This article reviews doctoral research into English language teaching and learning completed between 2009 and 2013 at Turkish universities. The 25 dissertations reviewed here fall into these four general categories: (1) instructional variables and designs, (2) learners, (3) textbooks, and (4) development and evaluation. The majority of these dissertations focus on classroom teaching and learning. Half are particularly concerned with the effects of different instructional variables and designs on learning-related issues. The dissertations are presented with a focus on research methodologies to provide the reader with an evaluation of not only the validity of the findings in each study but also their strengths and weaknesses.

The present study aims to identify translanguaging strategies and question the effectiveness of these strategies in foreign language classrooms. To this aim, a 10th grade German class was observed during fall and spring semesters of 2017-2018 academic year, and interviews before, during and after observation process were conducted with the German language teacher of the second foreign language classroom. Based on the studies of the City University of New York, to provide half of the instruction in English while the other half in the target language through translanguaging strategies is quite beneficial and fruitful for foreign language learning. Translanguaging as an emerging application is accepted as a part of both education and language equality. By challenging the rigid separation of foreign languages in the classroom, translanguaging strategies ensure that teachers employ a 50-50 model of first foreign language and target foreign language while teaching an additional foreign language. Findings of the current research showed that the teacher frequently prefers using vocabulary and syntax-based strategies in her second foreign language classroom, and the students generally responded to the use of these strategies and used them to participate activities and raise questions. Considering specifically the interview transcriptions, it was detected that the teacher uses translanguaging strategies undeliberately, but willingly, without any planning.

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Literacy as an emergent concept of study is a field of educational sciences studies and the skill of writing is an integral part of both the definition of literacy and studies of literacy. While many different approaches of research and various research designs serve the purposes of helping learners develop their writing skills and teachers better their writing courses, the present study applies a coursebook analysis methodology since coursebooks are key materials of teaching. For this research, four coursebooks (A1-B2) of teaching Turkish to foreigners coursebook series, Yeni Istanbul, have been analysed. The analysis aims to identify writing tasks included in coursebooks and analyze to what extent these tasks serve language functions suggested by Halliday (1973) and genre variety of activities as purposes and text components of a specific genre are the main attributes of successful writing. To this end, the study uses a 4-step research procedure including identification of writing tasks, exclusion of writing tasks which are below textual level, and specification of purposes and genres of each writing activity. Results of the research show that the coursebooks are mostly designed for learners to practise informative and personal functions of language; thus, it co uld be proposed to distribute writing tasks for each purpose in a more balanced way. Moreover, genre variety of writing activities in the coursebooks is low, and the coursebooks do not apply a genre-based approach to writing.