Karim Sadeghi

This book includes interviews with fourteen internationally-acclaimed leading figures in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), who speak on seminal issues in the field as well as their own contributions to SLA scholarship. As well as covering the contributors’ backgrounds and academic achievements, the interviews also delve into their areas of expertise, current theoretical and practical considerations, and contemporary questions, developments and challenges in SLA. The author probes their views on current topics including input and interaction, vocabulary acquisition, teaching pronunciation, writing development, syntactic processing, multilingualism, L1 attrition, complex dynamic systems, processing instruction, instructed second language acquisition, and technology in language teaching. An introduction by the author draws out the key themes and debates in the field today, and highlights areas for future research and further exploration, and a foreword is provided by Rod Ellis. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Applied Linguistics, Teacher Education and Methodology, and Second and Foreign Language Education.

This book includes interviews with fourteen internationally-acclaimed leading figures in Second Language Acquisition (SLA), who speak on seminal issues in the field as well as their own contributions to SLA scholarship. As well as covering the contributors’ backgrounds and academic achievements, the interviews also delve into their areas of expertise, current theoretical and practical considerations, and contemporary questions, developments and challenges in SLA. The author probes their views on current topics including input and interaction, vocabulary acquisition, teaching pronunciation, writing development, syntactic processing, multilingualism, L1 attrition, complex dynamic systems, processing instruction, instructed second language acquisition, and technology in language teaching. An introduction by the author draws out the key themes and debates in the field today, and highlights areas for future research and further exploration, and a foreword is provided by Rod Ellis. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Applied Linguistics, Teacher Education and Methodology, and Second and Foreign Language Education.

This book investigates the issue of cloze-validity as a measure of second language reading comprehension. It starts off by making a distinction between general reading ability and the more specific reading comprehension followed by a thorough review of the related research on L2 reading comprehension and sorting out the confusion in the literature in this categorization. A comprehensive account of cloze procedure is presented discussing its origin, different versions, its use for teaching and testing purposes, as well the latest research on cloze as measures of readability, language proficiency and second language reading. The book includes studies conducted at several stages on validating cloze as a measure of reading and interview and questionnaire techniques are applied to investigate the validity of eight cloze tests, criterion reading tests, and other cloze and reading tests in general. Two new cloze tests, i.e. reader-centered cloze test and phrase cloze test, are also introduced and researched as measures of reading ability. The book concludes with suggestions for developing tests that can better measure reading comprehension in light of recent research insights on the complex and dynamic nature of reading. This book will appeal to researchers, lecturers and graduate and post-graduate students taking a course in Second Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics, TESOL, Language Assessment, and Educational Measurement.

This book investigates the issue of cloze-validity as a measure of second language reading comprehension. It starts off by making a distinction between general reading ability and the more specific reading comprehension followed by a thorough review of the related research on L2 reading comprehension and sorting out the confusion in the literature in this categorization. A comprehensive account of cloze procedure is presented discussing its origin, different versions, its use for teaching and testing purposes, as well the latest research on cloze as measures of readability, language proficiency and second language reading. The book includes studies conducted at several stages on validating cloze as a measure of reading and interview and questionnaire techniques are applied to investigate the validity of eight cloze tests, criterion reading tests, and other cloze and reading tests in general. Two new cloze tests, i.e. reader-centered cloze test and phrase cloze test, are also introduced and researched as measures of reading ability. The book concludes with suggestions for developing tests that can better measure reading comprehension in light of recent research insights on the complex and dynamic nature of reading. This book will appeal to researchers, lecturers and graduate and post-graduate students taking a course in Second Language Acquisition, Applied Linguistics, TESOL, Language Assessment, and Educational Measurement.