Research on Teaching in English: Secondary and Higher Education. Where have we been and where are we going?

Abstract

At the end of the first decade of this new millennium, it is time to reflect on English Language Teaching (ELT) research and practice, due to the fact that English has become the global lingua franca and inevitably the communicative use of this global language has been promoted. Throughout its history, English Language Teaching (henceforth, ELT) and its research has been influenced by the way language, in general, has been understood, thought to be learned and needed to be used in given time periods. In other words, the ideas defining language (linguistic paradigms), the leading theories attempting to determine how it is acquired and the particular social demand for its implementation have determined the type of research carried out to find out how English can be taught best in the particular temporal and social context.In this introduction of the special issue on ELT we reflect on the progress of English teaching research mainly in higher education. We start with a brief review of the field by examining the three most influential factors, i.e., the linguistic, psychological and sociological realms or paradigms that have determined its research and practice to the present day. Secondly, we examine the significant developments in the state of the English language, recent European educational and language legislation, as well as the technological advances that have also played a predominant role in characterizing ELT methodology today. As is evidenced by the articles found in this volume of "Research on Teaching in English: Secondary and Higher Education", many studies have focused on the pedagogical procedures used in Spanish tertiary education, influenced by the creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), to facilitate the use of language for the academic and future professional lives of English language learners.

Genre Pedagogy and Bilingual Graduate Students’ Academic Writing

“…The work on academic genre pedagogy in English and Spanish has been quite profuse in recent years, more than likely due to the increasing numbers of novice researchers and teachers in the two languages. In the case of English, its status as the lingua franca for international academic communication suffices to justify this proliferation [6], whereas in the case of Spanish in Europe and in South America, the increasing number of university exchange students that take courses in Spanish has prompted studies that seek to provide discourse and genre models from linguistic, pragmatic and sociocultural perspectives [7][8][9]. These two academic languages, English and Spanish, are the focus of this study, in which a genre approach is put into practice to aid students to improve their academic written biliteracy.…”