Adult Learners Of English Research Articles

The Role of Error Correction in Teaching and Learning of English from the Cognitive Load Perspective: A Case Study

In second language teaching and learning, making errors is inevitable as language learning requires a lot of cognitive effort and concentration on the part of learners. Understanding the types and frequencies of student errors is, therefore, an important issue for ESL and EFL teachers to determine how students can be helped to improve their skills through instruction. This case study focuses on the frequency and types of errors and aims to identify any possible relationship between learner-based errors and the perceived cognitive load of the student. Data was received through 36 essays written by an adult learner of English who received 104 hours of formal instruction. The instruction was designed pursuing Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), and corrective feedback was provided. At the end of each month, a subjective cognitive load scale was applied to identify the perceived cognitive load of the learner. Errors were regarded as indicators of the student’s developmental competence and were analyzed not as a failure but as a sign in reflecting the learner’s progress. The results revealed that an improvement in the writings of the learner can be observed when the perceived cognitive load of the learner is lowered in the second language learning process.

Web-Based Text Structure Instruction on Ells’ High-Order Reading Comprehension Skills

ABSTRACT The difficulties with developing high-order reading comprehension skills negatively impact academic success across fields. The current study investigated whether the text structure strategy instruction, delivered through the Intelligent Tutoring of Structure Strategy (ITSS) to adult English learners as a foreign language (EFL), can improve reading comprehension, especially their higher-order reading comprehension skills. With a quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group design, 61 adult Chinese EFL learners from two classes were assigned to experimental or control groups. The experimental group utilized the ITSS to support their English reading instruction, whereas the control group was provided with the traditional instruction. Our results indicated that the web-based text structure instruction had a statistically significant positive effect on Chinese EFL learners’ reading comprehension (β = 3.22, p < 0.05). Furthermore, we confirmed our hypothesis that text structure intervention was a significant predictor for inferential (β = 0.91, p < 0.05) and evaluative (β = 1.06, p < 0.05) subskills of comprehension, but not for literal subskills (β = 1.25, p > 0.05). Based on these results, research and pedagogical implications of this study are discussed.

Book Review: Narratives of Adult English Learners and Teachers: Practical Applications by C. Larrotta

Book Review: <i>Narratives of Adult English Learners and Teachers: Practical Applications</i> by C. Larrotta

Promoting Health Literacy Among Adult ELLs Virtually During COVID-19.

The adult English language learner (ELL) population is often overlooked in health literacy discussions, which can result in perpetuating low health literacy and unfamiliarity with and low access to community resources. Health literacy interventions can reduce the impacts of social determinants of health. We examine the experience of a virtual health literacy educational course, Health in the English Language, for ELLs at Alaska Literacy Program (ALP), an Anchorage nonprofit. Our class was designed to help students navigate interactions with health care services, including medical care, pharmacy, health insurance, and nutrition resources. After 2 years of in-person teaching by university undergraduates, COVID-19 required a pivot to virtual instruction in Zoom in the summer of 2020. Instructors describe lessons learned and adjusting to student needs, community-building and personal connections, and the complexities of the topic of health literacy. ALP collaboration with university students continues to be a successful partnership to build health literacy capacity. Adoption of virtual instruction during COVID demonstrated the role that partnerships between nonprofits and university students can play to benefit all partners in the collaboration.

The Impact of Workforce Development Policies on Literacy Instruction for Adult English Learners

AbstractWorkforce development has been a primary focus of funding throughout the United States, with significant increases over the past 10 years (The Council for Community and Economic Research, 2019). As funding expands, policies related to workforce development and college and career readiness (CCR) will continue to have implications for adult education students, including adult English Learners (ELs). To closely examine how these policies influence the literacy development of adult ELs, I observed a newly implemented CCR class at a community‐based organization in New York City over a 10‐month period. The content of the course was driven in part by the nation‐wide College and Career Readiness for Adult Education Standards as well as funding from the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act; however, since the CCR standards are not a curriculum, states (and individual organizations) can individually interpret the standards. The result is a range of instructional practices not only across states, but also across organizations and even specific classes. In this Column, I argue for a broader understanding of the challenges many adult ESL instructors face when balancing policy requirements and the breadth of literacy instruction necessary to improve students’ access to careers and college.

Developing spoken requests during UK study abroad

Abstract The present study tracks the longitudinal pragmatic development of spoken requests by Japanese, adult learners of English during an academic year abroad, and aims to examine whether and how their requestive performance develops over time in high and low-imposition situations. Data were collected at three points of the academic year using oral, virtual role plays, and semi-structured group interviews. Data analysis examined the type and frequency of request strategies and modification devices employed by the group over time. Findings revealed that there were only some pragmatic gains (e.g., a slight drop in the use of want statements) as learners were very slow in adopting a new form-function mapping and expanding their pragmalinguistic repertoire. They relied on (and overused) a limited set of request sequences and had clear preferences for particular ways to express (in)directness, confirming that pragmatic gains might often be small, and development may follow a non-linear trajectory.

Plain Language as a Prerequisite for Environmental Justice

Background: Infrastructure, land use, zoning, and permitting decisions have long perpetuated patterns of environmental racism in the United States. These decisions and their underlying public participation processes often place undue demands on overburdened and historically excluded or disinvested communities who must repeatedly mobilize and engage to protect their well-being. Materials and Methods: In 2020, the Environmental Health Research-to-Action (EHRA) team joined with Literacy Work's Clear Language Lab (CLL) and staff at the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) to identify opportunities for increasing plain language in environmental decision-making processes. This entailed (1) CLL-led content review of sample documents (e.g., public notices), (2) EHRA-led focus groups with environmental justice leaders and legal advocates, and (3) CLL-led focus groups with adult English learners. Results: Themes from focus group analysis suggested that documents were perceived as intentionally biased, unnecessarily technical, and without clear directions on how and why to participate. The content review revealed opportunities for improving plain language in documents with regard to (1) audience and content, (2) organization and cohesion, (3) accessibility, (4) literacy, (5) language, and (6) process. Discussion: New versions of existing documents were generated. Many EGLE staff have worked toward plain language in public communications, providing models for colleagues and other agencies nationwide. Conclusion: Decades of grassroots mobilization has led to a recent increase in state- and federal-level resources and capacity to address environmental racism in the United States. Plain language can make decision-making processes transparent, and should be inherent in all agency-led public participation opportunities.

An action-oriented approach to didactic dubbing in foreign language education: Students as producers

This article discusses the action-oriented foundations of TRADILEX (Audiovisual Translation as a Didactic Resource in Foreign Language Education), a project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, which involves researchers from twelve universities across Europe and the UK. This project focuses on the improvement in the linguistic skills perceived through audiovisual translation (AVT) practices such as the use of captioning (i.e., interlingual and intralingual subtitling) and revoicing (i.e., dubbing, voice-over, and audio description) through an action-oriented approach (AoA). The ultimate objective is the study of AVT as a means to enhance learners’ communicative competence and reception, production, and mediation skills in an integrated manner. Following the design of a methodological proposal for a didactic sequence of AVT tasks, proposals are currently being piloted with B1 and B2 adult learners of English as a foreign language utilising – and adapting – the recent illustrative descriptors (Council of Europe, 2018) for AVT instruction. The potential benefits of action-oriented AVT tasks in foreign language education (FLE), in which foreign-language learners become active producers of AVT work, are put to the test employing empirical inquiry and thereafter advocating for more comprehensive integration of AVT in the FLE curriculum overall.

Collaborative Writing in a Third Language: How Writers Use and View Their Plurilingual Repertoire During Collaborative Writing Tasks

Recent years have witnessed major development in plurilingual pedagogies which support the use of learners’ repertoire of languages in language learning contexts (Payant &amp; Galante, 2022; Piccardo, 2013). However, little research has been undertaken to examine adult plurilingual learners’ perceptions towards the use of their languages during authentic collaborative writing tasks and contrasted these views with their actual behaviours. In this case study, six plurilingual adult learners of English in a Canadian university with three unique L1s (Romanian, Russian, Spanish) completed two collaborative writing tasks on two separate occasions. Each dyad shared the same linguistic profiles and were encouraged to draw on their entire repertoire to complete the tasks. Semi-structured interview data shows differing levels of openness towards L1 and L2 (French) use during language-learning writing tasks. The analysis of the interaction confirms multiple uses for the L1; however, the L2 was seldom observed during interactions. The findings are discussed from a plurilingual lens and pedagogical implications are discussed.

An Empirical Study on the Omission of Third-Person Singular -s in Writing

Enlightened by studies in inflectional morpheme in L2 speech, this article reports a survey on the use of third-person singular -s in writing by 6 L1 Chinese L2 English learners enrolled in Lancaster University in 2014. The results show that these undergraduate students omitted almost half -s marking in obligatory contexts but made little or no mistake when they actually used third-person singular -s. The students were more successful in using be form than -s form. The grammar of these students seemed to be &amp;ldquo;fossilized&amp;rdquo; in -s marking since they made no improvement after attending a pre-sessional program at Lancaster University. Whiling echoing the findings of previous studies on either Chinese or other English learners (adults or Children), this article concludes that the acquisition third-person singular -s is a challenge for adult Chinese English learners in writing. The implications for English language teaching in China are also discussed.

Book Review: Preparing Adult English Learners to Write for College and the Workplace by K. Schaetzel, J. K. Peyton, &amp; R. Ferncández

Book Review: <i>Preparing Adult English Learners to Write for College and the Workplace</i> by K. Schaetzel, J. K. Peyton, &amp; R. Ferncández

Learning Proper VOT of English Velar Stops by Kuwaiti Undergraduate Students from VOT and Optimality Theory Perspectives

An important issue in the recent L2 literature is whether adult learners can perceive a gradient phonetic difference between L1 and the corresponding L2 phonemes. This leads us to further judge whether such learners can acquire allophonic contrast in L2. The same issue has been addressed in the current study with reference to Kuwaiti adult learners of English. The aim of this study is to analyze velar stops /k, g/ as perceived and produced by Kuwaiti Arabic (KA) learners of English. In this study, comprehension is measured by a perception test, and pronunciation is measured by obtaining readings of voice onset time (VOT) in Praat software. The velar stops will also be analyzed using the framework of the classic version of optimality theory (OT). OT became one of the major generative frameworks in the field of generative phonology. OT is a constraint-based theory of phonology advanced by Prince and Smolensky. In the perception test, participants were asked to listen to words containing target sounds, which were “keys,” “skis,” and “geese,” and note on paper which English word they had heard. In the discrimination task, these words were presented in pairs, and the participants were asked to say whether they had heard a single word twice or two words together. In the production test, they read from a list of words, including “keys,” “skis,” and “geese,” and their productions were recorded. A large group of Kuwaiti English learners perceived and produced these velar stops of English. Their discrimination of voiced and voiceless velar stops was excellent, but their identification of [g] was weak. Their identification of the voiceless velar stop /k/ was also native-like. In production, they were native-like in aspirated [k^h]. In the production of the unaspirated voiceless velar stop [k], they were not native-like, but they had developed an understanding of this allophone of English. In [g], some students were native-like, some were still learning, and some had only relied on L1 transfer.

A study of online adult English learners’ perception of their English learning motivation and L2 selves

This study aims to investigate the perception that Korean graduate students are motivated to study English. Unlike the controversial early studies on L2 (second language) motivation (Gardner, 1985; Gardner & Lambert, 1959, 1972), Korean adult English learners were measured to have a distinctive self-system (D&#246;rnyei, 2005, 2009) in their L2 selves. 78 graduate school students from online English reading and practical English classes participated in the study. The semi-structured survey data analysis shows that the ideal self in possible selves significantly correlated with all three sub-types in L2 learning motivation. Their learning-oriented learning motivation, in particular, verified that both ideal self and ought-to self should be significantly meaningful predictors in practical English and English reading classes. The study’s implication considers how English teachers may reflect and utilize the features that Korean adult EFLs’ (English as a foreign language) learning motivation is more based on their inherent factors of possible self rather than external factors in learning L2. Based on the findings of the study, some pedagogical suggestions have been presented for further study.

The Lexical Basis of Second Language Reading Comprehension: From (Sub)Lexical Knowledge to Processing Efficiency

AbstractThis study compared how distinct lexical competences, including lexical knowledge as well as processing skills at both word/lexical and sublexical/morphological levels, collectively and relatively predict reading comprehension in adult learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). The participants were 220 Arabic‐speaking EFL learners in a Saudi university. A battery of paper‐ and computer‐based tests was administered to measure the participants’ lexical competences, reading comprehension ability, and working memory. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that over and above working memory, both lexical and sublexical knowledge were significant and unique predictors of reading comprehension, and sublexical processing efficiency, as opposed to lexical processing efficiency, predicted reading comprehension significantly. In addition, among the measured lexical competences, lexical knowledge was the strongest predictor, and the two knowledge variables collectively had a far greater influence on reading comprehension than did the two processing efficiency variables. These findings are discussed in light of the lexical basis of text comprehension.

Factors predicting classroom WTC in English and French as foreign languages among adult learners in Spain

This study aimed to identify associations and predictors of willingness to communicate (WTC) of adult foreign language (FL) learners and whether they are contingent upon the FL being learned. To this end, our research investigated learner variables associated with WTC in adult FL learners of English and of French in an under-researched field of WTC studies in Spain. More specifically, the following variables were studied: gender, age, level of multilingualism, perceived relative standing in the class, language proficiency, teacher’s use of the FL in class, out-of-class foreign language use (OCFLU) and the two emotions of foreign language enjoyment (FLE) and foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA). Of the 9 independent variables examined, FLCA and language proficiency were found to be predictors of the WTC of both English and French language learners; additionally, enjoyment was found to be a predictor of WTC of learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) and OCFLU, of learners of French as a foreign language (FFL). Our findings indicate that the construct of WTC needs to be further studied as research may produce dissimilar results depending on the instructional setting, population and foreign language. Pedagogical implications for language teaching practices seeking to enhance adult FL learners’ WTC were also drawn from the study results.

Deliberate training and incidental learning through the Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters through Visual Media: Capitalising on a European tool to enhance visual literacy and intercultural dialogue globally

This article addresses visual literacy as a crucial competence for fostering intercultural literacy and intercultural dialogue. Visual literacy has been defined as a combination of skills needed to interpret the meaning of images, latent reasons behind their making and their impact on audiences. Individuals need to develop such skills to critically read the ‘vocabulary’ (content) and ‘grammar’ (composition) of images they are constantly flooded with to fully understand and appreciate the underlying meaning of visual representations of their own culture and other cultures, as well as the people belonging to different cultural groups. The Council of Europe’s Autobiography of Intercultural Encounters through Visual Media (AIEVM) has been designed to promote interculturality through the reflection on the other, as portrayed in visuals. By analysing AIEVMs produced by 18 adult learners of English in two contexts – featuring explicit intercultural training prior to AIEVM completion vs. its application without such previous input – the present study examines the impact of pertinent training in visual and intercultural competence development. The data suggest heightened levels of metacognition and critical thinking in the former context. Results for both groups also disclose the development of a powerful sense of self-discovery and empathy toward alterity, induced by the commonalities detected between the respondents themselves and the depicted. Overall, implementing the AIEVM seems to narrow the gap between the intercultural awareness discerned in both contexts, yet the dissimilar depth of the narratives produced corroborates the value of prior intercultural learning. The article concludes with a critical overview of the potential of the AIEVM, comprising prospective courses of action to supplement this instrument to sharpen users’ visual literacy and boost deeper intercultural reflection.

“My Eyes Move Dynamically”: Inquiring into Adult English Learners’ Reading Through Retrospective Eye Movement Miscue Analysis

AbstractThis paper investigated two adult English learners’ reading processes of reading informational texts through Retrospective Eye Movement Miscue Analysis (REMMA). The readers read two texts and retold what they read. Their reading was recorded by the Tobii Pro eye tracker. They watched their eye movement video and discussed their miscues and eye movements. The REMMA sessions helped the readers realize their misconception about reading, understand reading is meaning‐making, uncover their strategies, and grow confidence. When readers have illusions about reading, secondary teachers and adult educators could invite them to share their reading views, talk about their reading, and discuss the importance of using images in informational texts.

How Do Speakers of a Language with a Transparent Orthographic System Perceive the L2 Vowels of a Language with an Opaque Orthographic System? An Analysis through a Battery of Behavioral Tests

Background: The present study aims to investigate the effect of the first language (L1) orthography on the perception of the second language (L2) vowel contrasts and whether orthographic effects occur at the sublexical level. Methods: Fourteen adult Greek learners of English participated in two AXB discrimination tests: one auditory and one orthography test. In the auditory test, participants listened to triads of auditory stimuli that targeted specific English vowel contrasts embedded in nonsense words and were asked to decide if the middle vowel was the same as the first or the third vowel by clicking on the corresponding labels. The orthography test followed the same procedure as the auditory test, but instead, the two labels contained grapheme representations of the target vowel contrasts. Results: All but one vowel contrast could be more accurately discriminated in the auditory than in the orthography test. The use of nonsense words in the elicitation task eradicated the possibility of a lexical effect of orthography on auditory processing, leaving space for the interpretation of this effect on a sublexical basis, primarily prelexical and secondarily postlexical. Conclusions: L2 auditory processing is subject to L1 orthography influence. Speakers of languages with transparent orthographies such as Greek may rely on the grapheme–phoneme correspondence to decode orthographic representations of sounds coming from languages with an opaque orthographic system such as English.

Adult English Language Learner Pathway to Literacy Initiative

In 2017, Kari Moore of Exodus Refugee Immigration and Ginger Kosobucki of the Immigrant Welcome Center met and discussed the unique needs Kari had noticed in her beginning literacy learners at Exodus. In 2018, Ginger led the Immigrant Welcome Center’s Adult ELL Research Project, which exposed the need for more classes geared for literacy-level learners, as well as more teacher training. In 2020, Kari and Ginger collaborated to lead professional development opportunities for Indianapolis teachers, including ATLAS Study Circles and a 2-day TESOL training with an expert from Literacy Minnesota. Since that time, they have formed a cohort -- the Pathway to Literacy development team -- consisting of teachers from programs around the city. The team has developed a 10-week pilot program, an assessment tool, and a website all designed to more effectively serve the needs of adult immigrants and refugees developing literacy skills for the first time. The Adult ELL Pathway to Literacy Initiative, a collaborative effort among educators in Indianapolis, is an attempt to provide access to vulnerable learners who have had limited access to educational opportunities.

Impact of Teachers’ Empathy towards Adult Learners’ Struggles in Acquiring EFL

This paper focuses on the role of empathy, one of the vital traits teachers are expected to possess, in the language acquisition process of Bangladeshi adult learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). It tries to assess if the presence of empathy in teachers’ approach has any significant impact on the pace of EFL acquisition of learners. This also investigates if the effect of empathy and associated emotions—such as sympathy and patience towards the struggle of learners—add positive and substantial speed to the learners’ progress. The study also tries to find out if the absence of a significant amount of empathy or complete absence of empathy slows down the acquisition process. A qualitative research conducted by applying multiple methodologies established the idea that the presence of empathy in teachers positively affects the performance of learners. The results also show that empathy in teachers may not always be very apparent while observing classes, but can be measured by considering the presence of other aspects that are crucial for effective teaching.