Much research has not been conducted on how classroom-based research articles concerning teaching effectiveness in the ESL/EFL classroom have changed over time, in spite of deep interest in the field. Therefore, this study aims to examine the characteristics of research articles on effective teaching in the ESL/EFL classroom, focusing specifically on articles from TESOL Quarterly. For this purpose, this study searched articles using three key terms; effective teaching, ESL/EFL, and activity. Articles which included those terms were investigated, depending on research topic and publication year, and four key facts were found; the importance of teachers’ input (older articles), a focus on group or peer work (newer articles), teachers’ education, and the use of students’ native languages. While students preferred teachers’ reliable and explicit input in the past, modern articles tended to recommend more frequent interactions among peer groups in the English learning classroom. Limited resources in teaching contexts asked for additional qualifications from ESL/EFL teachers, thus emphasizing teacher education as an important factor for effective teaching. Lastly, the use of students’ native language had a positive influence on learning English. The findings of this study suggest some implications for how effective teaching in Korean context could be implemented.

This study examines how students and instructors perceived online instructors’ roles in asynchronous courses designed for language teachers. Five instructor interviews, 46 student questionnaires, and ten course evaluation summaries presenting the opinions of 69 out of 120 students in total were analyzed. Based upon Berge’s (1995) framework, asynchronous online course instructors’ roles were divided into four categories: pedagogical, social, managerial, and technical. The results highlight and give suggestions to what is characteristic and likely problematic in online teaching—using the tools and pedagogical techniques to make learning more social than conventional classroom exhibit, orchestrating discussion not only technically but also by instructing and modeling effective postings, assessing the various ways that students participate in the class, and managing time, the students’ as well as the instructor’s. This study provides an opportunity for language educators and researchers to think about the unique characteristics of web-based distance education in general and the changing roles of instructors in that new form of education in more critical way.

This paper addresses pedagogical implications of contrastive rhetoric by focusing on recent trends in the field of contrastive rhetoric. The paper first addresses traditional contrastive rhetoric and highlights major issues along the way. It then focuses on recent diversification of and challenges to traditional contrastive rhetoric. For this purpose, the paper takes a close look at a) contrastive rhetoric's recent focus on rhetorical similarities rather than differences, b) its examination of ESL/EFL learners' perspectives, c) the introduction of critical contrastive rhetoric, and d) the most recent challenges based on the English-as-an-international-lingua-franca perspective. The paper concludes with a discussion of pedagogical implications of such diversification efforts and challenges. The discussion covers contrastive rhetoric's contribution to the increased awareness of ethnocentrism underlying traditional contrastive rhetoric, the need to study about actual impact of teaching rhetorical differences and/or similarities, and the necessity of investigating ESL/EFL learners’ beliefs about writing in English, which is believed to have a filtering effect on ESL/EFL learners' acceptance of contrastive rhetorical information.