TESOL Quarterly

Willingness to communicate (WTC) research has focused mostly on identifying factors that influence second language (L2) WTC in ESL contexts. This study differs by examining the effects of a 6‐week treatment aimed at enhancing WTC in a group of 206 Yemeni rural high school EFL learners. Classes were randomly assigned to a control group (n = 102) or an experimental group (n = 104). The researcher designed one weekly 45‐minute visualization lesson for the treatment group to help learners imagine themselves communicating in English; the control group did communicative activities. Results of an analysis of covariance indicate that the treatment group's WTC had increased significantly at the end of the intervention. Quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the program. The study provides insights into the role of visualization to enhance students’ WTC and suggests activities that teachers can use to enhance students’ WTC. It shows that there are many ways besides visualization to stimulate the development of ideal L2 selves and that it is not difficult to conduct interventions at schools in Yemen or in any other developing country if teachers are given the appropriate activities, guidelines, planning sessions, and instructions. Practical implications are discussed.

This study examined willingness to communicate (WTC) in English among IranianEFLlearners in the classroom context. For this purpose, a second language willingness to communicate (L2WTC) model based onWTCtheory (MacIntyre, Clément, Dörnyei, & Noels, 1998) and empirical studies was proposed and tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). This model examined the interrelationships amongWTCin English, communication confidence, motivation, classroom environment, attitudes toward learning English, and English language achievement. A total of 243 English‐major university students in Iran completed a questionnaire. The proposedSEMmodel adequately fitted the data. Results of theSEMindicated that classroom environment was the strongest direct predictor of L2WTC; communication confidence directly affectedWTC; motivation indirectly affectedWTCthrough communication confidence; English language proficiency indirectly affectedWTCthrough communication confidence; and the classroom environment directly affected attitudes, motivation, and communication confidence.

This article presents findings from qualitative research conducted in eight New York City public schools offering English as a new language (also known as English as a second language), in which language education policies were monolingual in English at the start of data collection. These schools participated in an intensive professional development and technical assistance project for which they were required to engage students’ bilingualism as a resource in instruction and implement translanguaging pedagogy, using the entire linguistic repertoire of bilingual children flexibly and strategically in instruction (García, Ibarra Johnson, & Seltzer, 2016). This study documents the efforts of participating schools to make their practices for emergent bilinguals more multilingual. Findings suggest that translanguaging pedagogy initiated broader ideological shifts as educators adopted a translanguaging stance that has proven transformative to the schools as a whole. Specifically, findings reveal changes in how educators thought about emergent bilinguals, their language practices and the place of those practices in instruction, and how this ideological shift engendered significant changes in several schools to their language policies. Moreover, findings show how the introduction of translanguaging pedagogy in participating schools disrupted dominant monolingual approaches in theoretical and practical ways and the impact of doing so on educators and students.

This qualitative study focuses on the potential influence students’ English as a second language (ESL) status has on teachers’ placement decisions. Specifically, the study examines 21 teachers’ responses to and decisions regarding fictional student record cards. Findings reveal that some teachers’ placement decisions were influenced by factors beyond a student's academic achievement, such as a student's ethnicity or ESL status. This study demonstrates that even when teachers are asked to base their recommendations only on academic achievement, some teachers still attend to arbitrary factors such as a learner's group membership. Teacher educators may use these findings to sensitize teacher candidates to the implications of their unchecked stereotypes and biases.

This article examines common lexicogrammatical problems found in Cantonese English as a second language (ESL) learners' written English output. A study was conducted with 387 student participants, who were asked to do two untutored and unaided free‐writing tasks of about 200–300 words each. A range of lexicogrammatical error types commonly found among Hong Kong Cantonese ESL learners was identified. Errors from the lexical level included vocabulary compensation and inaccurate directionality; errors from the syntactic level included calquing, existential structures, incorrect ordering of adverbials, and independent clauses as subjects; and those from the discourse level included periphrastic‐topic constructions. Mothertongue influence was inevitably an important source of the problems, but inadequate mastery of correct usage of the target language and universal processes were also important factors. The results of the study have potential for enhancing our understanding of the interlanguage grammar of learners and the nature, sources, and prevalence of learner problems. The results also have promising pedagogical implications, as they inform teachers of the levels, nature, sources, prevalence, and gravity of learner errors and equip them with the key ingredients needed for the design of appropriate remedial instructional materials. A discussion of how the taxonomical classification would be useful for language teachers is also given.