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ELT Research Bites



If you have an interest in research into second language acquisition but don't have the time, money or need to look at original journal articles, you may like this very good site which contains articles about notable research issues in the field. ELT Research Bites.

In their own words:

"The purpose of ELT Research Bites is to present interesting and relevant language and education research in an easily digestible format. Academic journal articles and research reports tend to be long, perhaps even long-winded. And rightfully so – there is a lot of theoretical and often statistical work that must be clearly explained and a journal article is the best place for that. We hope, with this new blog, to help all language teachers benefit from the insights gained through academic research, whilst not taking too much of their time away from where it is needed most – the classroom.

ELT Research Bites serves you the substance and context of the full article at the length of an abstract, with a side dish of practical implications! With these bite-size summaries of applied linguistics and pedagogy research, ELT Research Bites aims to offer a bridge to empirical or other published work which contributors feels deserve attention and which you can adapt and apply in your own language teaching!"

The site is written by a group of ELT teachers and researchers led by Anthony Schmidt and is regularly updated with very readable digests of pedagogical and theoretical topics.

Recent articles have included:
  • Foreign language educators exposure to research
  • Instructed second language learning, Implicit learning and input enhancement - a summary of some work done by leading researcher Michael Long
  • Pronunciation instruction - worth the time or wasted effort?
  • Gap-fill, sentence-writing or composition - which leads to better vocab learning?
  • Written feedback - does it work?
  • Cognitive load and language teaching - what teachers need to know
  • Is flipped learning worth the trouble?
The site also links to a range of free, open-access journals and invites contributions from other writers. Topics can be searched from a side bar.

What I like about the posts is their clarity and balanced content. Although the writers are from an English language Teaching background, as always, much of what they write is relevant to MFL (WL) teachers. Sites like this provide play an invaluable role in making research accessible and digestible to practising language teachers. You can learn a lot here.



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