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 to, for example, as the ‘timed impromptu writing test’ (Weigle, 2002, p. 59) or the ‘snapshot approach’ (Hamp-Lyons & Kroll, 1997, p. 18) – featured significantly in our practices, albeit in very different ways. This form of writing assessment still holds considerable sway across the globe. For us, however, it provoked early questions and concerns around the consequential and ethical aspects of writing assessment.

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 the field of language education include two books dedicated to the phenomenon of TBLT: Task-based language teaching from the teachers’ perspective (John Benjamins, 2012) and Foundational principles of task-based language teaching (Routledge, 2021).

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, 2018a, b). The present paper argues that TBLT remains in practice a contested endeavour. Positive experimental research findings are not necessarily finding their way into classrooms, and practitioner-focused studies play a crucial role in adding to our knowledge of what works and what does not work in authentic contexts. The original study and the comparative re-production addressed the same research questions and drew on parallel data sources. The findings of the comparative study, which supported those of the original study, helped in identifying more clearly the issues at stake for the profession and the variables that require attention. It is apparent that the challenges reside in upskilling and supporting practising teachers, who need to become a stronger focus of dedicated and long-term professional development opportunities that will introduce them to the innovation, and sustain them in its implementation.

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 provide an adequately structured environment that allows for sufficient exposure to frequent language, and processing and practising of grammatical form. At the same time, differences emerge between how TBLT is conceptualised in theory and how TBLT is operationalised practically in many additional language classrooms. These realities signal the need to look at the interface between theory, research and practice. The article considers what current research into TBLT has not succeeded in getting through to classrooms, what has succeeded in getting through reasonably well, and what has been over-applied. It is concluded that the under- and over-application of theory and research in practice highlight the difficulty in identifying exactly what TBLT is or should be in instructed contexts. The article proposes a way forward to strengthen the effectiveness of the TBLT endeavour.

Illegal hunting of resident and migratory herbivores is widespread in the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania. To devise effective strategies to reduce levels of hunting, information is required on why people are involved in illegal hunting and the role of bushmeat in the local economy. Participation in hunting may be influenced by measures of relative wealth, including livestock ownership, means of generating cash income and access to alternative sources of meat. Data came from 300 individuals responding to a questionnaire in 10 villages, from responses by 359 people in 24 group discussions in another 12 villages, and from 552 people arrested and interviewed in the National Park. A smaller proportion of individual respondents (32%) than group respondents (57%) volunteered that they participated in illegal hunting. Most individual and group respondents were subsistence farmers who considered bushmeat to be a source of protein and a means of generating cash income. Three-quarters of those arrested participated in hunting primarily to generate cash income and a quarter claimed that they only hunted to obtain food. Participation in illegal hunting decreased as wealth in terms of the number of sheep and goats owned increased. People with access to alternative means of generating income or acquiring protein were also less likely to be involved in illegal hunting. Arrested respondents were typically young adult males with low incomes and few or no livestock. Illegal hunting was not reduced by participation in community-based conservation pro-grammes. Results suggested that between 52 000 and 60 000 people participated in illegal hunting within protected areas, and that many young men (approximately 5200) derived their primary source of income from hunting.

Goswami and Bryant (1990) proposed a theory of reading development based on three causal connections. One of these causal connections was based on the relationship between rhyming skills and reading development found in English. To explain this connection, they suggested that young readers of English used analogies based on rimes as one means of deciphering the alphabetic code. This proposal has recently become the subject of some debate. The most serious critique has been advanced by Seymour and his colleagues (Duncan, Seymour, & Hill, 1997; Seymour & Duncan, 1997; Seymour & Evans, 1994). These authors reported a series of studies with Scottish schoolchildren which, they claim, show that progression in normal reading acquisition is from a small unit (phonemic) approach in the initial stage to a large unit (rime-based) approach at a later stage. Two experiments are presented which replicate those conducted by Seymour and his group with samples of English schoolchildren. Different results are found. It is argued that methodological and instructional factors may be very important for the conceptual interpretation of studies attempting to pit “small” units (phonemes) against “large” units (onsets and rimes) in reading. In particular, it is necessary to consider whether a given phonological awareness task requires the recognition of shared phonological segments (“epilinguistic” processing) or the identification and production of shared phonological segments (metalinguistic processing). It is also important to take into account the nature of the literacy instruction being implemented in participating schools. If the phonological aspects of this tuition focus solely on phonemes (small units), then poor rime-level (large unit) performance may be found in metalinguistic tasks.