How to correct learner errors has long been of interest to both language teachers and second language acquisition (SLA) researchers. One way of doing so is through interactional feedback, which refers to feedback provided on learners' erroneous utterances during conversational interaction. Various theoretical claims have been made regarding the beneficial effects of interactional feedback, and over the years a considerable body of research has examined its effectiveness. In this context, a central and challenging question has always been how to determine whether such feedback is effective for language learning. Studies investigating the role of feedback have used various measures to assess its usefulness. In this paper, I will begin with a brief overview of the recent studies examining interactional feedback, with a focus on how its effectiveness has been assessed. I will then examine the various measures used in both descriptive and experimental research and discuss the issues associated with such measures. I will conclude with what continues to pose us a challenge in assessing the role of feedback and offer some recommendations to inform future research in this area.

The past decades have seen dramatic improvements to dictionary content and format. Yet dictionaries – both paper-based and digital – remain disappointingly underused. As a result, it is widely acknowledged that more needs to be done to train people in dictionary-consultation skills. Another solution would be to build lexicographic resources that require little or no instruction. In this paper, I present the ColloCaid project, whose aim is to develop a lexicographic tool that combines user needs, lexicographic data and digital writing environments to bring dictionaries to writers instead of waiting for them to get the information they need from dictionaries. Our focus is on helping writers produce more idiomatic texts by integrating lexicographic data on collocations into text editors in a way that does not distract them from their writing. A distinguishing characteristic of ColloCaid is that it is not limited to providing feedback on miscollocations. It also aims to ‘feed forward’, raising awareness of collocations writers may not remember or know how to look up. While our initial prototype is being developed specifically for academic English, the implications of our research can be broadened to other languages and usages beyond academic.

This review involved 60 articles chosen from 336 empirical studies identified in five leading journals on the learning and teaching of Chinese as a second or foreign language in mainland China during the period 2014–2018. The selected studies document Chinese researchers' efforts to improve the teaching and learning of the Chinese language in terms of language pedagogy, language learning and teacher development. We contend that these studies on the teaching and learning of Chinese as a second or foreign language (CSL/CFL) can contribute to the advancement of second/foreign language education theories even though they were largely conducted to address local needs and interests in the Chinese context. Unfortunately, the impact of these studies on international language education research and pedagogical development remains limited and peripheral. For this reason, this review concludes with recommendations for Chinese researchers and journal editors in the field of Chinese language teaching and learning research on how to promote quality empirical research and enhance their contributions to second/foreign language education research.

English as a lingua franca (ELF) refers to ‘any use of English among speakers of different first languages for whom English is the communicative medium of choice, and often the only option’ (Seidlhofer, 2011, p. 7*). ELF research started relatively recently. It was only discussed occasionally in the last century. Landmark changes were the publications of Jenkins (2000*) and Seidlhofer (2001*). These works inspired more research into ELF, as witnessed by a dramatically increased interest in ELF since then, resulting in a large number of journal articles, monographs, edited books (e.g. Mauranen & Ranta, 2009*) and large corpora (e.g. the Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English, the Corpus of English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings, and the Asian Corpus of English). In addition, ELF researchers have launched the annual conference series (International Conference of English as a Lingua Franca), the Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, and the De Gruyter book series Developments in English as a Lingua Franca. These publications move from an initial understanding of ELF as a ‘variety’ or ‘varieties’ to a later conceptualisation of ELF as a dynamic, fluid and variable phenomenon. ELF has become a major focus of discussions and activities among both applied linguists and English language teaching professionals (Jenkins, Cogo, & Dewey, 2011).

To confirm the role of social factors in mediating cognitive processes, this systematic replication study seeks to extend the generalizability of an exploratory study (McDonough, Crowther, Kielstra & Trofimovich 2015) that reported a positive association between eye gaze and second language (L2) speakers’ responses to recasts. For this replication, L2 English speakers (N = 74) carried out communicative tasks with research assistants who provided recasts in response to non-targetlike forms while both interlocutors’ eye gaze behavior was tracked. Transcripts were analyzed for the occurrence of recasts in response to different error types, recast length, and L2 speaker responses. Eye gaze length for the research assistants (RAs) when producing the recast move and the L2 speaker when responding to the recast were obtained in seconds, and mutual gaze (i.e., simultaneous looking) was included as a binary eye gaze variable. A logistic regression model confirmed the findings of McDonough et al. (2015), with both L2 speaker and mutual eye gaze predictive of targetlike responses; however, the effect of L2 speaker's eye gaze duration was in the opposite direction as compared to the initial study. The implications are discussed in terms of understanding the role of eye gaze in face to face interaction.

This article calls for replication of two studies (Li, Zhu & Ellis 2016; Arroyo & Yilmaz 2018) that examine the timing of corrective feedback, which refers to whether errors should be corrected during a communicative task (immediate feedback) or after the task is completed (delayed feedback). The article starts with a rationale for replicating the two studies: they address a topic of significance to theorists, researchers, and practitioners; they are conducted with rigorous methods; they represent classroom and laboratory research respectively; they both show an advantage for immediate feedback. It proceeds to contextualize the subsequent discussion of replication strategies by (1) elaborating the theoretical claims and pedagogical positions on the influence of the timing of corrective feedback on learning outcomes and task performance, and (2) summarizing the findings of the research on the effectiveness of corrective feedback. After some background information is provided, a detailed discussion is given for each of the two studies, including a summary of the methods and findings, followed by recommendations about how to replicate.

Recently, a large number of vocabulary tests have been made available to language teachers, testers, and researchers. Unfortunately, most of them have been launched with inadequate validation evidence. The field of language testing has become increasingly more rigorous in the area of test validation, but developers of vocabulary tests have generally not given validation sufficient attention in the past. This paper argues for more rigorous and systematic procedures for test development, starting from a more precise specification of the test's purpose, intended testees and educational context, the particular aspects of vocabulary knowledge which are being measured, and the way in which the test scores should be interpreted. It also calls for greater assessment literacy among vocabulary test developers, and greater support for the end users of the tests, for instance, with the provision of detailed users' manuals. Overall, the authors present what they feel are the minimum requirements for vocabulary test development and validation. They argue that the field should self-police itself more rigorously to ensure that these requirements are met or exceeded, and made explicit for those using vocabulary tests.