Martin East
Biographic Data
| ID | 6176535 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Martin East |
| GIVEN NAMES | Martin |
| FAMILY NAME | East |
| SIGNATURE | EAST M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Auckland |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3681-5028 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Exploring English Language Learners’ Vocabulary Knowledge and Usage When Speaking
Vocabulary forms a fundamental component of speaking ability, as it enables speakers to convey meaning accurately, fluently, and effectively. Although the relationship between vocabulary and speaking has been investigated to some extent, gaps remain in understanding the link between learners’ vocabulary knowledge and their speaking proficiency, as well as how they deploy that knowledge in speaking performance. Drawing on speech production models,…
Supporting a task-based approach to Asian language teaching and learning in one Asia-Pacific context
Task-based language teaching (TBLT) is a learner-centred and experiential approach which contrasts with more traditional teacher-led models. However, the interface between learner-centred and teacher-led has emerged as a tension for TBLT in practice. In Languages Other than English (LOTE) programmes, this tension can appear more acute for Asian languages than for European languages where the former are seen as comparatively harder to learn, poten…
Second language listening pedagogy
This study explored how teachers undertook listening instruction with learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) through investigating teachers’ authentic classroom practices. Eight experienced EFL teachers working in Iranian private language schools participated in the study. Each teacher was observed six to nine times and each complete teaching session of each of the participants was audio-recorded. Findings revealed that teachers had know…
Integrating translanguaging into assessment
This paper explores how beginners in a second language (L2) perform on and perceive an online writing test that is designed based on the notion of translanguaging. The test was administered during emergency remote teaching when many L2 courses navigated creative solutions to online testing. Situated in an ab initio Mandarin Chinese course in New Zealand, 163 students’ first-time digital compositions in Chinese and responses to an immediate follow…
The ethical turn in writing assessment
Both of us were drawn into the writing assessment field initially through our lived experiences as schoolteachers. We worked in radically different contexts – Martin was head of a languages department and teacher of French and German in the late 1990s in the UK, and David was a Grade 12 teacher of Academic English in Alberta, Canada, at the turn of the twenty-first century. In both these contexts, the traditional direct test of writing – referred…
Martin East's essential bookshelf
Martin East is Professor of Language Education in the School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics, the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Prior to this, he spent ten years as a language teacher educator in the University's Faculty of Education and Social Work. He has also taught languages at a broad range of proficiency levels and in a variety of contexts, including leading a school languages department in the UK. His numerous publications in…
Task‐Based Language Teaching (TBLT) as a Pedagogical Framework
TBLT is based on the concept that undertaking communicative and interactive tasks fosters second language acquisition. Interaction is the means through which learners of an additional language (L2) can be provided with scaffolding, feedback, and instruction and is underpinned by two principal theoretical frameworks: the cognitive interactionist and the sociocultural interactionist. The primary mechanism through which classroom interactions occur …
Measuring Chinese EFL learners’ motivation and anxiety when completing a video narration task
What do beginning teachers make of task-based language teaching? A comparative re-production of East (2014)
East (2014) presented a largely qualitative study that uncovered how beginning teachers of languages other than English developed their understandings about task-based language teaching (TBLT) as they took part in a year-long initial teacher education programme in New Zealand. This paper reports a comparative re-production. It complements a recent New Zealand based study, experimental in nature, and its approximate replication (Erlam & Ellis, 201…
Shifting conceptualisations of foreign language teaching in New Zealand
Developing students’ intercultural capability is now an expectation within language programmes in New Zealand schools. This is a challenge, particularly as intercultural capability is still a new concept for many teachers. Drawing on data from a two-year project, this paper foregrounds student voices to reveal how beginner learners experienced language programmes where non-specialist intermediate school teachers facilitated comparative intercultu…
Intercultural language teaching as a catalyst for teacher inquiry
Research into practice
This article discusses the phenomenon of task-based language teaching (TBLT) in instructed additional language settings. It begins from the premise that, despite considerable theoretical and empirical support, TBLT remains a contested endeavour. Critics of TBLT argue that, particularly with regard to time-limited foreign language instructional contexts, TBLT's learner-centred and experiential approach to second language acquisition fails to provi…
Coming to terms with innovative high-stakes assessment practice
Implementing assessment reform can be challenging. Proposed new assessments must be seen by stakeholders to be fit for purpose, and sometimes the perceptions of key stakeholders, such as teachers and students, may differ from the assessment developers. This article considers the recent introduction of a new high-stakes assessment of spoken proficiency for students of foreign languages in New Zealand high schools. The new assessment aims to measur…
The Dictionary as a Tool in Language Learning
The dictionary, according to Kirkness, is an essential source, if not indeed the principal source, of information on language for all members of literate societies who might have questions on any aspect of the form, meaning, and/or use of a word or words in their own or in another language. (p. 54) Seen from this perspective, dictionaries are vital tools invoked by language users in a range of situations when they are seeking clear and definitive…
Addressing the intercultural via task-based language teaching
A frequent weakness of communicative approaches to foreign language teaching is a neglect of the intercultural dimension. Cultural knowledge is often treated as an addendum which focuses on learning facts about the target country. This article explores whether task-based language teaching (TBLT) can successfully address the intercultural dimension. Using findings that emerge from a series of one-to-one interviews, this article explores practition…
Promoting positive attitudes towards foreign language learning
This paper reports on the effectiveness of a tailored undergraduate course at a tertiary institution in New Zealand constructed to challenge, and encourage changes to, monolingual ‘English-only’ attitudes. The course was designed to provide knowledge and promote understanding of the phenomenon of English as a global language, and the place of, and implications for, languages other than English in that context. Working with two cohorts of students…
Moving Towards ‘Us-Others’ Reciprocity
Learning new languages potentially gives people vital skills to build more successful relationships, and understanding the social influences at work today may help us to know which type of language education is most beneficial. This article explores three social influences – globalisation, localisation and glocalisation – from the perspective of their effect on language use. It is suggested that glocalisation provides the most useful term to desc…
Language Evaluation Policies and the Use of Support Resources in Assessments of Language Proficiency
This paper reviews the arguments for and against the inclusion of support resources in high-stakes assessments of L2 language proficiency. It explores how these arguments have shaped centralised language-in-education planning and policy decisions and looks at what has happened at the local level as a consequence of these decisions. Regardless of whether support resources are included in or excluded from the assessment the paper proposes some of t…
Bilingual dictionaries in tests of L2 writing proficiency
Whether test takers should be allowed access to dictionaries when taking L2 tests has been the subject of debate for a good number of years. Opinions differ according to how the test construct is understood and whether the underlying value system favours process-orientated assessment for learning, with its concern to elicit the test takers' best performance, or product-focused assessment of learning, with its emphasis on the discriminatory power …
Intercultural language teaching as a catalyst for teacher inquiry
Research into practice
This article discusses the phenomenon of task-based language teaching (TBLT) in instructed additional language settings. It begins from the premise that, despite considerable theoretical and empirical support, TBLT remains a contested endeavour. Critics of TBLT argue that, particularly with regard to time-limited foreign language instructional contexts, TBLT's learner-centred and experiential approach to second language acquisition fails to provi…
Measuring Chinese EFL learners’ motivation and anxiety when completing a video narration task
Shifting conceptualisations of foreign language teaching in New Zealand
Developing students’ intercultural capability is now an expectation within language programmes in New Zealand schools. This is a challenge, particularly as intercultural capability is still a new concept for many teachers. Drawing on data from a two-year project, this paper foregrounds student voices to reveal how beginner learners experienced language programmes where non-specialist intermediate school teachers facilitated comparative intercultu…
Addressing the intercultural via task-based language teaching
A frequent weakness of communicative approaches to foreign language teaching is a neglect of the intercultural dimension. Cultural knowledge is often treated as an addendum which focuses on learning facts about the target country. This article explores whether task-based language teaching (TBLT) can successfully address the intercultural dimension. Using findings that emerge from a series of one-to-one interviews, this article explores practition…
Promoting positive attitudes towards foreign language learning
This paper reports on the effectiveness of a tailored undergraduate course at a tertiary institution in New Zealand constructed to challenge, and encourage changes to, monolingual ‘English-only’ attitudes. The course was designed to provide knowledge and promote understanding of the phenomenon of English as a global language, and the place of, and implications for, languages other than English in that context. Working with two cohorts of students…
Bilingual dictionaries in tests of L2 writing proficiency
Whether test takers should be allowed access to dictionaries when taking L2 tests has been the subject of debate for a good number of years. Opinions differ according to how the test construct is understood and whether the underlying value system favours process-orientated assessment for learning, with its concern to elicit the test takers' best performance, or product-focused assessment of learning, with its emphasis on the discriminatory power …
Moving Towards ‘Us-Others’ Reciprocity
Learning new languages potentially gives people vital skills to build more successful relationships, and understanding the social influences at work today may help us to know which type of language education is most beneficial. This article explores three social influences – globalisation, localisation and glocalisation – from the perspective of their effect on language use. It is suggested that glocalisation provides the most useful term to desc…
Language Evaluation Policies and the Use of Support Resources in Assessments of Language Proficiency
This paper reviews the arguments for and against the inclusion of support resources in high-stakes assessments of L2 language proficiency. It explores how these arguments have shaped centralised language-in-education planning and policy decisions and looks at what has happened at the local level as a consequence of these decisions. Regardless of whether support resources are included in or excluded from the assessment the paper proposes some of t…
Promoting positive attitudes towards foreign language learning
This paper reports on the effectiveness of a tailored undergraduate course at a tertiary institution in New Zealand constructed to challenge, and encourage changes to, monolingual ‘English-only’ attitudes. The course was designed to provide knowledge and promote understanding of the phenomenon of English as a global language, and the place of, and implications for, languages other than English in that context. Working with two cohorts of students…
Addressing the intercultural via task-based language teaching
A frequent weakness of communicative approaches to foreign language teaching is a neglect of the intercultural dimension. Cultural knowledge is often treated as an addendum which focuses on learning facts about the target country. This article explores whether task-based language teaching (TBLT) can successfully address the intercultural dimension. Using findings that emerge from a series of one-to-one interviews, this article explores practition…
The Dictionary as a Tool in Language Learning
The dictionary, according to Kirkness, is an essential source, if not indeed the principal source, of information on language for all members of literate societies who might have questions on any aspect of the form, meaning, and/or use of a word or words in their own or in another language. (p. 54) Seen from this perspective, dictionaries are vital tools invoked by language users in a range of situations when they are seeking clear and definitive…
Coming to terms with innovative high-stakes assessment practice
Implementing assessment reform can be challenging. Proposed new assessments must be seen by stakeholders to be fit for purpose, and sometimes the perceptions of key stakeholders, such as teachers and students, may differ from the assessment developers. This article considers the recent introduction of a new high-stakes assessment of spoken proficiency for students of foreign languages in New Zealand high schools. The new assessment aims to measur…
Intercultural language teaching as a catalyst for teacher inquiry
Research into practice
This article discusses the phenomenon of task-based language teaching (TBLT) in instructed additional language settings. It begins from the premise that, despite considerable theoretical and empirical support, TBLT remains a contested endeavour. Critics of TBLT argue that, particularly with regard to time-limited foreign language instructional contexts, TBLT's learner-centred and experiential approach to second language acquisition fails to provi…
Shifting conceptualisations of foreign language teaching in New Zealand
Developing students’ intercultural capability is now an expectation within language programmes in New Zealand schools. This is a challenge, particularly as intercultural capability is still a new concept for many teachers. Drawing on data from a two-year project, this paper foregrounds student voices to reveal how beginner learners experienced language programmes where non-specialist intermediate school teachers facilitated comparative intercultu…
Measuring Chinese EFL learners’ motivation and anxiety when completing a video narration task
What do beginning teachers make of task-based language teaching? A comparative re-production of East (2014)
East (2014) presented a largely qualitative study that uncovered how beginning teachers of languages other than English developed their understandings about task-based language teaching (TBLT) as they took part in a year-long initial teacher education programme in New Zealand. This paper reports a comparative re-production. It complements a recent New Zealand based study, experimental in nature, and its approximate replication (Erlam & Ellis, 201…
Task‐Based Language Teaching (TBLT) as a Pedagogical Framework
TBLT is based on the concept that undertaking communicative and interactive tasks fosters second language acquisition. Interaction is the means through which learners of an additional language (L2) can be provided with scaffolding, feedback, and instruction and is underpinned by two principal theoretical frameworks: the cognitive interactionist and the sociocultural interactionist. The primary mechanism through which classroom interactions occur …
Integrating translanguaging into assessment
This paper explores how beginners in a second language (L2) perform on and perceive an online writing test that is designed based on the notion of translanguaging. The test was administered during emergency remote teaching when many L2 courses navigated creative solutions to online testing. Situated in an ab initio Mandarin Chinese course in New Zealand, 163 students’ first-time digital compositions in Chinese and responses to an immediate follow…
The ethical turn in writing assessment
Both of us were drawn into the writing assessment field initially through our lived experiences as schoolteachers. We worked in radically different contexts – Martin was head of a languages department and teacher of French and German in the late 1990s in the UK, and David was a Grade 12 teacher of Academic English in Alberta, Canada, at the turn of the twenty-first century. In both these contexts, the traditional direct test of writing – referred…
Martin East's essential bookshelf
Martin East is Professor of Language Education in the School of Cultures, Languages and Linguistics, the University of Auckland, New Zealand. Prior to this, he spent ten years as a language teacher educator in the University's Faculty of Education and Social Work. He has also taught languages at a broad range of proficiency levels and in a variety of contexts, including leading a school languages department in the UK. His numerous publications in…
Second language listening pedagogy
This study explored how teachers undertook listening instruction with learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) through investigating teachers’ authentic classroom practices. Eight experienced EFL teachers working in Iranian private language schools participated in the study. Each teacher was observed six to nine times and each complete teaching session of each of the participants was audio-recorded. Findings revealed that teachers had know…
Exploring English Language Learners’ Vocabulary Knowledge and Usage When Speaking
Vocabulary forms a fundamental component of speaking ability, as it enables speakers to convey meaning accurately, fluently, and effectively. Although the relationship between vocabulary and speaking has been investigated to some extent, gaps remain in understanding the link between learners’ vocabulary knowledge and their speaking proficiency, as well as how they deploy that knowledge in speaking performance. Drawing on speech production models,…
Supporting a task-based approach to Asian language teaching and learning in one Asia-Pacific context
Task-based language teaching (TBLT) is a learner-centred and experiential approach which contrasts with more traditional teacher-led models. However, the interface between learner-centred and teacher-led has emerged as a tension for TBLT in practice. In Languages Other than English (LOTE) programmes, this tension can appear more acute for Asian languages than for European languages where the former are seen as comparatively harder to learn, poten…
EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning (17 works) · Psychology (17 works) · Pedagogy (14 works) · Second Language Learning and Teaching (13 works) · Mathematics education (11 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (10 works) · Language education (9 works) · Linguistics (9 works) · Sociology (9 works) · Computer Science (7 works)