The "trans-" perspectives offered in this special issue are heady stuff. Post-structuralism (philosophy) meets the digital age (electronics), meets globalization (economics), and meets translingual practice (linguistics) to create a perfectly utopian or placeless space for future exploration. I want to first add my voice to the…

Research methods offer authentic ways to elicit useful data based on which informed decisions can be made. With respect to their design and data collection or analysis, research methods are traditionally divided into qualitative and quantitative types, each with its strengths and weaknesses. In response to new theories and technological…

The Department of Linguistics at University of Victoria (UVic) in Canada has a long-standing tradition of empirical approaches to the study of theoretical and applied linguistics. As part of the Faculty of Humanities, the department caters to students with a wide range of backgrounds and interests, and provides crucial language teaching support in…

Like many EFL teachers of my generation, I side-stepped into the profession. While doing post-graduate research at Oxford in the early 1960s, I took a job one summer vacation teaching English in a local language school. Though I had no idea how to do this, I enjoyed the work, and kept on a few hours' teaching in the next academic year. As time…

Linguistic and narrative strategies employed in two dyadic interviews of male veterans of the war in Afghanistan were analysed and compared. Each interviewee told chains of connected stories that positioned them in relation to catastrophic events and their effects. These incidents were framed as being linked to decisions that the teller had taken…

Vijay Kumar Bhatia retired from his role as a professor at the City University of Hong Kong and is now Visiting Professor at the Hellenic American University in Athens, and Adjunct Professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has extensive experience of teaching at undergraduate and postgraduate levels over a period exceeding 50 years in…

Word frequency has a long history of being considered the most important predictor of word difficulty and has served as a guideline for several aspects of second language vocabulary teaching, learning, and assessment. However, recent empirical research has challenged the supremacy of frequency as a predictor of word difficulty. Accordingly,…

This study examines the correlation between the theory of pragmatic discourse of givenness and CP adverbial clauses from the two datasets: Q1 SCOPUS applied linguistics research articles and Thai undergraduate students' writing. The first set was 24 applied linguistics research articles from journals of "English for Specific Purposes"…

This volume features current, innovative, and effective ways of developing instructional materials for diverse English Language Teaching (ELT) contexts. It is divided into four sections, each featuring pedagogical materials designed for specific groups of learners. The sections focus on materials for general English, ESP and EAP, CLIL, and ELT…

Recently, research in second language acquisition has seen an increased attention on low-educated low-literate (LESLLA) learners. However, few of the existing instruments to measure L2 proficiency have been validated for use with this population. In this paper, we examine how adult L2 learners with diverging educational backgrounds perform on and…

Portfolios have been utilized in the teaching and learning of English of speakers of other languages as a tool for process-based writing and as an alternative form of summative assessment. While extensive research has been focused on the implementation of portfolios in English as a foreign language (EFL) writing, there has been limited attention…

This paper sets out to answer two questions by characterizing and deconstructing Alan Davies's seminal views and concepts -- especially his ostensive views and his native speakerism -- within the context of applied linguistics. Arguing that these are some of Davies's seminal views and concepts, it offers a philosophical framing of his ostensive…

This article considers Intensive English Programs (IEPs) affiliated with higher education institutions of the Global North from the perspective of a decolonial option in which English is viewed as a tool of modernity used for colonization and the maintenance of unequal socioeconomic and power structures. Via nuanced description (Pennycook and…

Learning analytics (LA) has been increasingly using in teaching and learning. However, in the field of applied linguistics, the use of LA has only begun to touch the surface. There is a need for understanding how LA and learning design (LD) influence each other and provide useful information to language teachers in the context of specific courses…

Language textbooks have been--and still are--the centre of attention of substantial research in the field of applied linguistics, language education and instruction, and language studies, among others. This paper synthesizes results and findings from the current Special Issue 'The language textbook: representation, interaction and learning''. In…