To conclude this review, the major findings of the research will be summarized, and implications for further research and teaching in second language classrooms will be suggested. Despite the obvious increase in amount of classroom-oriented research in recent years, few of the suggestions offered here can be made with great confidence, for the existing research is difficult to synthesize. It has been shown that research is a) lacking in consistent measures of classroom processes and products, b) sometimes inadequate in design to address critical research questions, c) inexplicit or incomplete in quantitative or qualitative analysis, and d) in need of greater theoretical specification of the constructs and relationships to be investigated. A discussion of these methodological issues is warranted before future directions are suggested.

Methodological issues

Observation instruments

The discussion in this book has frequently called attention to the noncomparability of measures of classroom processes. Although a large number of observation instruments have been developed through the years, they have resulted from quite different theoretical positions and research goals: it is rare for any researcher, or team of researchers, to adopt a prior system. This has resulted in many studies of similar phenomena that lack true comparability (e.g., quantity of teacher speech, questioning, feedback). Baseline units of observation (often unreported) differ to such an extent that results could be extremely distorted. For example, recall Strong's argument that measures of teacher L1/L2 language use in classrooms should be done on the basis of duration rather than, say, number of utterances, turns, or moves.