Language Learning Journal 

About: Language Learning Journal is an academic journal published by Taylor & Francis. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Foreign language & Language acquisition. It has an ISSN identifier of 0957-1736. Over the lifetime, 1091 publications have been published receiving 15726 citations.

Vocabulary Size and the Skills of Listening, Reading and Writing.

Abstract: This paper presents an empirical study investigating the relationship between vocabulary size and the skills of listening, reading and writing in English as a foreign language (EFL). The participants were 88 EFL learners from lower secondary education whose language skills were assessed as part of the national school leaving examination in Denmark. Learners' receptive vocabulary size was found to be strongly associated with their reading and writing abilities and moderately associated with their listening ability. However, vocabulary size could still explain a significant and substantial portion of the variance in the listening scores. These results thus emphasise the importance of vocabulary size for language proficiency. Furthermore, it was found that the majority of the learners did not know the most frequent 2000 words in English, but if they did, they would also perform adequately in the listening, reading and writing tests. These findings therefore suggest that the 2000 vocabulary level is a crucial...

We only learn language once. The role of the mother tongue in FL classrooms: death of a dogma

Abstract: All the praise that is heaped on the classical languages as an educational tool is due in double measure to the mother tongue, which should more justly be called the ‘Mother of Languages’; every new language can only be established by comparison with it… Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, 1806 If there is another ‘language teaching revolution’ round the corner, it will have to assemble a convincing set of arguments to support some alternative (bilingual?) principle of equal power. Howatt, 1984: 298 Using the mother tongue, we have (1) learnt to think, (2) learnt to communicate and (3) acquired an intuitive understanding of grammar. The mother tongue is therefore the greatest asset people bring to the task of foreign language learning and provides a Language Acquisition Support System. This theory, which is an alternative to prevailing thought, is presented, explained and put into a historical perspective. The paper does not only redress an imbalance but concludes that drastic re-thinking of FL methodology is ca...

Learners' perceptions of their successes and failures in foreign language learning

Abstract: (2004). Learners' perceptions of their successes and failures in foreign language learning. The Language Learning Journal: Vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 19-29.

The link between vocabulary knowledge and spoken L2 fluency

Abstract: In spite of the vast numbers of articles devoted to vocabulary acquisition in a foreign language, few studies address the contribution of lexical knowledge to spoken fluency. The present article begins with basic definitions of the temporal characteristics of oral fluency, summarizing L1 research over several decades, and then presents fluency findings from a corpus of oral productions in three different L2s. Investigation of disfluencies in the corpus (the distribution of long hesitations and two types of retracing) reveal the fundamental role of ‘lexical competence’ in spoken fluency, which should, it is argued, be taken more thoroughly into account in our language-teaching programmes.

Sources, developments and directions of task-based language teaching

Abstract: This paper provides an outline of the origins, the current shape and the potential directions of task-based language teaching (TBLT) as an approach to language pedagogy. It first offers a brief description of TBLT and considers its origins within language teaching methodology and second language acquisition. It then summarises the current position of TBLT from two perspectives: first, it identifies key elements in approaches to the teaching of language based on tasks, and second, it turns to a consideration of the principal issues that have been explored in TBLT research. The paper concludes by considering directions for the future development of TBLT as an approach to language pedagogy, highlighting the need for future research to be classroom-based and programme-based.