Parvaneh Tavakoli

Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages Teachers' Views on the Relationship between Research and Practice.

This paper reports on a study investigating teachers’ views and beliefs about the relationship between second language (L2) research and practice. Although a gap has been frequently reported between the two, there is little empirical data to show what teachers’ views on this relationship are or how these views and beliefs influence their use of research. A total of 60 teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) teachers in England responded to a questionnaire which sought both qualitative and quantitative data. Results of the data analysis suggest that although their views on research and its usefulness are positive, teachers are mainly sceptical about the practicality and relevance of L2 research. More importantly, they expect research to originate from rather than end in classrooms and maintain that the prime responsibility of bringing research and practice together is to be shared by teacher training programmes and educational policies of the institutions they work in. Our analysis of the data further implies that there are differences between teachers’ epistemological assumptions and the more established notions of research.

Connecting Research and Practice in TESOL: A Community of Practice Perspective

In line with a growing interest in teacher research engagement in second language education, this article is an attempt to shed light on teachers’ views on the relationship between teaching and practice. The data comprise semi-structured interviews with 20 teachers in England, examining their views about the divide between research and practice in their field, the reasons for the persistence of the divide between the two and their suggestions on how to bridge it. Wenger’s (1998) Community of Practice (CoP) is used as a conceptual framework to analyse and interpret the data. The analysis indicates that teacher experience, learning and ownership of knowledge emerging from participation in their CoP are key players in teachers’ professional practice and in the development of teacher identity. The participants construe the divide in the light of the differences they perceive between teaching and research as two different CoPs, and attribute the divide to the limited mutual engagement, absence of a joint enterprise and lack of a shared repertoire between them. Boundary encounters, institutionalized brokering and a more research-oriented teacher education provision are some of the suggestions for bringing the two communities together.

Fluency in monologic and dialogic task performance: Challenges in defining and measuring L2 fluency

Abstract The study reported in this paper challenges current models of measuring second language fluency by comparing monologic versus dialogic task performance, and providing a novel insight into the measurement of the interactive aspects of dialogic performance. The data that constitute 35 monologic and dialogic task performances from second language learners were coded using a battery of established measures known to tap different aspects of fluency, and subjected to statistical analysis to test for overlaps or differences. Interactive aspects of fluency in dialogue, e. g. interruptions, overlap and unclaimed between turn pauses were also investigated to compare with common measures of monologic speech. While the results confirm previous research findings suggesting that performance is in general statistically more fluent in a dialogue in terms of speed, length of pause and repair measures, they indicate that performances in the two modes are not different in terms of number and location of pauses. The analysis of the dialogues indicates that the decisions researchers make about measuring the interactive aspects of fluency would have an impact on the outcome of measurements of fluency. These findings highlight the need for developing a more systematic and reliable approach to measuring second language (L2) fluency.

Is Fluency Being 'Neglected' in the Classroom? Teacher Understanding of Fluency and Related Classroom Practices.

This article reports on a study examining second language (L2) teachers’ understanding of speech fluency and their self-reported classroom practices for promoting it. Qualitative and quantitative data collected from 84 L2 teachers in England were analysed to answer the research questions. In addition to the descriptive statistics and lexical frequency analysis used to explore teacher understanding of fluency, Rossiter, Derwing, Manimtim and Thomson’s (2010) framework was employed to analyse the teachers’ reported classroom practices. The results suggest that teachers often define fluency in a broad sense, with many using fluency and speaking ability interchangeably. Similarly, a large majority of the activities reported by the teachers were useful for enhancing speaking practice rather than focusing on fluency specifically. The findings underline the interaction between teacher understanding and their methodology (Borg, 2003), and highlight a mismatch between what fluency research recommends and what teachers do in class. Though the study highlights the complex and multifaceted nature of L2 oral fluency, we argue that adopting a narrower understanding could help teachers take a more active and practical approach to promoting fluency in the classroom.

New directions and developments in defining, analyzing and measuring L2 speech fluency

In studying second language (L2) fluency attainment, researchers typically address questions about temporal and hesitation phenomena in a descriptive manner, cataloguing which features appear under which learning circumstances. The goal of this paper is to present a perspective on L2 fluency that goes beyond description by exploring a potential explanatory framework for understanding L2 fluency. This framework focuses on the cognitive processing that underlies the manifestation of fluency and disfluency, and on the ways social context might contribute to shaping fluency attainment. The framework provides a dynamical systems perspective of fluency and its development, with specific consequences for a research program on L2 fluency. This framework gives rise to new questions because of its focus on the intimate link between cognitive fluency and utterance fluency, that is, between measures of the speed, efficiency and fluidity of the cognitive processes thought to underlie implementation of the speech act and measures of the oral fluency of that speech act. Moreover, it is argued that cognitive and utterance fluency need to be situated in the social context of communication in order to take into account the role played by the pragmatic and the sociolinguistic nature of communication in shaping L2 fluency development.