Authentic Language Use Research Articles

The Changing Face of Language Learning: Learning Beyond the Classroom

There are two important dimensions to successful second language learning: what goes on inside the classroom and what goes on outside of the classroom. While language teaching has always been seen as a preparation for out-of-class uses of language, much of the focus in language teaching in the past has typically been on classroom-based language learning. At the same time the limitations of classroom-based learning have been frequently acknowledged. The opportunities for learning or ‘affordances’ available in the classroom are hence quite restricted, consisting of a limited range of discourse and literacy practices. Today, however, the internet, technology and the media, and the use of English in face-to-face as well as virtual social networks provide greater opportunities for meaningful and authentic language use than are available in the classroom. In view of the growing range of opportunities and resources available to support out-of-class learning the paper examines what some of these opportunities are, how they are used, the kinds of learning affordances they provide, and the issues they raise for classroom based teaching as well as second language teacher education.

Issues of language and competence in intercultural business contexts

This paper explores some of the tension between language ability as a type of workplace competence and standardized language use in Malaysian business contexts, which are set against the backdrop of the globalized workplace. Standardized English language use is prioritized as a value-added skill, over contextualized or localized language use as authentic language ability, in these contexts which are natural sites of intercultural communication in multilingual, multiethnic Malaysia. It is contended that standardized English may not be able to compete with the authenticity of contextualized or localized language use for it is the latter that ensures that the work of the localized workplace gets done first before it can lay claim to the globalized economy. The tension between such authentic language use as innate ability and prescribed language use as skills can impinge on intercultural communication competence (ICC). Three studies that demonstrate such tension in the localized Malaysian and globalized business contexts are discussed following an examination of ICC in Anglo-American contexts.

Linguistic and cultural learning processes of four Chinese exchange students at a women’s university in Japan

With an inter-disciplinary perspective of second language acquisition and cross-cultural adaptation, this study explores the nature of linguistically- and culturally-specific learning processes perceived by sojourners during study abroad. Methodologically, their diary entries with follow-up interviews were analyzed using the grounded theory approach. Findings included two themes that emerged as key in determining and reflecting sojourners’ learning processes in the host environment: (1) attitudes towards normative or authentic language use; and (2) perceptions of traditional or exploratory identity. Furthermore, dynamic tensions were observed between these two themes, constrained by the prescriptive knowledge and skills that sojourners had developed in formal classroom instruction and learning in the home country.

The authenticity continuum: Towards a definition incorporating international voices

The choice of what materials to use in the language classroom is perhaps one of the most fundamentally important and difficult decisions teachers and those responsible for choosing textbooks are faced with. Authenticity is often seen as a desirable component in the content we select and adapt for our language learners, and it has been shown that authentic materials are more motivating, even for low-level learners (Peacock, 1997). The term authentic is often used to describe materials which were not originally designed for the purpose of language learning, but that were designed to have some purpose within the target language culture, such as a newspaper or novel. An unfortunate consequence of this is that authenticity is still often defined in reference to the target language's ‘native speakers’ or L1 community, particularly in EFL contexts, or what Kachru (1985) would label the Outer Circle communities. In other words, where English is taught as a foreign language, both teachers and students often regard ‘native-speakers’ as being the ideal model and therefore an example of authenticity. For example, Tan (2005) criticises corpora investigations of learner English for holding the view that authentic language use is equivalent to ‘native-speaker’ usages. She goes on to criticise not only corpus research but also textbook publishers for still not taking into account ‘the inextricable link between language and culture’ (2005: 127). In the academic world, culturally embedded notions of authenticity relating to ‘native-speakers’ have been challenged for decades (Smith, 1976). And yet I would argue that in mainstream textbooks and in most EFL language classrooms the native speaker still retains a ‘privileged position’ (Clark & Paran, 2007: 407). As Widdowson (1996: 68) puts it:Authenticity concerns the reality of native-speaker language use: in our case, the communication in English which is realized by an English-speaking community. But the language which is real for native speakers is not likely to be real for learners […] They belong to another community and do not have the necessary knowledge of the contextual conditions which would enable them to authenticate English in native-speaker terms. Their reality is quite different.

Cognitive Strategies for Dual Imperatives: EFL Listening and Speaking in Chinese Universities

Strategic development of oral communication skills (i.e., listening and speaking) in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in China is fraught with difficulties, including lack of contexts for authentic language use, examination-oriented pedagogy, and tacit educational practices. The quantitative study reported here was designed around a research question of how extensively three specific cognitive strategies – translation, deduction, and contextualisation – are used when students are listening and speaking in class. It was conducted with a large sample (N = 1,440) of Chinese EFL learners at the tertiary level who were learning in class to speak and listen in English. Findings indicate all three strategies are used extensively in both modalities, but significantly more so in speaking. These findings are interpreted in relation to instructional objectives of preparing students for oral communication beyond the classroom and for passing the listening test in the College English Test Band 4 (CET-4). The development of oral communication (listening and speaking) skills as opposed to the development of literacy (reading and writing) for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in mainland China has been a slow and cumbersome process for both learners and teachers. Whilst factors such as limitations on access to resources and upgrading teachers’ qualifications are constraining variables, most difficulties stem from lack of authentic contexts and purposes for oral language use, together with use of pedagogy which is culturally inappropriate within the Chinese educational tradition (see Anderson, 1993; Harvey, 1985; Rao, 2002; Y. Wang, 1991). Multilingual communities usually present pragmatic reasons for authentic use of oral English as a medium of intracommunity communication. However, in non-English monolingual contexts such as China, typically there is no need for intracommunity communication in oral English. As a result, Language Education in Asia, 2014, 5(1), 46-65. http://dx.doi.org/10.5746/LEiA/14/V5/I1/A05/Liyanage_Bartlett_Tao Language Education in Asia, Volume 5, Issue 1, 2014 Liyanage, Bartlett, and Tao Page 47 use of oral English has been limited mainly to language classrooms where learners are prepared for end-of-course examinations rather than for out-of-class contexts. Examination-oriented instruction also calls for heavy reliance on textbook-contrived linguistic accuracy. Hence, major focus has been on explicitly teaching and learning grammar (Rao, 2002). The present study is one of several in a large ongoing research project between Australian and Chinese universities to examine the use of language learning strategies (LLS) by Chinese learners of English. The current research stems from one of the studies (Liyanage, Bartlett, Birch, & Tao, 2012) which explored usefulness of strategies in developing listening and speaking skills as perceived by Chinese EFL learners. The authors extended the focus of that study by revisiting its data with specific interest in three language learning behaviours that are used typically by Chinese learners of English in developing oral communication skills in class. The three behaviours are relying on translation to and from Chinese in mediating meaning in oral English, attending to rules of grammar to deduce meaning when engaging in the use of oral English, and using context as an aid to meaning in the comprehension and production of oral English (see Barlow & Lowe, 1985; Harvey, 1985; Maley, 1983; Scovel, 1983). These behaviours are well represented in the literature – for example, they correspond to the cognitive strategies of translation, deduction, and contextualisation respectively, as described by O’Malley and Chamot (1990, p. 137), and were used in their language learning strategy inventory. In the current study, use of these three cognitive strategies by Chinese EFL learners in university settings was investigated. How these strategies are realised in listening / speaking lessons for a regular class of freshmen and the effect of the use of these strategies on the College English Test Band 4 (CET-4) preparation classes is described in detail.

Corpus Linguistics and English Language Teaching Materials: A Review of Recent Research

Motivation for using corpus linguistics in English language teaching is partly related to the inconsistencies found between the use of lexical items and grammatical structures in the corpora and those in traditional language textbooks that are often largely based on the personal judgments of the materials writers. This lack of fit between the language in the textbook and authentic language use has been reported in many studies; yet, an overview of this aspect has not been carried out. The purpose of this study is twofold: 1) to discuss the importance of corpus linguistics for the development of English language teaching materials, and 2) to present a survey of studies carried out in the last ten years, with particular reference to the mismatches found between the language in various corpora such as Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (LSWE) and British National Corpus (BNC) and that used in Finnish EFL textbooks, Malaysian ESL textbooks and Hong Kong secondary textbooks to name a few. The implication of this study is to provide L2 teachers with useful information about pedagogical corpus and the ways in which they can make optimal use of a textbook’s strong points, recognizing the shortcomings of certain exercises, tasks, or entire texts and to show how they can improve the textbook and adapt their teaching materials accordingly.

Using Corpus Linguistics in the Development of Writing

Corpus linguistics has its adequate justification in the teaching of writing skills since it can reveal patterns of authentic language use through analyses of actual usage. The aim of this paper is to list the most common corpora and explore useful, inexpensive and user-friendly software programmes, such as the WordSmith Tools or TextSTAT, exploited in the development of writing skills. In addition, the author provides several practical examples on how corpus linguistics can be applied to the development of writing skills. For instance, the concordance enables to see any word or phrase in context so that one can see what sort of company it keeps. Thus, students can, for example, see the differences between the words they often confuse (e.g., excited vs. exciting).

Efficacy of Online Social Networks on Language Teaching: A Bangladeshi Perspective

It is now an established fact that the use of technology facilitates teaching and learning in language classrooms. With the advancement of technology, social networking websites have emerged too. Social networking sites have been quite popular among various age group users particularly the young users since their invention. Also, they are conceived to be able to motivate (Greenhow, Robelia, & Hughes, 2009) and expose learners to the authentic use of the target language (Baralt, 2011). However, very little research has been done, especially in Bangladesh, on how much these websites can contribute to language learning and teaching though they seem to offer ample opportunities. Therefore, this study aims at investigating the effect of using ‘The Facebook’, a social networking website, in language classrooms at tertiary level in Bangladesh. Participants of this study were first year first semester university students doing a foundation course in English focusing to improve their listening, speaking and writing skills. The participants were divided into two groups. Group 1 was the control group who was taught traditionally and non-digitally without using Facebook. Group 2, along with classroom teaching, received help from the instructor through Facebook and did tasks assigned on Facebook. At the end of the three months semester a test was taken and the result of both groups was compared. Thus, this study shall try to provide an answer regarding to what extent online social networks can facilitate second language acquisition.

Reading-to-write: A Practice of Critical Thinking

Reading-to-write, a term taken from language testing studies, puts great emphasis on a student-centered learning atmosphere, on the situational context and cooperative learning, on an authentic learning environment, on making use of various information resources, and on the process of the individuals’ meaning construction and critical thinking. The application of this model in class will shed lights on College English teaching in China, providing the English teachers with a new perception of language teaching: Reading and writing can be integrated to elicit more authentic language use, and skill training and critical thinking are not two separate stages.

Study on Developing Chinese College EFL Learners’ Pragmatic Competence in Relation to Language Proficiency and Overseas Experience

Pragmatic competence refers to both knowledge of the linguistic forms which realize particular illocution, and knowledge of the appropriate use of the linguistic forms in certain social contexts. It is an important part of the language proficiency construct. However, studies in China show that College English students' pragmatic competence is poor. Unlike second language learners, students learning English as a foreign language in China do not have many opportunities to be exposed to authentic language use. If they are not provided with sufficient pragmatic knowledge, they will have more difficulty in understanding and producing appropriate use in the target language. This paper focuses on the development of pragmatic competence and awareness on the part of college English learners in China. Overseas experience and language proficiency are treated as two main variables which may influence students' PC development. With some data collection from students in Shanghai Second Polytechnic University, findings shows that there are significant differences in the acquisition of pragmatic competence between students with overseas experience and students without overseas experience, yet no significant differences in the acquisition of pragmatic competence between students with high and low language proficiency.

Dressing and Being: Appraising Costume and Identity in English Second-Language Drama

In many cultures, L2 students are reticent to engage in spontaneous oral L2 production. In Chinese culture, social norms tend to place value on accuracy, which tends to inhibit learners from authentic oral use of the target language. The purpose of this study was to consider the impact of costume, as used in L2 drama, on L2 selves, and attitudes towards specific elements of authentic language use. Costume has long been understood as eliciting imagination, and permitting the expression of possible and desired selves. Fashion ensembles of many kinds are experienced as having a semiotic “sparkle”, which wearers connect to their own self, as they imagine and perform possible selves. In this study, 78 second-language actors were asked to write a brief commentary on how they responded to their costume. This qualitative data was analysed using Appraisal analysis, indicating a majority of positive evaluations. It was also analysed using possible self theory. Comments also showed that L2 actors felt that costumes impacted their emotions and imagination of self, which improved their second language use, cultural performance. They felt costume integrated their oral production with their choices of social register, and their paralinguistic and kinetic performance.

Youth radio and colloquial Indonesian in urban Java

Few studies have explored colloquial Indonesian in the media outside of Jakarta. This article examines language policies at two youth radio stations in Malang, East Java, as well as the perceptions of these policies by targeted audiences. Results show that notions of the ‘authentic’ Indonesian speaker and the ‘appropriate’ use of Indonesian come to the fore in the design of Indonesian radio language. Radio station staff and audiences agree that it is neither authentic nor appropriate to speak Indonesian with a Javanese accent in radio broadcasts or in the community. Beyond this point, however, the two radio stations differ in what they consider to be authentic or appropriate in Indonesian radio broadcasts. These differences, I argue, hint at tensions between Jakartan and Javanese linguistic practices in the Malang community. However, audience members indicate they strategically manage these tensions through the authentic use of language in the appropriate context. Thus, I argue that rather than representing differing views of the authentic Indonesian speaker, the radio stations' approaches reflect the varied and fluid senses of self in post-Reform Indonesia.

A Practical Corpus-based Approach to Teaching English for Tourism

The benefits derived from the use of corpora in the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) class seem out of question nowadays despite being a challenging task both for teachers and learners. Learning through a corpus-based approach or “data-driven learning” (DDL) (Johns 1986, 1994) allows students to get used to hands-on learning, thus promoting an inquiry-based approach leading them to discover patterns in authentic language use and making them linguistic researchers (Johns 2002) able to solve present and future linguistic needs of different nature with ease and autonomy. Accordingly, the main aim of the research presented is twofold: firstly, to show the students of the ESP subject “Introduction to English for Tourism” the multiple applications and benefits that the use of a specialised corpus may have in the learning process of a foreign specialised language. With this aim, the 25 students who took part in the pilot study reported were presented the COMETVAL 1 corpus (Corpus Multilingue de Turismo de la Universidad de Valencia), a specialised multilingual and multi-genre data base on tourism. In this initial stage, a workshop with different corpus activities was prepared to make students familiar with COMETVAL’s functioning, functionalities, and possible future professional applications. Secondly, students responded a questionnaire designed ad hoc to know their perceptions about the use of specialised corpora in class –exemplified with COMETVAL’s workshop– and about their potential particular interest in devising, compiling and exploiting a similar specialised corpus in and for the class both for teaching/learning and future professional purposes. Results show that students seem to feel positively motivated towards the use of corpora in class, specifically by the fact of having direct access to real, non-biased language samples from different genres; they do also find frequency and collocation-related data particularly interesting as well as linguistic patterns comparison between languages. In addition, students acknowledge the potential of autonomously relying on a specialised corpus for future professional queries.

Students’ Perceptions of Effective EFL Teachers in University Settings in Cyprus

This study sought to identify what characteristics and teaching behaviours describe effective EFL University teachers as perceived by Cypriot students. Data were collected by means of a questionnaire and focus group interviews. Findings have provided evidence that effective language teaching seems to be related to a more learner-centred approach to language learning and teaching, which, in turn, assumes a more assisting, mediating role for the language teacher. According to the participants of this study, an effective EFL teacher is no longer considered one who has a directive and authoritarian role in the learning process but one who takes into consideration his/her students’ individual differences, language anxiety, abilities and interests and design learning environments accordingly. Language teachers’ skills in using technology and engaging students in meaningful classroom interactions by involving them in group tasks designed around real life topics and authentic language use have also been emphasised. Participants’ views call for EFL teachers in university settings to move beyond the traditional focus-on-form approach to language teaching which views language learning as an individual activity, to the adoption of the communicative approach to language teaching which acknowledges the social aspect of learning and as such, it depends upon meaningful interactions with peers. EFL teachers working in tertiary education should use these findings as a yardstick to better understand themselves and the needs of their students for the enhancement of the learning process.

Not to Teach but Give Insights: Corpus-based Approach in Portuguese-English and Portuguese-Russian Cross-linguistic Error Correction

Foreign language learners make mechanical errors caused by cross-linguistic influence. It comes from trying to extract information from a native language (L1) and apply it in a second or foreign language (L2/FL). There are not many didactic materials proposing a set of techniques that train the skills to keep L1 and L2/FL apart and help students to reduce cross- linguistic errors. In alternative to a traditional rule-based teaching, a corpus-based approach provides a framework for exploring online corpora to give insights into authentic language use. The paper describes the types of errors caused by cross-linguistic Portuguese-English and Portuguese-Russian influence, and illustrates how some monolingual and bilingual online corpora may be rich sources for raising learner's awareness to face such linguistic obstacles.

Die englischen Modalverben im Daumenkino: Zur dynamischen Visualisierung von Phänomenen des Sprachwandels

How can frequency data from diachronic corpora facilitate research into processes of language change? This paper uses an approach that dynamically visualizes complex patterns of language change (Hilpert 2011a). This technique can be likened to a ›flipbook‹ of language change: a sequence of graphs visualizes a linguistic phenomenon during successive periods of real time. The purpose of this approach is to transform frequency data into a format that facilitates the explorative analysis of change and the formation of research hypotheses. The studies in this paper are based on the ›Corpus of Historical American English‹ (Davies 2010), which contains authentic language use from the past two centuries. The case studies presented here focus on current changes in the domain of the English modal auxiliaries.

Language Assesment For Young Leaners

Teaching English in Asia typically dominated by teachers and textbooks based. Even worse, teaching English for young learners is generally a matter of vocabularies memorization. The teaching focuses on short-term purposes, those are testing purposes. In fact, in teaching English, the assessment should focus on the function of the language itself. Those teaching styles might be caused by short-term purpose of teaching English: focuses on knowledge and memorization for testing purposes rather than communicative competence. Therefore all the teaching efforts focused on answering the tests while the primary function of learning English is being ignored. Memorizing vocabularies is general activities in teaching of English in primary level. Thus to avoid such short-term purpose learning, a well and careful designed assessment should put into consideration in teaching English for young learners. Consequently the teaching-learning process will focus on authentic use of language. For those reason, authenticity in the assessment is a major consideration. Key words: Teaching, young learners, assessment, authenticity

LANGUAGE ASSESMENT FOR YOUNG LEARNERS

Teaching English in Asia typically dominated by teachers and textbooks based. Even worse, teaching English for young learners is generally a matter of vocabularies memorization. The teaching focuses on short-term purposes, those are testing purposes. In fact, in teaching English, the assessment should focus on the function of the language itself. Those teaching styles might be caused by short-term purpose of teaching English: focuses on knowledge and memorization for testing purposes rather than communicative competence. Therefore all the teaching efforts focused on answering the tests while the primary function of learning English is being ignored. Memorizing vocabularies is general activities in teaching of English in primary level. Thus to avoid such short-term purpose learning, a well and careful designed assessment should put into consideration in teaching English for young learners. Consequently the teaching-learning process will focus on authentic use of language. For those reason, authenticity in the assessment is a major consideration. Key words: Teaching, young learners, assessment, authenticity

Vocabulary Learning Strategies of Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners

This study examines the preferred vocabulary learning strategies of Iranian upper-intermediate EFL learners. In order to identify the aforementioned group in terms of language proficiency, a TOEFL test was administered to a population of 146 undergraduate EFL students at the university of Vali-e-Asr in Rafsanjan, Iran. Those scoring above 480 were arbitrarily labeled as upper-intermediate. Subsequently a questionnaire known as VOLSI (Vocabulary Learning Strategies Inventory) was given to the same subjects to come up with their preferred vocabulary learning strategies. Finally, a stepwise multiple regression analysis revealed that 11.4% of the variance in the learners’ L2 proficiency can be accounted for by three strategy categories involving self-motivation, word organization, and authentic language use .In addition, an independent-samples t-test indicated no significant difference between learners’ gender and their VLS choice.

Cognitive Corpus Linguistics: five points of debate on current theory and methodology

Within cognitive linguistics, there is an increasing awareness that the study of linguistic phenomena needs to be grounded in usage. Ideally, research in cognitive linguistics should be based on authentic language use, its results should be replicable, and its claims falsifiable. Consequently, more and more studies now turn to corpora as a source of data. While corpus-based methodologies have increased in sophistication, the use of corpus data is also associated with a number of unresolved problems. The study of cognition through off-line linguistic data is, arguably, indirect, even if such data fulfils desirable qualities such as being natural, representative and plentiful. Several topics in this context stand out as particularly pressing issues. This discussion note addresses (1) converging evidence from corpora and experimentation, (2) whether corpora mirror psychological reality, (3) the theoretical value of corpus linguistic studies of ‘alternations’, (4) the relation of corpus linguistics and grammaticality judgments, and, lastly, (5) the nature of explanations in cognitive corpus linguistics. We do not claim to resolve these issues nor to cover all possible angles; instead, we strongly encourage reactions and further discussion.