English language teaching research in Egypt: trends and challenges

English language teaching (ELT) research in Egypt is about four decades old now. The study reported in this paper attempted to identify the main trends in the ELT research in the Egyptian context though analysing the research areas, topics, contexts, and methods in 143 published studies and comparing the orientations noted in them to the ones revealed previously in the unpublished studies reported by graduate students in the country. Though some relative differences were found between the published and unpublished studies in the areas and contexts researched, both types of studies were similar in the research methods used and nature of the topics covered. Specifically, the experimentation, data quantification, and stereotyping aspects remarkably noted in these studies have caused some methodological, topical, and contextual research gaps in ELT research. The paper highlights the following four main causes of the dominant ELT research trends: the local educational research culture, the inappropriate interdisciplinarity approach, reading sources and institutional regulations, and researchers’ over-reliance on convenience sampling. In light of these results and interpretations, the author suggests some steps for reforming ELT research practices in Egypt.