approach to doctoral research, and secondly how learner and teacher/researcher understanding can be developed together. EP principles were used to integrate teaching practices and research in an applied setting to aid both the students and myself, through a collegial process, to develop our own understandings of what happens in the language classroom. Data collected through the use of various classroom activities included both analysis of the students’ performances and the students’ reflections on their performances. The combination of the various forms of data permitted comprehensive discussion of communicative competence over time, by looking at what the students actually do, what the students say about what they do, as well as what others say about what the students do. With the data collected from a small number of students learning English at an International school in Thailand, two girls and two boys ranging in age from 11 to 13 representing four different nationalities, over a six-month period, I was able to see how their communicative competence developed over time. This information ultimately enabled me to better understand my puzzle area concerning the challenges of helping students develop communicative competence.

This paper is a contribution to the growing sociolinguistic literature on classroom foreign/second language learning and teaching (Duff 1995; Willett, 1995; Bailey and Nunan, 1996; Bremer et al., 1996; Coleman, 1996; Toohey, 1998; Heller, 1999; Rampton, 1999). We report two case studies of mainstream beginner-level FL instruction, using observational and interview data gathered in schools in Seoul, Korea, and in Southern England. In both cases, the public rationales offered for foreign language learning include a mix of ‘internationalist’ and ‘instrumental’ values (MoE, 1995; DES, 1991; DfEE/QCA, 1999). The dominant language-teaching ideologies to which the teachers in the different locations declare allegiance are also similar, involving commitment to various principles of the ‘communicative approach’ to language teaching. (In both settings, for example, the speaking skill is given priority, there is use of group work, etc.) Through analysis of selected lesson excerpts we identify similarities and differences in the classroom interpretations of communicative methodology, and in particular the opportunities available for individual students to engage in L2 interaction. We examine how the identity of the ‘good language learner’ is constructed in the different settings, for example, through differing teacher emphases on individual vs. collective responsibility for learning. Differences between the two classrooms are linked to broader features of the educational setting, but we show that these differences do not reflect common stereotypes about Anglo and Asian teaching styles in any simple way.

Ideas about good teaching emerged from one-off ethnographic observations of six 'communicative' university English language classes in China and India. The lessons were all taught by non-native speakers in classes of between 25 and 45. Through analysis of the behaviour and physical environment of the culture of each classroom, it emerged that aspects of a popular view of 'communicative' connected with group- work, oral practice and teacher withdrawal may be questioned. Instead, cultural continuity between traditional and innovative forms emerges as an essential feature of successful communicative language teaching.