مجله تحقیقات زبان انگلیسی ایران
سال:1396 | دوره:5 | شماره:3 |تعداد مقالات:10

Once upon a time in “an education kingdom,” the Good Teachers assembled to bestow their blessings and gifts to the new graduates while wishing them a bright future. Suddenly, an evil looking Cranky Teacher came forward cursing the excited students and prophesying that they would leave their profession out of exhaustion with reporting. Just in time, a Good Teacher intervened like a savior and promised the shocked students “unconditional hope”; a hope that would rise from love and passion of the profession and of experiencing challenging hours with eager children (p. xv).

Vocabulary is a rich and varied form of one’s language knowledge. It is seriously essential for learning, but conventional vocabulary assessments lack the range and flexibility to support classroom teachers in making instructional decisions. This has motivated McKeown and her colleagues, five leading scholars in vocabulary teaching and/or assessment, to try to bridge the gap by developing an informative book. The volume tackles the complex yet crucial topic of linking assessment to instruction in the domain of vocabulary. For decades, the field of education has been unable to meet the challenge of getting meaningful, useful vocabulary assessment into everyday classroom practice in a way that improves reading outcomes.

Prof. Alison Wray has a BA and D.Phil in linguistics from the University of York and had a 3 year postdoctoral in the Music Department of the same university. After working as a linguistics lecturer at what is now York St John University in York, she became Assistant Director of the Wales Applied Language Research Unit, Swansea University. In 1999 she was made a senior research fellow at Cardiff University, and subsequently a Reader, Professor and Research Professor. She been Director of Research for the School's of English Communication and Philosophy since 2004. What follows is an interview with Alison Wray (AW) conducted by Karim Sadeghi (KS).