The current project longitudinally investigated the extent to which first-year Japanese university students developed their second language (L2) oral ability in relation to increased input in foreign language classrooms. Their spontaneous speech was elicited at the beginning, middle and end of one academic year, and then judged by linguistically trained coders for pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary and grammar qualities. According to the statistical analyses, the total amount of input (operationalized as number of English classes taken and L2 use outside of classrooms) was significantly related to the participants’ quick and immediate development of fluency and lexicogrammar during the first semester. Their pronunciation development was mixed, either subject to continuous change over two academic semesters (for prosody) or limited within the timeframe of the study (for segmentals). Similar to naturalistic L2 speech learning, the findings support the multifaceted role of input in different areas of oral proficiency development in foreign language classrooms.
This article reports on a pedagogical project aimed at helping second language (L2) learners of English develop the ability to detect and appropriately interpret spoken sarcasm. The study used a pre- and posttest procedure to assess the development of learners’ ability to both detect sarcasm and impute appropriate speaker intentions and attitudes conveyed through sarcastic utterances as result of a 10-week instructional program. The study also used interviews to gauge changes in learners’ conceptual understanding of English sarcasm. Beyond improving learners’ ability in the L2, a side effect of the project was that learners reported an enhanced awareness of the use and functions of sarcasm in their first language (L1), Korean.
A growing body of research has shown a positive role of task-supported instruction in second language (L2) learning (Ellis, 2003a; Loewen, 2015; Van Den Branden, 2006). From a pedagogical perspective, recycling or repeating parts of teaching materials is common practice and theoretical support for such practice is emerging (Bygate and Samuda, 2005). However, determining which aspects to repeat during task-supported interaction that fosters interaction-driven learning opportunities while maintaining student interest is currently underexplored. Further, few studies have considered learners’ perception during task completion. The current study thus examined the effects of task repetition on the production and resolution of language-related episodes (LREs) over time. English-speaking (first language, L1) students of Spanish (second language, L2) from two intact Spanish as a foreign language (FL) classroom (n = 28) were assigned to one of the following task repetition groups: task with repetition (same task/same content) or task with procedural repetition (same task/new content). Learner–learner interaction produced during two-way decision-making tasks were transcribed and coded for LREs. Learner perception data was collected following task completion and analysed qualitatively. The results indicated that the task repetition had greater benefits on the occurrence and resolution of lexis-based LREs, but that both groups benefited similarly in terms of producing and resolving form-based LREs. Results are discussed in light of speech processing models and pedagogical implications for task-based instruction in FL settings are examined.
Various forms of pre-listening support, such as the provision of vocabulary and topic information, have been used to help second language (L2) learners better understand what they listen to. Results of studies on the effects of vocabulary support have been mixed. Furthermore, there has been little research on the effects of different quantities of vocabulary items and types of word information provided on the listening performance of L2 students of different proficiency levels. Therefore, this study investigated the effectiveness of two different levels of 18-week vocabulary support (an expanded vocabulary-instruction support that targeted both a greater quantity of lexical items and a focus on multiword units vs. an unexpanded vocabulary-instruction support with a focus on single words only) for enhancing listening ability of students of English as a foreign language (EFL) defined as their performance on the listening test of the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC). The results indicate that the group that received the expanded vocabulary support attained a significant gain and performed significantly better on the posttest than the group that received the unexpanded vocabulary support. The results also reveal that the expanded vocabulary support was particularly helpful for lower proficiency level students. Pedagogical and research implications are also discussed.
Although the second language literature on Dynamic Assessment (DA) – the unity of assessment and instruction into a singular activity to promote cognitive development – shows promising results, very little has been written about how to educate teachers to use it. This two-cycle, exploratory action research study aimed to understand and address the challenges that the pre- and in-service teachers faced while participating in a graduate course introducing computer-mediated DA. Data from reflective journals, surveys, and transcripts from synchronous online DA tutoring sessions showed that the teachers in Cycle 1 experienced problems managing the levels of the mediating strategies that they used, which was related to the issues of utilizing course-embedded supports, dealing with task pressures, and understanding the DA concept. After modifying the course to attend to these issues, the study found that the Cycle 2 teachers exhibited greater control over the mediating strategies they employed during tutoring sessions than the teachers in Cycle 1. This study presents a contextualized account of certain issues that may arise when introducing DA and ways to manage them. More broadly, the findings underscore the importance of teacher educators investigating their own practices, and highlight the need to connect the concepts that teachers are studying with meaningful and well-supported opportunities for use.
The use of ‘chunks’ is not only a common and characteristic feature of first language use, but may also be a distinguishing factor between less and more proficient second language users. The present study aimed at investigating potential correlations between chunk use and holistically rated proficiency scores and development over time in advanced Chinese learners of English as a second language (L2) over the course of 18 months of English classes. Neither holistically rated proficiency scores nor common complexity measures had shown any progress in these learners, but a few lexically based measures did. Therefore, the development of chunks in these learners was examined as chunks are mostly lexical in nature and might show more subtle progress over time.
The use of chunks was examined in the first and last two texts of the learners and, in line with previous research, it was found that more proficient writers use relatively more chunks, specifically collocations. Chunk coverage, the total number of chunk words divided by the total number of words, also correlated with some holistic proficiency scores, and increased significantly over time. Average chunk length did not show any correlation with proficiency scores nor did it increase over time. Increased proficiency in written texts is thus specifically related to the use of more chunks. This study shows that development in advanced Chinese L2 learners of English appears to be subtle, which might be due to the fact that at this advanced level mainly lexical changes take place. Future research into development over time in advanced learners may thus have to zoom in on lexical measures especially. Implications of this study point to the importance of promoting the use of target language chunks to advanced learners of English.
This article introduces the construct of teacher noticing, situates it in research on second language teacher cognition, and considers its implications for research on second language teacher training, acknowledging socio-cognitive perspectives on language learning and teaching. We then present a mixed-methods observational study that utilized quantitative and qualitative approaches to study novice teacher noticing in the context of teaching demonstrations carried out as part of eight participants’ undergraduate course requirements. Teacher noticing was defined as awareness of features of second language classroom interaction that may influence student learning. The goals of the study were to: (1) assess our approach to studying teacher noticing, (2) examine the interactional contexts in which teacher noticing occurs, and (3) identify themes in novice teacher noticing. The results indicated that the stimulated recall methodology used was, not surprisingly, sensitive to the time delay between teaching demonstrations and recall interviews. Nonetheless, all participants reported noticing. Teacher noticing occurred primarily when the participants were teaching to the whole class and tended to involve the difference between plans vs. reality, noticing as a trigger for action, and individual learner contributions. The discussion weighs the strengths and limitations of this study and explains how a focus on the significance that teachers place on classroom interactions they become aware of during lessons may benefit research on language teacher education.
The present study investigated the effects of two types of core-image-based basic verb learning approaches: the learner-centered and the teacher-centered approaches. The learner-centered approach was an activity in which participants found semantic relationships among several definitions of each basic target verb through a picture-elucidated card game. By contrast, the teacher-centered approach involved explicit instruction from the teacher explaining how several definitions of the basic target verbs are interrelated. A total of 241 Japanese EFL (English as a foreign language) junior high school students acted as participants in this comparative study to determine the superior approach. At the end of the treatment period, a short questionnaire was distributed. A two-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that the learner-centered approach was more effective than the teacher-centered approach with regard to both retention rates for learned definitions and accuracy rates for novel definitions of the basic target verbs. The results of paired t-tests for the questionnaire also support these findings. Considering the results, it can be argued that basic verbs may be best taught through a learner-centered collaborative approach, with conventional teacher-centered explicit instruction as a supplement.
This article reports on a survey of 241 Master of Arts programs in TESOL (MATESOL) in 16 countries serving as a snapshot of second language teacher education in 2014. After an initial screening by a set of criteria, these programs were first identified, and their course offerings, among other criteria, such as entrance and capstone requirements, were categorized. In total, 3,877 courses across 15 knowledge fields were coded with frequency counts taken. Our analysis revealed that the most frequently appearing course offerings tended to focus on teaching methods. However, large differences appeared among the programs with regard to the offering of courses in various knowledge fields. Differences also appeared between US and non-US programs, particularly with regard to practicum requirements. Several other patterns and themes emerged from the data including the extensive coverage of social and cultural aspects of language learning in elective courses, and the lack of focus on specific English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts in course offerings, among others.
Recently, situated willingness to communicate (WTC) has received increasing research attention in addition to traditional quantitative studies of trait-like WTC. This article is an addition to the former but unique in two ways. First, it investigates both trait and state WTC in a classroom context and explores ways to combine the two to reach a fuller understanding of why second language (L2) learners choose (or avoid) communication at given moments. Second, it investigates the communication behavior of individuals and of the group they constitute as nested systems, with the group as context for individual performance. An interventional study was conducted in a class for English as a foreign language (EFL) with 21 students in a Japanese university. During discussion sessions in English over a semester in which Initiation–Response–Feedback (IRF) patterns were avoided to encourage students to initiate communication, qualitative data based on observations, student self-reflections, and interviews and scale-based data on trait anxiety and WTC were collected. The analyses, which focused on three selected participants, revealed how differences in the frequency of self-initiated turns emerged through the interplay of enduring characteristics, including personality and proficiency, and contextual influences such as other students’ reactions and group-level talk–silence patterns.
This study investigates how second language (L2) fluency is influenced by two factors: Pre-task planning and content familiarity. Planning was adopted as a between-participant variable, combined with content familiarity as a within-participant variable, in a 2 x 2 split-plot factorial design. Nineteen measures of fluency phenomena, constituting eight categories, were used. Both planning and content familiarity were found to enhance fluency, but the positive effects of planning were stronger and noticeable on a wider range of measures. The availability of planning time also helped to compensate for lack of content familiarity. Implications for pedagogy and L2 fluency measurement are discussed.
This study investigated how learners’ ages affect their interpretation of the nonverbal behaviors (NVBs) of teachers and other students in distinguishing between questions and statements in the second language (L2) classroom. After watching 48 short video clips without sound in which three L2 teachers asked a question or made a statement with or without gesture, 36 elementary school pupils and 30 university students judged whether they thought the teachers asked a question or made a statement along with their reasons. The findings show that, regardless of learners’ ages, L2 teacher’s gestures were found to help learners better identify questions. Furthermore, the six major types of NVBs used for judgments most frequently were identical across the two age groups regardless of the accuracy of their judgments. Nevertheless, incorrect judgments were made as often and sometimes even more often than correct judgments by applying the same assumptions. The effect of age was evidenced in that the university students were able to use a larger number of NVBs for correct judgments, and better distinguish questions and statements without linguistic information than the elementary school pupils. The data suggest that it is the learners’ (L2) classroom experience that seems to be playing the major role in yielding this difference. The study indicates that adult L2 learners are better able than children to incorporate and interpret NVBs of teachers as well as other students quantitatively and qualitatively.
Corrigendum to ‘Understanding the development of Chinese EFL learners’ email literacy through Exploratory Practice’ by Yuan-shan Chen, Language Teaching Research, 2016, 20(2): 165–180. DOI:
In March 2016 issue of Language Teaching Research, in the above mentioned article, the author would like to add the following clarification to the section which describes the collaborative e-mail construction activity and its outcome (pp. 173–174):
‘To assist the students in their joint construction activity, they were presented with a writing sample from a previous cohort of students who had engaged in a similar sequence of activities as those described in this article. Although the students were found to copy parts of this example as they constructed their own text, their appropriate decisions of which parts to copy and which to modify can nonetheless be considered a sign of their developing pragmatic awareness.’
Corpus analyses of learners’ dictionaries of English idioms have revealed that 11% to 35% of English figurative idioms show either alliteration (miss the mark) or assonance (get this show on the road), depending on the type considered. Because English multiword combinations, particularly idiomatic expressions, present a huge challenge even to advanced learners, techniques for helping learners come to grips with this part of the lexicon should be welcomed. A quasi-experiment was conducted to investigate whether interword phonological similarity (specifically, alliteration and assonance) facilitates the delayed recall of the forms of common second language (L2) English figurative idioms which were not known at pretest. Twenty-six advanced-level EFL learners learned significantly more phonologically similar, or ‘sound-repeating’, idioms than phonologically dissimilar control idioms after a treatment designed to raise awareness of phonological similarity and to direct learners’ attention toward occurrences of it. Learners in a comparison group (n = 24), who experienced no awareness raising or attention direction, recalled more non-sound-repeating control idioms than sound-repeating ones. We conclude that the presence of sound-repetition in idioms makes the forms of those idioms relatively easy to recall, but only when learners experience appropriate awareness raising and attention direction. It appears that the techniques of awareness raising and attention direction did not hinder learning of the control idioms.
This study investigated the effects of three instructional modes: picture-book reading-only (PRO), picture-book reading plus vocabulary instruction (PRVI), and picture-book reading plus reading-based collaborative output activity (PRCOA) on young adult EFL (English as a foreign language) learners’ vocabulary acquisition and retention. Eighty Taiwanese university students with low to intermediate level English proficiency from three English reading classes participated in each of the three modes once during three weekly 100-minute sessions. Vocabulary knowledge was tested through two post-tests using a modified Vocabulary Knowledge Scale: immediately after each instructional mode to measure students’ vocabulary acquisition, and one month later to measure their word retention. The results showed that the PRVI mode was the most helpful for immediate word learning. However, the PRCOA mode was the most effective for word retention, and most conducive to bettering students’ productive knowledge in both acquisition and retention. This study suggests that explicit learning from vocabulary instruction that directs students’ attention to the words to be learned did not guarantee greater vocabulary gains than incidental learning where new words can be learned as by-products of classroom collaborative output activities. Without trying to memorize words, students learned vocabulary through mental investment in group discussions and generative activities, leading to their mastery of productive word knowledge.
This article examines how four second language (L2) teachers’ discursive practices changed as they attempted to implement dynamic assessment (DA) in their classrooms. Classroom artifacts, lesson recordings, and reflections from two pre-service teachers and two in-service teachers, both before and after a professional development series on DA, were included in the analysis. Findings revealed that all teachers’ approaches to mediation changed. In Pre-DA lessons, teachers defaulted to recasts when attempting to provide mediation. Following the DA professional development series, all teachers expanded the discursive space by providing more prompts and fewer recasts. However, findings illustrated that the four teachers appropriated DA to varying degrees, suggesting that some may have required additional mediation to appropriate all of the distinguishing features of DA. We discuss implications of these findings for teacher preparation.
Research has shown that tasks provide second language (L2) learners with many opportunities to learn the L2. Task repetition has been claimed to benefit L2 learning since familiarity with procedure and/or content gives learners the chance to focus on more specific aspects of language. Most research on task repetition has focused on adult populations, but child learners are an under-researched group. The same goes for first language (L1) use during L2 interaction, which has been mainly studied among adult L2 learners whereas little is known about L1 use among child L2 learners interacting while they complete communicative tasks. This study explores to what extent and for which purposes children in an English as a foreign language (EFL) setting use their shared L1 (Spanish). Furthermore it also considers how task repetition (exact vs. procedural task repetition) influences their L1 use. Forty-two EFL learners worked in pairs while they completed a spot-the-difference task twice. Our findings showed a significant decrease in L1 use when learners repeated the task in the two conditions but a minor effect of task repetition on the functions the L1 served.
Research to date suggests that textual enhancement may positively affect the learning of multiword combinations known as collocations, but may impair recall of unenhanced text. However, the attentional mechanisms underlying such effects remain unclear. In this study, 38 undergraduate students were divided into two groups: one read a text containing typographically enhanced collocations (ET group) and the other read the same text with unenhanced collocations (the baseline text, or BT group). While reading, participants’ eye movements were recorded with an eye-tracker. Results showed that the ET group spent significantly longer time processing target collocations, and performed better than the BT group in a post-reading collocation test. However, apart from the enhanced collocations, the ET group recalled significantly less unenhanced text than the BT group. Further investigation of eye fixation data showed that the ET group spent substantially longer time processing collocations which, according to a pretest, they were not familiar with than did the BT group, whereas the two groups did not differ significantly in their processing of familiar collocations. Collectively, the results suggest that the trade-off between collocation learning and recall of unenhanced text is due to additional cognitive resources being allocated to enhanced collocations that are new to the reader.
This research inspects the allocation of involvement load to the evaluation component of the involvement load hypothesis, examining how three typical approaches to evaluation (cloze-exercises, sentence-writing, and composition-writing) promote word learning. The results of this research were partially consistent with the predictions of the hypothesis: the two writing tasks with greater involvement load led to significantly better word learning than cloze-exercises with lower load, while composition-writing was significantly more effective than sentence-writing despite the same involvement load according to the matrix of the original model. Such results are explained from the perspectives of information organization and pre-task planning, based on which evaluation induced by cloze-exercises is suggested to be allocated with ‘moderate evaluation’ as it involves no use of chunking, hierarchical organization or pre-task planning, evaluation induced by sentence-writing with ‘strong evaluation’ as it involves chunking and pre-task planning at the sentence level, and evaluation induced by composition-writing with ‘very strong evaluation’ for it involves chunking, hierarchical organization and pre-task planning at the composition level.
Recent research has shown that beat gestures (hand gestures that co-occur with speech in spontaneous discourse) are temporally integrated with prosodic prominence and that they help word memorization and discourse comprehension. However, little is known about the potential beneficial effects of beat gestures in second language (L2) pronunciation learning. This study investigates the impact of beat gesture observation on the acquisition of native-like speech patterns in English by examining the effect of a brief training with or without beat gestures on participants’ ratings of accentedness. In a within-participants, pre-/post-test design, participants (undergraduate students learning English as a foreign language) watched a training video in which an L2 instructor gave spontaneous responses to discourse prompts. The prompts belonged to one of two categories (easy and difficult), and were presented by the instructor either with or without accompanying beat gestures. Participants’ own answers to the prompts were recorded before and after training and evaluated by five native speaker judges. The results of the comparison between the participants’ pre-training and post-training speech samples demonstrated that beat gesture training significantly improved the participants’ accentedness ratings on the set of difficult (more discourse-demanding) items. The results of the study support the role of beat gestures as highlighters of rhythmic information and have implications for pronunciation instruction practices.
In a recent article, Boers, Demecheleer, Coxhead, and Webb (2014) deplored the lack of effectiveness for the learning of verb–noun collocations of a number of exercise formats which they sampled from EFL textbooks and put to the test in a series of quasi-experimental trials. The authors called for further investigations into possible improvements to such exercise formats. The present article is a response to that call. It also addresses methodological issues that may have affected Boers et al.’s (2014) findings and that rendered their conclusions tentative. In the quasi-experiment reported here, EFL learners were given fill-in-the-blank exercises on verb–noun phrases in one of three formats: (1) choose the appropriate verb, (2) complete the verb by using a first-letter cue, and (3) choose the appropriate intact phrase. A delayed post-test gauged the learners’ ability to recall the meaning of the phrases as well as their verb–noun partnership. In both regards the exercise where learners worked with intact phrases generated the best results. We then evaluate the extent to which exercises for phrase learning in 10 recent EFL textbooks accord with recommendations that follow from the quasi-experimental findings.
This article supplements a review covering all (quasi)experimental studies of second language (L2) learning that appeared in Language Teaching Research (LTR) during the 19-year period 1997–2015. The dual focus of that review is practices in inferential statistics and the reporting of results. The present article sets out guidelines and recommendations reflecting findings reported in that review; and it includes additional discussion of topics of especial relevance to the analysis of data from L2 (quasi)experimental studies; for example, statistical power, effect sizes and confidence intervals for effect sizes, t-tests, the Wilcoxon–Mann–Whitney test,
This article reviews all (quasi)experimental studies appearing in the first 19 volumes (1997–2015) of Language Teaching Research (LTR). Specifically, it provides an overview of how statistical analyses were conducted in these studies and of how the analyses were reported. The overall conclusion is that there has been a tight adherence to traditional methods and practices, some of which are suboptimal. Accordingly, a number of improvements are recommended. Topics covered include the implications of small average sample sizes, the unsuitability of p values as indicators of replicability, statistical power and implications of low power, the non-robustness of the most commonly used significance tests, the benefits of reporting standardized effect sizes such as Cohen’s d, options regarding control of the familywise Type I error rate, analytic options in pretest–posttest designs, ‘meta-analytic thinking’ and its benefits, and the mistaken use of a significance test to show that treatment groups are equivalent at pretest. An online companion article elaborates on some of these topics plus a few additional ones and offers guidelines, recommendations, and additional background discussion for researchers intending to submit to LTR an article reporting a (quasi)experimental study.
This study explored the potential effects of communicative tasks developed using a reformulation of a task-based language teaching called Automatization in Communicative Contexts of Essential Speech Sequences (ACCESS) that includes automatization of language elements as one of its goals on learner attention to form in task-based interaction. The interaction data collected from a class for English as a second language (ESL) over a four-week period was analysed for incidence, outcome and characteristics (i.e. focus, initiation, response, and turn length) of language-related episodes (LREs) operationalized as evidence of learner attention to form. The results showed that during ACCESS task-based interactions, learners attended to form as reflected in a large number of LREs. Despite being brief, a majority of these LREs were correctly resolved, self-initiated, self- and other-responded, and focused on the target linguistic item: past-tense verbs. These results are discussed in terms of the potential effects of ACCESS task principles, different task features (i.e. task complexity, pre-task modeling, speaker role and group size), and learners’ approach to tasks on the incidence and characteristics of LREs.
This study investigated learner knowledge of the figurative meanings of 30 collocations that can be both literal and figurative. One hundred and seven Chilean Spanish-speaking university students of English were asked to complete a meaning-recall collocation test in which the target items were embedded in non-defining sentences. Results showed limited collocation knowledge, with a mean score of 33% correct. The study also examined the effects of frequency, semantic transparency, year at university, and everyday engagement with the second language (L2) outside the classroom on this collocation knowledge. Mixed-effects modelling indicated that there was no relationship between frequency and semantic transparency and the knowledge of the figurative meanings. However, a positive relationship was found between this knowledge and year at university, time spent in an English-speaking country, and time spent reading.
The role of interactional feedback has long been of interest to both second language acquisition researchers and teachers and has continued to be the object of intensive empirical and theoretical inquiry. In this article, I provide a synthesis and analysis of recent research and developments in this area and their contributions to second language acquisition (SLA). I begin by discussing the theoretical underpinnings of interactional feedback and then review studies that have investigated the provision and effectiveness of feedback for language learning in various settings. I also examine research in a number of other key areas that have been the focus of current research including feedback timing, feedback training, learner–learner interaction, and computer-assisted feedback. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the issues examined with regard to classroom instruction.
When teaching foreign languages to very young learners, motivation is an issue that needs to be taken into account even more than in the case of any other age group. Teaching materials and students’ textbooks used in schools and preschools, however carefully crafted, often fail to cater for the genuine interests of children and to invoke intrinsic motivation for learning. This article aims to examine whether centring teaching around authentic media material, such as popular cartoons, and the accompanying branded toys, affects the level of second language (L2) knowledge and motivation for learning. The ‘one environment – one language’ approach was developed for this case study, which focuses on the learning progression of one four-year-old during the period of 18 months. The results speak in favour of using this approach both in kindergarten settings, exploiting role play with playschool character toys, as well as in home settings, where family characters can be used to connect home and preschool environments.
The current study examined in depth the effects of suprasegmental-based instruction on the global (comprehensibility) and suprasegmental (word stress, rhythm, and intonation) development of Japanese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). Students in the experimental group (n = 10) received a total of three hours of instruction over six weeks, while those in the control group (n = 10) were provided with meaning-oriented instruction without any focus on suprasegmentals. Speech samples elicited from read-aloud tasks were assessed via native-speaking listeners’ intuitive judgments and acoustic analyses. Overall, the pre-/post-test data showed significant gains in the overall comprehensibility, word stress, rhythm, and intonation of the experimental group in both trained and untrained lexical contexts. In particular, by virtue of explicitly addressing first language / second language linguistic differences, the instruction was able to help learners mark stressed syllables with longer and clearer vowels; reduce vowels in unstressed syllables; and use appropriate intonation patterns for yes/no and wh-questions. The findings provide empirical support for the value of suprasegmental-based instruction in phonological development, even with beginner-level EFL learners with a limited amount of second-language conversational experience.
Despite the preponderance of theoretical and empirical evidence that suggests the use of pair/group work to promote second language learning, it is still unclear who can best form high performance groups. Should students be allowed to choose their working partners, or should teachers themselves assign students to pairs? This study set out to compare the nature of student-selected and teacher-assigned pairs while they were engaged in collaborative writing. All learner talk was audio recorded, transcribed and analysed for the quantity, type and resolution of language related episodes (LREs) as well as the patterns of dyadic interaction. Furthermore, the study examined the texts produced using both quantitative and qualitative measures. Our findings suggest that the teacher-assigned pairs generated significantly more LREs than the student-selected pairs, while there was no significant difference in the patterns of interaction between the two pairing methods. Meanwhile, the qualitative analysis of learner talk revealed a considerable amount of off-task behavior among the members of student-selected pairs. Moreover, as far as the outcome of pair work (collaborative writing) was concerned, the teacher-assigned pairs noticeably outperformed the student-selected pairs on measures of fluency and accuracy. Also, they produced significantly better texts in terms of organization, grammar and vocabulary.
In view of ongoing debates about the future of task-based language teaching (TBLT) in contexts of English as a foreign language (EFL), we present a detailed case study of teacher beliefs and practices regarding TBLT conducted in a secondary school in mainland China with a long history of communicative and task-based teaching approaches. We used a mixed-methods approach to gather a broad range of triangulated data, combining individual interviews, material analysis and observations coded using a novel task-focused version of the scheme ‘Communicative Orientation of Language Teaching’ (COLT). Quantitative and qualitative findings revealed positive beliefs about TBLT principles in general, reflecting strong institutional support for communicative teaching. However, there was marked variability between beliefs and practices in using tasks, especially with beginner-level learners. Most teachers demonstrated an intrinsic lack of confidence in using tasks as more than a communicative ‘add-on’ to standard form-focused teaching. We argue that this demonstrates a need for building teacher autonomy, in implementing TBLT, even in supportive settings, to support successful authentic contextualizing TBLT principles in different EFL contexts.
This study investigated Vietnamese EFL learners’ knowledge of verb–noun and adjective–noun collocations at the first three 1,000 word frequency levels, and the extent to which five factors (node word frequency, collocation frequency, mutual information score, congruency, and part of speech) predicted receptive knowledge of collocation. Knowledge of single-word items at the same word frequency levels was also examined. The results indicated that the participants were not close to a level of mastery of collocational knowledge at any word frequency level; knew less than 50% of each type of collocation overall; and that their knowledge of collocation significantly decreased at each level. The analysis also revealed that there were significant large positive correlations between knowledge of collocations and single-word items, and that node word frequency was the strongest predictor of receptive knowledge of collocation.
Contexts that promote intensive second language (L2) experiences (typically, stay abroad, immersion, etc.) are reported to facilitate language development; yet, little is known about such programs when they are addressed to school-age learners in their home country. The present study examines the experiences of learners aged 11–13 years who participated in two domestic summer programs: a group of 58 learners on an overnight summer camp and a group of 47 learners at a language school. While the learners on both programs received English lessons on a daily basis, only those in the summer camp were exposed to English during non-language related activities. L2 development was assessed by administering three productive tasks and students’ experiences were recorded using questionnaires and via on-site observations. Our results indicate that the learners in both settings underwent significant L2 improvement in spite of the short duration of the two programs (three to four weeks). The results also highlight the challenge that domestic intensive programs face in seeking to maximize L2 use.
This study investigated the impact of topic interest, alongside L2 proficiency and gender, on L2 vocabulary acquisition through reading. A repeated-measures design was used with 135 Korean EFL students. Control variables included topic familiarity, prior target-word knowledge, and target-word difficulty (word length, class, and concreteness). Participants read both high- and low-interest topic passages and took vocabulary posttests (word-form recognition, translation recognition, and translation production) immediately and four weeks after reading. Analyses revealed significant effects of topic interest and L2 proficiency, and a significant interaction between topic interest and gender. These results were maintained over time. The article concludes by discussing the facilitative role of topic interest, expanding on the motivational factor considered in the involvement load hypothesis.
Research on second language (L2) grammar in task-based language learning has yielded inconsistent results regarding the effects of task-complexity, prompting calls for more nuanced analyses of L2 development and task performance. The present cross-sectional study contributes to this discussion by comparing the performance of 245 learners of German at two universities in the USA on two types of assessment tasks using multidimensional analyses of grammatical accuracy, fluency and complexity. Results show that: (1) grammatical accuracy in learner performance did not improve linearly across two years of instruction in either task condition; (2) participants tended to perform more accurately in the integrative task than on discrete-point items; (3) second-year learners wrote more fluently than first-year learners; and (4) fourth-semester learners wrote more complex sentences than other groups. The results yield important research, pedagogical and curricular insights.
Most studies on task-based language learning focus on the oral performance of advanced level learners of English as a second language (ESL), while little research examines the written performance of beginning language learners in non-ESL contexts. This exploratory study aims to address this gap, by examining the effect of pre-writing tasks on second language (L2) writing among 24 first-semester learners of German. One group completed collaborative, meaning-focused pre-writing tasks, while the comparison group completed grammar-focused activities, also in pairs. In line with task-based language research, learners’ performance was analysed in terms of complexity, accuracy, fluency, and lexical richness, as well as a global measure of quality, to reflect the multi-componential nature of L2 performance. The results suggest that collaborative, meaning-focused pre-writing tasks improved grammatical accuracy and lexical richness, as well as the overall quality of learners’ writing. The findings also offer insights into the effectiveness of using CAF and measures of communicative adequacy for analysing beginning L2 performance.
The purpose of this exploratory longitudinal study was to evaluate the efficacy of two new forms of recasts (i.e. elaborated and paraphrased recasts), each of which was designed to be more in accordance with contested views of input processing. The effectiveness of the two new forms of recasts was compared to that of conventional standard recasts. To this end, an experienced language teacher engaged four intermediate-level learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in weekly, one-on-one, English conversation sessions under four instructional conditions (elaborated recast, paraphrased recast, standard recast, and no recast), one learner under each condition. A diachronic, time-series research design was used to assess the effects of recasts on each learner’s performance of past tense over a nine-week, instructional period. The results showed that all three types of recasts proved effective in assisting the learners to improve their accuracy on English past tense; all things considered, elaborated and especially paraphrased recasts proved to have a distinct advantage over standard recasts. The results suggest that recasts, in general, and more specifically paraphrased and elaborated recasts, are effective when employed in less controlled, spoken conversational practice, where there is free turn-taking, topic shifts, and the conversational content is related to the learner’s personal experiences and background knowledge.
The study examines whether there is any difference between the effects of a reading–writing integrated task and comprehensive corrective feedback (CF) on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ writing development, and whether the input language in the integrated task makes a difference in L2 writing development over time and the language accuracy of the writing resulting from the integrated task. It also explores the possible relationships among language, content alignment and language accuracy and the relationship between language alignment and content alignment. To this end, a quasi-experimental study was conducted to assess participants’ L2 writing development based on a pretest–posttest–delayed-posttest design implemented in four intact EFL freshman classes. Four groups were created: an English-reading–English-writing (EE) group, a Chinese-reading–English-writing (CE) group, a comprehensive CF group, and a control group, which engaged solely in writing practice. The results demonstrated that (1) the EE and CF groups outperformed the control and CE groups on the posttest and outscored the control group on the delayed posttest with respect to language, although there were no significant differences among the three experimental groups in overall, content, and organization scores; (2) the input language of the integrated reading–writing task had a significant effect on language accuracy in the resulting essays; and (3) there was no significant correlation between content alignment and language accuracy for the CE group, whereas for the EE group, a significant positive correlation was observed not only between content and language alignment, on the one hand, and language accuracy, on the other hand, but also between content alignment and language alignment.
Using data from a study investigating the implementation of a popular French as a second language (FSL) teaching method in Canada (i.e. the Accelerative Integrated Method), this article presents a second language (L2) perspective on micro-policy implementation and pedagogical change. According to Fullan (2007), successful change implementation requires the establishment of ‘shared meaning’: a balanced vision of what the change represents and coordinated management of its implementation. This inquiry compared stakeholder perspectives (n = 36) on the method and its implementation in contexts where it was mandated and optional for FSL instruction. Data from interviews and focus groups were triangulated to provide a descriptive synthesis of the shared realities and practices of these local players. Findings showed that the bias for action and utility of the method, teacher agency and lack of collaborative monitoring emerged as factors affecting the short-term implementation of this change and its potential long-term sustainability. The findings present important implications for FSL education, micro-level L2 policy implementation and ongoing research focusing on L2 pedagogical change in the Canadian context.
Previous studies have shown that intentional learning through explicit instruction is effective for the acquisition of collocations in a second language (L2) (e.g. Peters, 2014, 2015), but relatively little is known about the effectiveness of incidental approaches for the acquisition of L2 collocations. The present study examined the incidental acquisition of collocational knowledge when learners encounter adjective–pseudoword collocations while reading. Forty-one L2 learners read a story containing six target collocations in a classroom setting. One week after the reading they were interviewed about their knowledge of the form, meaning and collocation of the target items (at recall and recognition levels). Participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental groups, i.e. the 4-repetition group and the 8-repetition group. Results showed that collocational knowledge can be learnt incidentally from reading; that it is learnt at a similar rate to other lexical components such as form and meaning of individual words; and that the frequency manipulation in this study did not seem to have a significant effect on the acquisition of any of the aspects examined.
The present study aimed to examine whether distributed practice works better than massed practice for proceduralization of grammatical knowledge. Learners of Japanese as a second language were trained on an element of Japanese morphology under either massed or distributed practice conditions. Results showed that massed practice led to accurate utterances to the same extent as distributed practice. It was also shown that massed practice may lead to more rapid utterances than distributed practice. A number of potential factors that mediate the effects of distributed practice are discussed.
This qualitative case study explored how a novice language teacher negotiated her pedagogical beliefs and practices during her socialization into a foreign cultural and educational context. The focal participant was an Uzbek language teacher at a university in the USA. Using a language socialization theoretical framework, data were drawn from multiple sources such as interviews, video-recorded classroom observations, and classroom materials. The findings indicate that biographical factors (e.g. the teacher’s personal history, experience as a learner), contextual factors (e.g. interactions with students and institutional resources), and dialogic factors (e.g. the teacher’s knowledge of theories of teaching and learning) guided the process of socialization. The teacher was able to transform her beliefs and practices by negotiating the tensions, dilemmas, concerns, and questions across her biography, current teaching context, and theoretical knowledge of teaching and learning.
If known words can be defined psycholinguistically as ‘form–meaning mappings’, the present article investigates whether prompting learners to evaluate whether the form of a new second language (L2) word fits its meaning generates ‘mapping elaborations’ that aid recall. Thirty Dutch-speaking upper-intermediate learners of English were invited to rate and motivate the degree of congruency they perceived between the form and meaning of 14 novel L2 words. Their ability to recall the form and the meaning of the target words was measured in an unannounced post-test. Recall was found to be positively related to the number of learner-generated mapping elaborations triggered by the task. Elaborations of a sound–symbolic nature appeared particularly useful for rendering the form of new words memorable.
Should teachers spend hours correcting students’ errors, or should they simply underline the errors, leaving it up to the students to self-correct them? The current study examines the utility of indirect feedback on learners’ written output. Journal entries from students enrolled in intact second language (L2) Korean classes (n = 40) were collected and returned to the students with all of their errors underlined (indirect feedback). The students were then given class time to either identify the target of their errors, or to self-correct them. The results were compared across two proficiency levels (beginning vs. intermediate) and across learners’ prior language exposure/learning experiences (heritage language vs. non-heritage language learners). The results showed that the learners in general were able to self-correct more than a third of their errors, and that the non-heritage language learners were significantly better at perceiving their errors on orthography and particles. It was also found that the higher proficiency and non-heritage language learners were better able to self-correct their errors on particles. The current findings suggest that simply underlining the errors and asking students to self-correct them can be helpful, especially for certain ‘treatable’ errors, including those involving orthography and particles. The findings also highlight the importance of considering individual learner factors, such as the nature and length of their prior L2-learning experience, when providing indirect written feedback.
The current study investigated the effects of three forms of output activity on EFL learners’ recognition and recall of second language (L2) vocabulary. To this end, three groups of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) were instructed to employ the following three output activities after reading two narrative texts: (1) summarizing the texts and incorporating target vocabulary in the summary; (2) generating several general comprehension questions out of reading texts and answering those questions while incorporating target vocabulary; and (3) making predictions about what is to occur in the texts and including target vocabulary in the prediction. The results of a cued response production test and a multiple choice recognition test indicated that the three treatment conditions resulted in significant development of vocabulary knowledge. Moreover, the results revealed that making predictions and questioning/answering were more effective than summarizing for promoting L2 words knowledge.
Recent years have witnessed a shift in empirical investigations of language learners’ willingness to communicate (WTC) from quantitative studies examining the ways in which WTC antecedents co-act and contribute to communication, treating the concept as a stable characteristic, to a mixed-methods approach that allows the examination of stable behavioral tendencies and dynamic changes brought about by contextual variables. The rationale behind this study comes from the assumption that more profound understanding of motives underlying learners’ readiness or reluctance to speak may help create classroom conditions that facilitate communication, thus contributing to linguistic attainment. More specifically, the study represents an attempt to tap factors that shape advanced learners’ WTC during conversation classes in four different groups of students. Each time, the data were collected by means of self-ratings (i.e. indications of the level of WTC on a scale from –10 to +10) and immediate reports (i.e. questionnaires including closed and open-ended items). A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis revealed that the extent to which WTC fluctuated was impacted by a range of contextual and individual factors. It was enhanced in particular when students were given the opportunity to communicate with familiar receivers in small groups or pairs on topics related to personal experiences.
Foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) has been the subject of several studies aimed to optimize learning of a foreign language in the classroom. However, few studies provide specific curriculum-based methodological strategies to be used in the classroom in order to lower the anxiety level. In this article, two experimental classes of 8th-grade students participated in a 5-week intervention program aimed to teach French as a foreign language through music during the regular French classes. One class had a higher anxiety average (ExpHi) compared with the other (ExpLo). The self-reported level of anxiety of the two experimental classes was compared after the intervention program with the self-reported level of anxiety of two control classes with similar levels of anxiety (CtrHi and CtrLo). The study also compared the opinions of students from the experimental classes regarding their overall experience of the foreign language classes. Findings indicated that teaching songs during FL classes was perceived as an enjoyable experience by students from classes with both high and low anxiety; however, this teaching method decreased the FLCA average of classes of students with rather high anxiety, but not of the ones with a rather low anxiety.
While learners of a second language (L2) are increasingly interacting in small groups as part of a communicative methodological paradigm, very few studies have investigated the social dynamics that occur in such groups. The aim of this study is to introduce a group work dynamic measuring instrument and to investigate the relationship between group work dynamic (GWD), or the social climate existing within a group, and learners’ state-level motivational responses and amount of language produced in interactive tasks. The context for the classroom-based study was a speaking-skills course consisting of a small group of 10 Korean English learners of intermediate to high intermediate proficiency level enrolled in a Korean university TESOL certificate program. The data were based on 15 different tasks that were part of the course and two work groups for each task for a total of 30 groups. Instruments of data collection consisted of audio-video recordings, transcription of all verbal and nonverbal language produced in the tasks, the GWD measurement instrument, and post-task motivation questionnaires. Results from correlational analysis showed a significant relationship between GWD and task motivation and between GWD and language production. Nonverbal-related behaviors, furthermore, were found to be particularly influential in shaping GWD and were significantly associated with learners’ task motivation, especially in the form of greater task enjoyment and sense of success. The study’s findings therefore add support to socio-contextual perspectives in L2 motivation and applied linguistics that emphasize the critical role of social and group factors on motivation and language development and imply a need for educators to focus on creating positive group dynamics in their classrooms.
The role of grammar teaching in foreign language education is a controversial one both in second language acquisition (SLA) research and language pedagogy and, as a result, a potential source of confusion to student teachers. The objective of this study was to gain insight into the beliefs on grammar teaching of student teachers of English as a foreign language enrolled in undergraduate and postgraduate teacher education programmes at Dutch universities of applied sciences. To this end a questionnaire was developed and validated based on four construct pairs from SLA literature: meaning- versus form-focused instruction, focus on form (FonF) versus focus on forms (FonFs), implicit versus explicit instruction, and inductive versus deductive instruction. Overall, respondents (n = 832) were found to prefer form-focused, explicit, inductive instruction, and FonFs. However, higher-year undergraduates’ and postgraduates’ results showed a trend towards a preference for more meaning-focused and implicit instruction, and FonF. When learner level was factored in, however, these forms of language instruction were considered subordinate to more traditional form-focused approaches for teaching higher-level language learners.
Learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) are exposed to a collection of materials and communicative activities in the classroom through which they learn to use the language competently and appropriately. Textbooks, in particular, are a rich source of input, offering a variety of opportunities to acquire and practice pragmatic competence in specific areas of language use. One such area concerns apologies. As a ubiquitous and routinized pragmatic speech act, apologies are important to master for learners who have violated a socio-cultural norm. This study examines how German textbooks for EFL learners provide input on apologies and what tasks as well as exercises they suggest to practice and perform this act in the classroom. Teaching apologies – like any other speech act – should be based on rich, meaningful and authentic input and tasks in order for learners to appreciate and make use of this competence in real-life communication. The analysis of textbooks for secondary schools in Germany reveals the existence of some apology input, but also a lack of variety in terms of apology expressions. In addition, a noticeable difference between (implicit) input and (explicit) tasks exists, which can have an influence on the development of learners’ apology competence. EFL teachers need to be aware of what textbooks can and cannot offer, and then they need to adapt input and tasks for their teaching.
Knowledge of English affixes plays a significant role in increasing knowledge of words. However, few attempts have been made to create a valid and reliable measure of affix knowledge. The Word Part Levels Test (WPLT) was developed to measure three aspects of affix knowledge: form (recognition of written affix forms), meaning (knowledge of affix meanings), and use (knowledge of the syntactic properties of affixes). A total of 118 derivative affixes were selected based on frequency data from the British National Corpus. First, data was collected from 417 Japanese university students to revise poorly working items using Rasch analysis. Second, the responses of 1,348 people representing more than 30 different native languages were analysed to determine the affix difficulty levels. A description of the test, justification for its design, and practical implications are provided.
This two-part study aims to investigate teacher perceptions about providing oral corrective feedback (CF) to minority students of Latvian as a second language and compare the perceptions to the actual provision of CF in L2 Latvian classrooms. The survey sample represents sixty-six L2 Latvian teachers while the classroom observations involved 13 teachers of L2 Latvian from five minority schools in Latvia. The survey results show that all major types of oral CF were thought to be uniformly provided. The classroom observations, however, demonstrated a predominant provision of explicit, isolated recasts with the other types of feedback (explicit correction, elicitation, integrated recasts and repetition) present, yet trailing behind in terms of their use during classroom interactions.
The Interaction Approach argues that negotiation for meaning and form is conducive to second language development. To date, most of the research on negotiations has been either in face-to-face (FTF) or text-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) modes. Very few studies have compared the nature of negotiations across the modes. Such comparisons are important as they can indicate which mode may be more conducive to language learning. The present study set out to compare the nature of negotiations between FTF and SCMC modes in same-proficiency intermediate dyads. Dyads performed two similar decision-making tasks, one in FTF and one in SCMC mode, and were encouraged to provide corrective feedback, where necessary, to their partner. The analysis revealed that negotiations for form and meaning were scarce in both modes, with more negotiations for meaning in FTF mode. The findings also suggested that mode of interaction influenced the type of negotiations, and their outcomes, in terms of modified output as well as successful uptake.
Studies show that incorporating self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies into foreign language teaching encourages the development of autonomous learners. However, interviews with teachers (n = 51) indicate that they mostly do not consider SRL in classroom practices. The present study attempts to highlight the significance of SRL in language teaching by exploring its impact on language achievement. It investigates learner reported use of SRL, focusing on its three main components – orientation, performance, and evaluation – and their power in predicting foreign language achievement. A total of 222 undergraduate foreign language learners at a state university participated in the study. Data was collected from two sources: a five-point Likert-type self-regulated language learning questionnaire, adapted from models and research instruments used in previous studies to investigate SRL and language learning strategies, and the university’s English achievement exam. Quantitative analyses indicated that although participants reported moderate to low levels of SRL use, it is a significant predictor of foreign language achievement and had significant correlations with language achievement. The results are meant to draw attention to the importance of SRL research within the foreign language teaching field as well as foster SRL implementation in language instruction.
Nonverbal behavior is an area of recent interest in second language acquisition (SLA). Some researchers have found that teachers’ nonverbal behavior plays a role in second language (L2) learners’ learning. Furthermore, corrective feedback during L2 interaction can also be facilitative of L2 development; however, little is known about how nonverbal behavior accompanies teachers’ corrective feedback. The current study investigated teachers’ nonverbal behavior in corrective feedback during 48 observations (about 65 hours of recordings) of nine classrooms for English as a second language (ESL). The results indicated that teachers used a variety of nonverbal behavior in their corrective feedback, including hand gestures (specifically iconics, metaphorics, deictics, and beats), head movements, affect displays, kinetographs, and emblems. Specific nonverbal behaviors that commonly occurred in the observations were nodding, head shaking, pointing at an artifact, and pointing at a person.
Interest in pronunciation learning and teaching has increased significantly in the past few years. Studies and resources in the area have proliferated, but it is important to know whether they have influenced teachers of English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL). The purpose of this study was to investigate the beliefs and practices of Brazilian EFL teachers. Convenience and snowball sampling were employed to recruit 60 participants, who completed an online survey on pronunciation teaching and learning. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse trends, while qualitative responses were coded for common topics. The findings suggest that the instructors had generally informed views about pronunciation and positive attitudes toward its teaching. Their teaching practices tended to be traditional: the predominant approach was to deal with word-level features, especially problematic sounds, through repetition as the need arose. Although most of the respondents claimed to be comfortable teaching pronunciation, they reported a wish for more pronunciation training, as have other instructors in prior studies (e.g. Burgess & Spencer, 2000; Foote, Holtby, & Derwing, 2011).
Research on corrective feedback (CF), a central focus of second language acquisition (SLA), has increasingly examined how teachers employ CF in second language classrooms. Lyster and Ranta’s (1997) seminal study identified six types of CF that teachers use in response to students’ errors (recast, explicit correction, elicitation, clarification request, metalinguistic cue, and repetition) as well as target linguistic foci (lexical, phonological, and grammatical errors). These taxonomies have remained dominant in observational studies conducted in a growing range of second language teaching contexts. Several studies have acknowledged that contextual factors may influence how teachers provide CF (e.g. Mori, 2002; Sheen, 2004) with few generalizable conclusions. The present study brings together research in this area in the first comprehensive synthesis of classroom CF research seeking to aggregate proportions of CF types teachers provide, as well as their target linguistic foci. Findings reveal that recasts account for 57% of all CF while prompts comprise 30%, and grammar errors received the greatest proportion of CF (43%). The study further identifies a range of contextual and methodological factors (i.e. moderators) that may influence CF choices across teaching contexts, such as student proficiency, teacher experience, and second/foreign language context. A clearer picture of the patterns of CF that teachers provide and the variables that influence these choices serves to complement the growing body of research investigating the efficacy of CF in second language pedagogy.
Peer feedback is widely used in second and foreign language writing contexts. While second language (L2) proficiency is likely to be an important factor in determining peers’ ability to give and utilize feedback, its contribution has been relatively under-researched. In the present study, 54 undergraduates in a foreign language writing context gave and received feedback on two different texts. The quantity and type of feedback given and incorporated were analysed, looking at whether these changed or preserved meaning. Generalized linear mixed models were used to assess whether the L2 proficiency of the reviewer (reviewer proficiency) and writer (writer proficiency) in each dyad determined the quantity and type of feedback given and incorporated. Results showed that reviewer proficiency significantly predicted the number of suggestions made. Writer proficiency did not significantly predict the number of suggestions, though lower proficiency writers incorporated significantly fewer meaning-related suggestions into their revised texts than higher proficiency writers. Differences in giving and incorporating suggestions also emerged for different pairings (i.e. matched or mixed proficiency), though these were not significant. The present findings provide further insight into understanding how L2 proficiency modulates the peer feedback process.
This quasi-experimental study investigated the noticeability and effectiveness of three corrective feedback (CF) techniques (recasts, prompts and a combination of the two) delivered in the language classroom. The participants were four groups of high-beginner college level francophone learners of English as a second language (ESL) (n = 99) and their teachers. Each teacher was assigned to a treatment condition that fit his CF style, but the researcher taught the controls. CF was provided to the learners in response to their production problems with the simple past and questions in the past. While the noticing of CF was assessed through immediate recall protocols, learning outcomes were measured by way of picture description and spot-the-differences tasks administered through a pre-test/post-test design. The results indicated that the noticeability of CF is dependent on the grammatical target it addresses (i.e. feedback on past tense errors was noticed more) and that the CF techniques that push learners to self-correct alone or in combination with target exemplars are more effective in bringing out the corrective intent of the feedback move. In relation to the learning outcomes, the past tense accuracy levels increased more than those for questions, but the differences between the two targets were not significant across groups.
This study focuses on the effects of task type on the retention and ease of activation of second language (L2) vocabulary, based on the multi-feature hypothesis (Moonen, De Graaff, & Westhoff, 2006). Two tasks were compared: a writing task and a list-learning task. It was hypothesized that performing the writing task would yield higher retention and ease of activation of the target words than performing the list task. Translation tests and picture description tests were used to measure acquisition of the target vocabulary. Think-aloud protocols were used to study task performance. Results show that the writing group significantly outperformed the list group on both test types and on both direct and delayed tests. These findings are discussed in the light of task design characteristics and the issue of time on task.
The purpose of this article is to examine both the process and product of vocabulary learning in a task-based instructional context. The article reports a study that investigated the acquisition of two dimensional adjectives (‘big’ and ‘small’) by six-year-old Japanese children who were complete beginners. It tracked the ‘learning behaviours’ that occurred in the classroom interactions involving the use of these adjectives in nine task-based lessons to show how these behaviours developed over time. It also collected test data to establish whether the learners had developed the receptive and productive knowledge required for the independent use of two adjectives. In this way, the study shows how second language (L2) learning evolves through interaction by exploring the relationships between the learners’ different learning behaviours and the differences in their test performance. The main finding was that differences in the success of the individual learners in acquiring productive control over the dimensional adjectives – as shown in the tests – was directly traceable to their learning behaviours in the task-based interactions.
This study examined the opportunities that pair and small group interaction offer for collaborative dialogue and second language (L2) vocabulary learning. It compared the performance of the same collaborative writing task by learners working in groups of four (n = 60) and in pairs (n = 50), focusing on the occurrence of lexical language-related episodes (LREs). Findings indicate that groups produced more lexical LREs than pairs and were able to solve correctly a higher percentage of these LREs. Although opportunities for individual learners to contribute to the conversation were more limited in small groups, the number of participants did not have a negative impact on learners’ rate of retention of the lexical knowledge co-constructed in interaction. The pretests and posttests showed that learners benefited from the LREs they initiated or resolved, as well as from observing their peers’ collaborative problem-solving activities. As a result, small group interaction resulted in significantly more instances of L2 vocabulary learning than pair interaction.
In this study we compared the effects of two types of form-focused instruction (FFI) on second language (L2) learning and their potential contributions to the development of different types of L2 knowledge. Both types of instruction were pre-emptive in nature, that is planned and teacher generated. In Integrated FFI attention to form was embedded within communicative practice; in Isolated FFI it was separated from communicative practice. Two groups of adult learners of English as a second language (ESL) received 12 hours of Integrated or Isolated FFI on the ‘passive’ construction. Learners’ progress on a written grammar test and an oral communication task indicated no significant differences between the instructional groups over time. However, some advantages were observed for Integrated FFI on the oral production task and for Isolated FFI on the written grammar test. The results are discussed in relation to instructed second language acquisition (SLA) research an transfer appropriate processing theory.
Language learners with high working memory capacity have an advantage, all other factors being equal, during the second language acquisition (SLA) process; therefore, identifying a pedagogical intervention that can compensate for low working memory capacity would be advantageous to language learners and instructors. Extensive research on the provision of planning time before non-native speakers complete various oral and written tasks in the target language suggests that planning time might provide the processing support needed to overcome the constraints of low working memory capacity. This article reports on an empirical aptitude-treatment interaction (ATI) study of the interaction of working memory capacity and pre-task planning time with a population of English as a second language (ESL) learners in the USA. Learners were asked to complete two different oral, monologic, picture-guided narratives in two conditions: with pre-task planning time and without pre-task planning time. The results did not show an effect for the interaction of working memory capacity with pre-task planning time; that is, the results demonstrate the facilitative effect of planning time on learner fluency for participants with both high and low working memory capacity. In addition, the results demonstrate that learners with pre-task planning time produce more fluent and more complex speech than learners without pre-task planning time, with mixed results for accuracy. Finally, the results suggest that planning time may have a carry-over effect and benefit the fluency and complexity of learners’ speech during subsequent, unplanned tasks.
English language teaching (ELT) currently occurring in diverse social settings points to the need to locate ELT in its social context. Many researchers have highlighted the need to explore local vernacular practices, in particular ELT practices in peripheral contexts. The present study investigates events in an English language classroom at a Nepalese public college, using ethnographic observations and interviews. The article describes local practices that have emerged to match the contextual particularities of this classroom. Although localized practices are idiosyncratic, they have coherence within the macrocosm of language teacher education. Vernacular practices and local knowledge are under-represented in both ELT theories and language teacher education. The findings of the study will help understand classroom teaching practice and competence of teachers in ‘peripheral’ contexts as well as help raise ‘relevant doubts and questions’ (Bowers, 1986, p. 407) regarding established ELT theories and practices.
This study investigates the roles of collaborative output, the modality of output, and word engagement in vocabulary learning and retention by Chinese-speaking undergraduate EFL learners. The two treatment groups reconstructed a passage that they had read in one of two ways: (1) dyadic oral interaction while producing a written report (Written Output); (2) dyadic oral interaction followed by an oral report (Oral Output). A control group completed a reading comprehension task (Reading) based on the same passage. Four posttests revealed that Oral Output led to significantly better productive and receptive lexical learning than Reading all the way to the last posttest. Written Output led to significantly better productive and receptive lexical learning than Reading on posttest 2, but not on posttests 3 and 4. However, the difference in lexical learning between the Written and Oral Output conditions did not achieve significance. Interaction analysis found that the Oral and Written Output groups differed in the types of word processing they favoured as well as in the frequency of their word engagement. The article discusses the reasons why collaborative output facilitates lexical learning; considers the association between the Output performers’ word engagement and lexical retention; and suggests what might have contributed to the better success of the Oral Output group in their lexical retention.
This study investigated the interactions between feedback type, proficiency, and the nature of the linguistic target in the learning of Chinese as a foreign language. Seventy-eight learners from two large US universities participated in the study. The participants were divided into two proficiency levels based on their performance on a standardized proficiency test. At each proficiency level, they were randomly assigned to three feedback conditions: recasts, metalinguistic correction, and control. Learners in the experimental conditions received feedback on their nontargetlike use of classifiers and the perfective -le. Results revealed that for the perfective -le, recasts benefited the high-level but not low-level learners; at the high proficiency level, the effects of recasts were more sustainable than those of metalinguistic correction. With respect to classifiers, recasts were effective for learners at both proficiency levels. For both target structures, metalinguistic correction showed larger effects than recasts for the low-level learners, but the two feedback types were equally effective for the advanced learners. The results underscore the importance of taking an interactional approach to the investigation of corrective feedback. The results also undermine the commonly believed superiority of explicit feedback over implicit feedback.
The current study compared the effectiveness of computer-delivered task-essential practice coupled with feedback consisting of (1) negative evidence with metalinguistic information (NE+MI) or (2) negative evidence without metalinguistic information (NE–MI) in promoting absolute beginners’ (n = 58) initial learning of aspects of Latin morphosyntax. This study measured language development on a variety of dependent measures (three comprehension-based tests and one production test), assessing both changes in accuracy and reaction time as well as examining effects on trained (old) vs. untrained (new) items. Although participants under both conditions improved in accuracy and reaction time on all measures, on immediate post-tests, participants receiving metalinguistic information outperformed those who did not. However, this advantage had largely dissipated by the time of the delayed tests. Performance on untrained items also suggests an advantage for metalinguistic feedback on system learning and on transfer of skills from comprehension-based practice to production. Furthermore, we argue, based on findings in cognitive neuroscience, that greater maintenance of gains in accuracy as well as evidence of some faster processing by participants not exposed to metalinguistic information may reflect qualitatively different learning processes at work: more explicit learning in the [NE+MI] group and more implicit learning in the [NE–MI] group (Li, 2010).
Finding the match between individuals and educational treatments is the aim of both educators and the aptitude-treatment interaction research paradigm. Using the latent growth curve analysis, the present study investigates the interaction between the type of explicit instructional approaches (deductive vs. explicit-inductive) and the level of foreign language aptitude (high vs. low) in the learning of explicit grammar rules. The results indicate that on the whole the two equally explicit instructional approaches did not differentially affect learning performance. However, when the level of language aptitude, measured by grammatical sensitivity, associative memory, and memory for text (with the last variable being the best measure), was taken into account, low-aptitude learners performed significantly better with the deductive instruction, in the sentence-correction tests. The interaction effects of equally explicit instructional approaches suggest the need for considering aptitude-treatment interaction to maximize learners’ potential for success in second language learning.
Imitation has a fundamental role in learning and development within Vygotskyan sociocultural theory. In this study, we adopt a sociocultural theory view of imitation as an intentional, meaningful, and transformative process leading learners to higher developmental levels. The study centers on instances of imitation that occurred as adult learners of English as a second language (ESL) were engaged in a classroom shadow-reading task. The task consisted of an interactional phase where two learners, working collaboratively, read aloud, shadowed, and orally summarized a story, and a non-interactional phase where students produced written retellings of the story. The qualitative analysis of the data involved identifying possible instances of imitation and tracking relevant story segments throughout the different phases of the activity. Various types of imitative behaviors were found, ranging from close copies to major transformations of models, as well as immediate to deferred reproductions. From an instructional point of view, the built-in, recursive structure of the shadow-reading task seemed effective in providing affordances for persistent, meaningful imitation and internalization of second language (L2) exemplars as well as story comprehension and retention.
This study created a medical word list (MWL) to bridge the gap between non-technical and technical vocabulary. The researcher compiled a corpus containing 155 textbooks across 31 medical subject areas from e-book databases (totaling 15 million running words) and examined the range and frequency of words outside the most frequent 3,000-word families along the British National Corpus scale. To reach 98% lexical coverage for adequate comprehension of medical texts, 595 of the most frequently-occurring word families in the corpus were ultimately chosen and formed the MWL, and these accounted for 10.72% of the tokens in the medical textbooks under study. Excluding highly-specialized medical terms of Greek/Latin sources, the MWL encompasses various sub-technical and lay-technical vocabularies. It is suggested that with the help of free online concordancers, medical teachers can raise their students’ awareness of the commonly-used medical words reported in this study by incorporating concordance data into teaching materials, thereby consolidating the vocabulary knowledge acquired from the MWL. For medical novices, the present MWL provides a window to the medical register.
A fundamental goal of any L2 teacher education program is to move novice teachers toward greater levels of professional expertise, both in terms of what they know and what they can do with what they know. Yet, it is less clear how the activities embedded in teacher education programs actually assist novice teachers as they move toward greater levels of expertise. Informed by a sociocultural theoretical perspective on teacher learning (Johnson, 2009) this study examines the practices of a teacher educator as she works with a team of three novice teachers of English as a second language (ESL) who are exposed to and attempt to take up and use a set of pedagogical tools designed to assist them in garnering greater levels of student participation and engagement in their L2 instruction. Specifically, this study traces how the meaning and functional uses of this set of pedagogical tools develops and the critical role that strategic mediation must play in order to assist novice teachers in becoming fluent users of these pedagogical tools in their L2 instruction.
This article assesses the impact of a UK-based professional development programme on curriculum innovation and change in English Language Education (ELE) in Western China. Based on interviews, focus group discussions and observation of a total of 48 English teachers who had participated in an overseas professional development programme influenced by modern approaches to education and ELE, and 9 of their colleagues who had not taken part, it assesses the uptake of new approaches on teachers’ return to China. Interviews with 10 senior managers provided supplementary data. Using Diffusion of Innovations Theory as the conceptual framework, we examine those aspects of the Chinese situation that are supportive of change and those that constrain innovation. We offer evidence of innovation in classroom practice on the part of returnees and ‘reinvention’ of the innovation to ensure a better fit with local needs. The key role of course participants as opinion leaders in the diffusion of new ideas is also explored. We conclude that the selective uptake of this innovation is under way and likely to be sustained against a background of continued curriculum reform in China.
The listening comprehension skill is frequently cited by both teachers and learners of a second language (L2) as perhaps the most difficult to deal with in any systematic way. One possible approach is to use the dictogloss task. This involves learners reconstructing a short text they have listened to. Originally developed to draw learners’ attention to grammatical points, dictogloss can also be used as a listening comprehension activity. Having incorporated dictogloss in a listening comprehension course for learners of English in a French university, I sought to explore its various components further. My principal aim was to improve students’ understanding and retention of spoken English input. After a presentation of the task itself, the difficulties that learners experience when trying to remember and reproduce spoken text are discussed. Three variations of the task are presented, each of which highlights different input features. Students’ written productions were collected and scored over the course of a semester, and progress was noted on all of the measures adopted. Whether such progress can be carried over into more authentic tasks remains, however, a matter for further research.