The Backseat Linguist
Commentary on research in language acquisition and language education, by Jeff McQuillan, Senior Research Associate at the Center for Educational Development, Los Angeles.
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I’ve Moved to Substack
I’ll move the contents of this blog over to Substack. You can now follow me here and read my occasional posts.
1 min readL2 Teaching · May 14, 2026Does memorizing “chunks of language” make you more fluent?
A few years ago, I went through the weaknesses of the arguments for rote memorization of vocabulary . I recently stumbled upon a slight twist on this practice: memorizing “prefabricated sequences” of language rather than just individual…
5 min readL2 Teaching · November 1, 2025DIY Master’s in Second Language Teaching: A Reading List
Teaching adults a second language, or developing a good teaching app/program, requires both a solid grounding in the “why” (theory/research) as well as the “how.” If you don’t understand the why, you have no way of knowing if the how is…
11 min readL1 Literacy · October 14, 2025Individual State NAEP Scores Aren’t Evidence For Anything
Two more letters appeared in the 10/12/25 print edition of The Wall Street Journal on the topic of phonics and California. One of them was in direct response to my letter .
1 min readL1 Literacy · October 7, 2025Shanahan Responds to My WSJ Letter
The Wall Street Journal recently published a letter by Tim Shanahan in response to my earlier letter on phonics instruction in California. Several of Shanahan’s points are wrong or misleading.
4 min readL1 Literacy · October 3, 2025Schooling the WSJ and the “Mississippi Miracle”
I schooled the Wall Street Journal editorial page writers in a letter published in today’s (Oct. 3, 2025) edition (see image, link, & text below). The Journal had applauded California’s recent adoption of (more) phonics teaching (see link…
2 min readL2 Teaching · September 16, 2024Are Flashcards a Good Idea for Learning New Words?
I recently did another YouTube interview (to be posted shortly) and realized that I had forgotten to post this one (with James Stubbs) from last year.
43 min readL2 Teaching · July 26, 2024Fundamentals of Language Acquisition: Two Talks
I gave two one-hour talks to the IZ Education Centre for beginning teachers over the past six months or so. The first one reviews Krashen’s theory of second language acquisition and can be found on my YouTube channel:
1 min readL2 Teaching · April 29, 2024Interview with Matt Brooks-Green on Language Acquisition
Popular YouTuber Matt Brooks-Green interviewed me recently on some key concepts in acquiring a second language.
1 min readL2 Teaching · March 21, 2023Interviews with James Stubbs on “Future Multilingual”
James Stubbs over at Future Multilingual (YouTube channel) interviewed me recently about second language acquisition and vocabulary instruction. It was a lot of fun – thanks to James for inviting me!
1 min readL1 Literacy · November 18, 2022The Case for Acquired Phonics
Stephen Krashen and I have published a very short paper, “ The Case for Acquired Phonics ,” which argues that the “acquisition/learning” distinction applies to phonics.
1 min readL2 Teaching · April 25, 2022Interview with Álvaro from Natural Languages on Comprehensible Input
I was recently interviewed by Álvaro from Natural Languages about using comprehensible input in language teaching.
1 min readL2 Teaching · November 10, 2021How to Teach Intermediate Language Students
I gave another lecture via Skype to the IZ Language School last month (October, 2021) in Zanjan, Iran , talking about how to teach intermediate language students. Since most of the students were new to teaching (of any kind), the talk…
1 min readBilingualism & Bilingual Education · April 26, 2021NABE Talk Materials 2021
I’m giving a short talk as part of a panel presentation on heritage languages for the National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) this week. Below are links to the studies I’m discussing:
1 min readBilingualism & Bilingual Education · April 25, 2021Heritage Language Development (Krashen, Tse, & McQuillan, 1998) – Free Book
One of the first collections of papers on heritage language acquisition and education was , published in 1998 and edited by Stephen Krashen, Lucy Tse, and me. The book contains both original research and comprehensive reviews on several…
2 min readVocabulary · July 6, 2020Does Teaching Morphology Improve Vocabulary?
Medium-length answer: The theory behind morphological instruction is that if you teach students Greek and Latin roots and/or common prefixes and suffixes, students will be able to apply that knowledge to figure out the meanings of new…
1 min readVocabulary · May 18, 2020How We Improve Our Vocabulary (Video)
I gave a talk to a group of students and scholars at the IZ Education Center (Iran) via Skype on May 15, 2020.
1 min readVocabulary · January 14, 2020I’m Not a Real Doctor, But I Acquire Like One from TV
We’ve previously reviewed evidence that you can pickup scientific vocabulary from reading science fiction . Now a new study shows that you can pickup medical vocabulary from watching TV dramas about doctors and hospitals.
3 min readL1 Literacy · December 4, 2019Can Language Minority Students Acquire Academic Vocabulary from Reading?
The study examined the performance of 149 sixth-graders in a seven-week vocabulary intervention called “U.S. History for Engaged Readers.” There were both English-only (EOs) (called “English Monolinguals” in the paper) and LM students…
5 min readL1 Literacy · November 21, 2019The Shaky #ScienceOfReading on Decodable Texts
“Decodable texts” are books written so that the words that appear in them conform to the phonics rules children are taught. So if children have been taught the rules for the correspondence between the letter n and the phoneme /n/, m and…
9 min readVocabulary · November 19, 2019Vocabulary, Grammar, Sex, and Aging
The title Vocabulary, Grammar, Sex, and Aging is from a paper published a few years ago in the journal Cognitive Science, not what’s been on my mind lately.
2 min readL1 Literacy · November 14, 2019The NAEP Reading Panic: 2019 Edition
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) – “the Nation’s Report Card ” – has released results from their latest round of reading tests. These tests are given every two years, but regardless of the results, the reaction in the…
2 min readL1 Literacy · November 11, 2019Why Reading Fiction is Good for Academic Achievement
The education writer at Forbes , Natalie Wexler, argued last week that reading fiction isn’t the “only” thing needed to boost academic achievement. It’s a curious position to take, not because it is wrong – I agree with her completely –…
7 min readL1 Literacy · November 5, 2019Another Massive Vocabulary Study Finds No Gains, Massive or Otherwise
Jayanthi and colleagues (2017 online; paywall) conducted a study – in what seems like an endless series of massive , federally-funded studies of this sort – to determine the efficacy of vocabulary instruction. The “pilot” study ( Gerstner…
2 min readL2 Teaching · October 29, 2019An Early Start in English as a Foreign Language Doesn’t Help
Jeaekel and his colleagues (2017, paywall) followed two large cohorts of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students in German schools for a period of seven years. One “Early Starter” group (N=3,340) got EFL instruction beginning at age…
1 min readL1 Literacy · October 21, 2019The Myth of Teaching Morphology
Several researchers have claimed that “morphological instruction” is an effective way to improve students’ vocabulary and reading proficiency ( Carlisle, 2010 ; Nagy, Berninger, & Abbott, 2006 ).
2 min readL2 Teaching · October 17, 2019Should Intermediate English Acquirers Read Children’s Literature?
Why is this important? Because the main source of good reading material for English beginners and low intermediates are graded readers (stories written for second language acquirers). But graded readers in English currently only take you…
7 min readError Correction · October 8, 2019Error Correction is (Still) a Waste of Time
Three groups wrote a series of three in-class essays, one per week. Two of the groups got CF on certain target structures appearing in their first essay; one group did not. In addition, one of the CF groups was also graded on the…
1 min readL2 Teaching · October 1, 2019A Reverse Turing Test: Is Good Language Teaching Robot-Proof?
The always brilliant Gene Glass provides a list of jobs that are “0% Automatable” (cannot be done by a robot) and “100% Automatable.” He uses the list to examine what schools teach and the future of our economy, but it is a question you…
1 min readUncategorized · September 25, 2019Reading Tests That Don’t Measure Reading [CORRECTED]
Hua and Keenan (2017, paywall), following up on early work by Keenan and her colleagues , examined five popular reading comprehension tests to see how much of the variance in scores could be explained by a reader’s listening comprehension,…
3 min readL1 Literacy · September 25, 2019Reading Tests That Don’t Actually Measure Reading
Hua and Keenan (2017, paywall), following up on early work by Keenan and her colleagues , examined five popular reading comprehension tests to see how much of the variance in scores could be explained by a reader’s listening comprehension,…
3 min readL1 Literacy · August 19, 2019How Kids Become Readers
Some parents fear that their child may “fall behind” in learning to read. But there is no evidence that learning to read, or reaching a given reading level, must be done by a certain age to succeed in school.
2 min readAnnouncements · March 4, 2019Free Book! “The Literacy Crisis: False Claims, Real Solutions”
My book, The Literacy Crisis: False Claims, Real Solutions , is now available in PDF format for FREE here .
1 min readAnnouncements · January 21, 2019Language and Language Teaching Special Issue Guest Edited by Stephen Krashen (Free Download)
Stephen Krashen has guest edited an issue of Language and Language Teaching (India). There are 11 great articles on topics that will interest language and reading teachers from preK to adult, for both first and second languages. You will…
1 min readMeasurement · April 30, 2018What Counts as Success in Vocabulary Instruction?
I’ve discussed in previous posts ( here and here ) the inefficiency of academic vocabulary teaching programs such as Word Generation . In one evaluation of the program, Snow, Lawrence, and White (2009) found that after 30 hours of…
5 min readL1 Literacy · April 23, 2018Is Synthetic Phonics Instruction Working in England? (Updated)
Since originally posting this analysis back in September, 2017, I have shortened it for publication in Margaret M. Clark’s new edited volume, Teaching Initial Literacy: Policies, Evidence, and Ideology (2018). But here I’m posting a…
12 min readL1 Literacy · April 17, 2018Don’t Believe What You Read in the Papers: American Kids Are Getting Better at Reading
Kevin Drum at Mother Jones magazine has an excellent take on the so-called “failure” of American students to improve their reading scores. It’s a quick but important read now that the annual NAEP Nonsense Season is once again in full…
1 min readL1 Literacy · February 23, 2018Krashen Responds to the International Literacy Association’s “Explaining Phonics Instruction”
The International Literacy Association recently published a report, Explaining phonics instruction: An educator’s guide . It is incomplete and misleading, but that comes as no surprise to anyone who subscribes to an ILA journal.
1 min readL1 Literacy · January 12, 2018The Failure of Phonics in England: Letter in Times of London (Jan 12, 2018)
The Backseat Linguist jumped across the pond today for a letter in the Times of London about phonics teaching in England. Sir, In her article, Alice Thomson claims that the teaching of phonics has led to “a big improvement” in the number…
1 min readL1 Literacy · October 12, 2017A Trial of Tiers: Why Silent Reading Beats Other “Tier 1” Interventions All Day Long
Swanson, E., Stevens, E. A., Scammacca, N. K., Capin, P., Stewart, A. A., & Austin, C. R. (2017). The impact of tier 1 reading instruction on reading outcomes for students in Grades 4–12: A meta-analysis. Reading and Writing , 30 (8),…
5 min readL1 Literacy · September 14, 2017We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Exercises*: Listening to Stories is More Efficient Than Direct Instruction for Vocabulary Acquisition
Everyone agrees that reading storybooks to young children helps them build vocabulary. But lots of researchers think they can improve on storybook reading, making it more “effective” as a way of teaching children new words.
4 min readL1 Literacy · September 7, 2017Do Good Scrabble® Players Read More Than the Rest of Us?
Protzner, A. B., Hargreaves, I. S., Campbell, J. A., Myers-Stewart, K., van Hees, S., Goodyear, B. G., … & Pexman, P. M. (2016). This is your brain on Scrabble: neural correlates of visual word recognition in competitive Scrabble players…
2 min readVocabulary · August 29, 2017How Reading ‘The Martian Chronicles’ Can Improve Your Scientific Vocabulary: Rolls & Rodgers (2017)
In my last post , I presented evidence that when high school students read books for pleasure related to their school subjects, their test scores in those subjects go up. Rolls and Rodgers (2017) have just published a wonderful study that…
6 min readL1 Literacy · August 22, 2017Reading Science Books for Pleasure Will Help You in Science Class: Chen, Chang, & Yang (2017)
One of the current fixations of the reading field is teaching “academic language,” especially academic vocabulary, via direct instruction. Most of these efforts have produced very meager results, as I have pointed out here and here .
3 min readL1 Literacy · August 7, 2017Academic Vocabulary Instruction II: Learning 1 Word in 5 Hours Shouldn’t Count as a Success
In a previous post , I noted that one of the studies often cited for the success of academic vocabulary instruction, Snow, Lawrence, and White (2009), is in fact an example of its questionable effectiveness. Here’s another such study,…
5 min readL1 Literacy · August 4, 2017The New York Times Goes Back to the Future: The New Literacy Crisis, Writing Edition
The New York Times education reporter Dana Goldstein on the rather silly notion that most kids are not “proficient” in writing:
2 min readL1 Literacy · August 1, 2017Academic Vocabulary Instruction: Does Word Generation Really Teach You Two Years’ Worth of Words in 22 Weeks?
One of the hot topics of the past decade or so in language education research has been the teaching of “academic language” and “academic vocabulary.”
7 min readL1 Literacy · July 28, 2017Closing the Books on Open Court Reading
Back in the 1990s, the Los Angeles Times was a big fan of the scripted reading curriculum, Open Court, designed to teach reading in the elementary grades through a heavy dose of explicit, systematic phonics. The Times reporters wrote lots…
3 min readVocabulary · July 25, 2017Carpe Vinum: Does Drinking Help Vocabulary Retention?
If you thought my previous discussion on the benefits of sleeping on vocabulary acquisition was a bit “out there,” consider the latest study from the venerable scientific journal, Nature .
2 min readVocabulary · July 21, 2017Carpe Noctem: Is it Time for Chronolinguistics?
A few months ago, I read a wonderfully-written and informative book called Rest by Alex Pang . Pang reviews recent research on the benefits of taking breaks, napping, and sleeping on learning, creativity, and productivity.
3 min readSpelling · July 20, 2017The Color of Dictation
One of my favorite lines on Twitter is “Not The Onion ,” meaning that the headline or story linked to is not supposed to be funny or satirical, like news site, The Onion , but is (bizarrely) true. We need an academic equivalent of this –…
1 min readL1 Literacy · July 5, 2017The Goldilocks Corollary to the Input Hypothesis
Zoe M. Flack, Jessica S. Horst. Two sides to every story: Children learn words better from one storybook page at a time. Infant and Child Development , 2017; e2047 DOI: 10.1002/icd.2047 (paywall)
3 min readThis Week in Language Education · June 30, 2017This Week In Language Education (June 30, 2017)
In Case You Missed It: College Students “Don’t Have Time” to Read, Researchers Claim Do ELLs Need More Grammar and Spelling Instruction? Quick Takes: A Map of Language Diversity – Shows the areas on Earth where the most languages are…
2 min readL2 Teaching · June 28, 2017College ESL Students “Don’t Have Time” to Read in English, Researchers Claim
For the past decade, we have been witnessing a heated debate between the advocates of ‘vocabulary-through-input’ position and the proponents of word-focused instruction. The most recent example is the discussion between Cobb, Nation, and…
3 min readL1 Literacy · June 26, 2017Do ELLs Need More Grammar and Spelling Instruction?
Swanson and colleagues observed reading instruction in 50 elementary classrooms with 270 Spanish-speaking English-language learners (ELLs) over a period of two school years. Three grade levels were included in the study (first, second, and…
2 min readThis Week in Language Education · June 23, 2017This Week In Language Education (June 23, 2017)
It’s been a slow week, so just a few links: Why You Should Sit Next to a Crazy Person at Starbucks – Researchers found that hearing “ meaningful irrelevant speech” in the background caused Chinese readers to re-read words more often than…
2 min readL2 Teaching · June 22, 2017Converging Evidence on Vocabulary Acquisition: Another Look at Reynolds (2016)
Nation analyzed a series of adult-level English novels and concluded that if (a) an ESL reader reads texts in which 2% of the words are unknown (that is, he knows the meaning of 98% of the words on the page), and (b) words are acquired…
4 min readL1 Literacy · June 19, 2017I Know What You Shouldn’t Have Done Last Summer
Rachel R. Romeo, Joanna A. Christodoulou, Kelly K. Halverson, Jack Murtagh, Abigail B. Cyr, Carly Schimmel, Patricia Chang, Pamela E. Hook, John D.E. Gabrieli. Socioeconomic Status and Reading Disability: Neuroanatomy and Plasticity in…
3 min readThis Week in Language Education · June 16, 2017This Week In Language Education (June 16, 2017)
We’ll try doing This Week In Language Education a bit differently from now on. I find it more useful to post reviews and observations throughout the week rather than in one post, so I’ll use this weekly post for very short comments and…
4 min readVocabulary · June 14, 2017Frequency and Cognate Effects in Vocabulary Acquisition
Reading is the most powerful tool available to language acquirers for expanding and broadening vocabulary knowledge. Studies have found that while you have a low probability (around 5-15%) of picking up the meaning of an unknown word…
4 min readVocabulary · June 12, 2017Does Vocabulary Instruction Improve Reading Comprehension?
One of the most widely-cited articles in the past 40 years on the impact of first-language vocabulary instruction on English reading comprehension is Stahl and Fairbanks (1986) . Stahl and Fairbanks’ meta-analysis found that vocabulary…
5 min readL2 Teaching · June 8, 2017The IBM Computer Cloud of Unknowing
This press release is making the rounds this week, announcing a collaboration between Sesame Street and the letters I, B, and M. Big Bird and Big Blue are teaming up to do “learning in the cloud” with Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings Watson…
1 min readL2 Teaching · June 7, 2017The Existential Fallacy: If It Exists, It Must Be Taught
I stumbled across the following observation this morning from a 1983 technical report on reading comprehension by David Pearson and Margaret Gallagher:
2 min readL2 Teaching · June 2, 2017Forced “Pleasure Reading” May Get You Neither
Back in the 1980s, I spent my first year out of college working as a clerk in small clothing company (I majored in ancient history). There was a sign in the break room meant to provide a little humor to the employees’ day: “The Beatings…
4 min readThis Week in Language Education · May 19, 2017This Week In Language Education – May 19, 2017
An abbreviated edition of TWILE since I’m traveling this week and next. But there’s one study that can’t wait . . .
1 min readThis Week in Language Education · May 12, 2017This Week In Language Education (May 12, 2017)
At the end of the semester, the iPad group had a higher SOPI score (Cohen’s d = 0.68) than the non-iPad group, although neither the fluency nor accuracy subscales of the exam showed any differences between groups.
8 min readThis Week in Language Education · May 5, 2017This Week In Language Education: May 5, 2017
A new Dutch study published in Scientific Studies of Reading provides more support for the notion that access to books promotes reading, and reading improves comprehension.
7 min readThis Week in Language Education · April 28, 2017This Week In Language Education: April 28, 2017
The always brilliant Gene Glass provides a list of jobs that are “0% Automatable” (cannot be done by a robot) and “100% Automatable.” He uses the list to examine what schools teach and the future of our economy, but it is a question you…
7 min readL2 Teaching · April 26, 2017Rakuten, Japan’s 21st Century Online Powerhouse, to Launch 19th Century Language School
One of the leading online retailers in Japan, Rakuten , is getting into the English-teaching business. According to their press release, their “ Super English ” lessons will use software developed by a new startup in the language teaching…
3 min readBilingualism & Bilingual Education · April 24, 2017Memo to The American Conservative: Bilingual Education Will Not Actually Make Californians Bilingual
A writer at The American Conservative website has a long discussion on the supposed perils of bilingualism that, he believes, may soon come to pass now that California has voted to allow schools to use bilingual education in the teaching…
2 min readThis Week in Language Education · April 21, 2017This Week In Language Education: April 21, 2017
Note: This post is an experiment in which I link to and comment on recent news and research developments in language education. It’s the sort of thing I’d like to get in my own email box each week, but since no one else seems willing to do…
3 min readL1 Literacy · April 19, 2017What Kaplan and Princeton Review Don’t Want You to Know About the SAT
A recent article in the New York Times recommended that students from low-income backgrounds should prepare for the SAT (Scholastic Achievement Test) “like a rich kid” by spending hundreds of hours studying test prep books, visiting…
3 min readL2 Teaching · April 15, 2017How to Eliminate Second Language Reading Anxiety (Without Drugs or Alcohol)
I think a better way of addressing this issue is to consider that reading anxiety is a result of attempting to read a text that is too hard for you. The key variable, then, is the relative difficulty of the text for the reader. This is…
2 min readVocabulary · October 31, 2016How Many Words Can You Acquire in a Year?
There is an exchange in the current issue of Reading in a Foreign Language regarding papers that Paul Nation and I published on the number of words one can acquire through free reading. The original papers are here:
2 min readVocabulary · August 23, 2016In Case You Missed It: What Can Readers Read After Graded Readers?
Earlier this year I published an article in Reading in a Foreign Language about reading your way to fluency in English. Check it out here (free!).
1 min readL2 Teaching · August 12, 2015Et tu, Wimpy Kid? What Teachers Get About Language Teaching that College Professors Don’t
There was an article on translating the first book of the popular Wimpy Kid series into Latin in today’s Wall Street Journal . The reporter interviewed a Latin teacher, the book’s publisher, and a college professor of classical languages.
1 min readL1 Literacy · March 4, 2012Spelling Nonsense Words Requires Rules Useful in Spelling Nonsense Words
There’s no better way to start a discussion of almost any topic related to reading and writing than a quote from Frank Smith. Here’s one from Writing and the Writer (1994) on spelling:
8 min readL2 Teaching · February 10, 2012The Most Studied, Fastest Growing, and “Best Represented” Languages in U.S. Colleges
A recent post by Brad Peterson on the supposed popularity of Chinese language study around the world sent me digging for some data on the whole question of what foreign/modern languages are popular in U.S. schools and, well, what we mean…
4 min readL2 Teaching · January 21, 2012Rosetta Stone and “Falling out of Favor”: Claims without Empirical Support
I comment on two statements in K. Nielson’s paper, “Self-study with language learning software in the workplace: What happens?” published in Language Learning and Technology , 2011, 15 (3): 110-129.
2 min readError Correction · January 20, 2012All Correction, All the Time: Is Written Error Correction Worth the Effort?
In the world of language teaching, some ideas die hard. Error correction is one of those ideas that keeps rising from the dead after each seemingly fatal blow.
12 min readL2 Teaching · January 13, 2012And Then There Were None: Surviving Foreign Language Study
Almost no one who studies a foreign language in the United States gets very far. Millions of high school and college students show up to their Spanish or Chinese I classes in the hopes of learning to communicate in a foreign language, but…
8 min readLibraries · January 1, 2012Is The Library Important? Multivariate Studies at the National and International Level
Three multivariate analyses, all controlling for the effects of poverty, confirm the importance of the library. Replicating McQuillan’s analysis of 1992 NAEP scores, access to books in school and public libraries was a significant…
1 min readAnnouncements · January 1, 2012Welcome to The Backseat Linguist!
The Backseat Linguist is my personal project, allowing me to comment on and post research related to second language acquisition and language education in general. It has no official association with my job as host of English as a Second…
1 min read