What could the following professor have been talking about lately?

Sociocognitive perspectives on identity
Pedagogical grammar
Teacher beliefs, learner interpretations of classroom activity
Sociocognitive perspectives on language use and language learning

My primary interest is in critically examining a number of key assumptions about task-based language teaching. I argue that the discourse type upon which many of these assumptions are based – namely, communicative discourse – does not make provision for learners to ‘push’ their output by taking risks with their language in ways which are necessary for second language learning proceses (in particular restructuring) to take place. I argue instead for what I refer to as Learning Discourse, the primary goal of which is to faciltate such risk taking.

I’m also currently looking into the effect which learner interpretation has on the language they do or do not attend to during classroom tasks (again, there is a tendency in some contemporary research to play this factor down).

In case anyone is wondering, the above is “exactly what he was saying”.

I have “something about hapinness and sadness” in my detail part of the OP. I don,t see anything about that.