While Action Research (AR) is promoted as a powerful route for teachers' professional development, different contextual challenges may arise during the process; teachers may be helped to overcome these challenges with the guidance of external facilitators. Drawing on data from interviews and the teachers' AR reports, this article explores how two…

Excerpts from a discussion among five applied linguistics researchers with an interest in second-language acquisition (SLA) focus on three issues: important recent advances in SLA research, transmission of research findings to teachers, and maintenance of communication between the worlds of theory and practice. (MSE)

A course in scientific English for science researchers and advanced civil engineering students in Belgium has a central problem--the heterogeneous nature of the group and lack of common research experience around which to build a curriculum. An attempt to overcome this difficulty by using two logical problems for discussion is presented. (MSE)