Bilingual University Research Articles

Flipped learning as a teaching method in the bilingual university classroom

Flipped learning as a teaching method in the bilingual university classroom

Assessing language background and experiences among heritage bilinguals.

The language backgrounds and experiences of bilinguals have been primarily characterized using self-report questionnaires and laboratory tasks, although each of these assessments have their strengths and weaknesses. The Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), an audio recording device, has recently become more prominent as a method of assessing real-world language use. We investigated the relationships among these three assessment tools, to understand the shared variance in how these measures evaluated various aspects of the bilingual experience. Participants were 60 Southern California heritage bilingual college students who spoke a variety of heritage languages and began to learn English between the ages of 0-to 12-years. Participants completed both self-report and laboratory-based measures of language proficiency and use, and they wore the EAR for 4 days to capture representative samples of their day-to-day heritage language (HL) use. The results indicated that self-reported HL use and English age of acquisition were significant predictors of real-world language use as measured by the EAR. In addition, self-reported HL proficiency and laboratory-based HL proficiency, as measured by verbal fluency, were mutually predictive. While some variability was shared across different assessments, ultimately, none of the measures correlated strongly and each measure captured unique information about the heritage bilingual language experience, highlighting the dissociation between language experience measured at a single point in time and an accumulated life history with a heritage language. These findings may provide guidance for bilingualism researchers about which assessment tool, or combination of tools, may be best for their specific research questions.

Role of Cognitive Flexibility in Bilingualism and Creativity

The present study examined cognitive flexibility as a mediator in the relationship between bilingualism and creativity. Other variables, such as cultural orientation, multicultural experience, and second language acquisition age, were also included to comprehensively understand associations with creativity. The mediation effect of cognitive flexibility was analyzed using a bootstrapping method with a sample of 89 Korean-English bilingual college students through an online survey. Findings indicated that bilingualism was not statistically associated with creativity but that cognitive flexibility mediated the relationship between bilingualism and creative ideation (i.e., fluency, originality, and flexibility), indicating that the relationship of creative ideation with bilingualism depended on cognitive flexibility. Also, cognitive flexibility played an important role in the relationship between multicultural experience and two indices of creative potential (i.e., fluency and flexibility, but not originality). Bilingualism was the most accurate predictor of cognitive flexibility. Limitations and future research are discussed.

Success factors for English as a second language university students’ attainment in academic English language proficiency: exploring the roles of secondary school medium-of-instruction, motivation and language learning strategies

Abstract Displaying a strong competence in English as a second language (L2) is a major advantage for university graduates in personal development and career advancement. There are limited studies that have explored how the implementation of English-Medium-Instruction (EMI) in non-Anglophone universities can affect students’ academic English proficiency. This mixed-method study explores how both the learners’ variables (motivation and L2 learning strategies) and the medium-of-instruction policy implemented at secondary and university settings can contribute to students’ success in academic English learning at a bilingual university in Hong Kong. The findings of a large-scale questionnaire reveal that the effect of medium-of-instruction in students’ secondary school education is not a significant predictor of students’ academic English language proficiency at university. The findings suggest that university students who previously attended secondary schools which adopt medium-of-instruction other than English tend not to be disadvantaged in improving their academic English proficiency. Institutional factor (i.e. provision of EMI lectures at university) and learners’ variables, including students’ L2 strategy use and motivation, are statistically significant predictors of the student’s English language proficiency. The implications for higher education policy in Hong Kong and worldwide will be discussed.

Language Entropy Relates to Behavioral and Pupil Indices of Executive Control in Young Adult Bilinguals.

IntroductionIt has been proposed that bilinguals’ language use patterns are differentially associated with executive control. To further examine this, the present study relates the social diversity of bilingual language use to performance on a color-shape switching task (CSST) in a group of bilingual university students with diverse linguistic backgrounds. Crucially, this study used language entropy as a measure of bilinguals’ language use patterns. This continuous measure reflects a spectrum of language use in a variety of social contexts, ranging from compartmentalized use to fully integrated use.MethodsLanguage entropy for university and non-university contexts was calculated from questionnaire data on language use. Reaction times (RTs) were measured to calculate global RT and switching and mixing costs on the CSST, representing conflict monitoring, mental set shifting, and goal maintenance, respectively. In addition, this study innovatively recorded a potentially more sensitive measure of set shifting abilities, namely, pupil size during task performance.ResultsHigher university entropy was related to slower global RT. Neither university entropy nor non-university entropy were associated with switching costs as manifested in RTs. However, bilinguals with more compartmentalized language use in non-university contexts showed a larger difference in pupil dilation for switch trials in comparison with non-switch trials. Mixing costs in RTs were reduced for bilinguals with higher diversity of language use in non-university contexts. No such effects were found for university entropy.DiscussionThese results point to the social diversity of bilinguals’ language use as being associated with executive control, but the direction of the effects may depend on social context (university vs. non-university). Importantly, the results also suggest that some of these effects may only be detected by using more sensitive measures, such as pupil dilation. The paper discusses theoretical and practical implications regarding the language entropy measure and the cognitive effects of bilingual experiences more generally, as well as how methodological choices can advance our understanding of these effects.

Synergic Concepts, Lexical Idiosyncrasies, and Lexical Complexities in Bilingual Students’ Translated Texts as Efforts to Resolve Conceptual Inequivalences

The purpose of this study is to draw on the conceptual blending hypothesis from the socio-cognitive approach to investigate the conceptually equivalent translation written in L2—English—of bilingual students via two tasks of translating and defining individual words and translating texts from L1 to L2. Next, the study demonstrates how translation abilities that vary amongst groups can affect students’ lexical density, lexical diversity, lexical sophistication, and lexical idiosyncrasies in translated text. The translating process in bilinguals could be interpreted via the lens of the conceptual blending hypothesis and dueling contexts framework to demonstrate that bi/multilingual students do not differ from monolingual ones pertaining to cognitive or linguistic abilities. Rather, the distinctive difference between bilingual and monolingual language users is bilingual speakers’ abilities of the third competence of formulating a synergism across word concepts and utilizing a bidirectional translation between two languages. When a word in L2 is acquired, there is a conceptual blending between the new conceptual information, encoded after each time the L2 word is used in an L2 socio-cultural context and the existing socio-cultural conceptual information in L1. The new concept created after the blending is called a synergic concept. If the synergic is not well developed, the language user selects incorrect or inappropriate words in a context, resulting in lexical idiosyncrasies. Data gathered from 30 English–Chinese bilingual university students in a transnational program in sociology were collected and compared against 15 monolingual American students. The preliminary findings are as follows: (1) regardless of the location of where the English (L2) socio-cultural meaning conceptualization mainly takes place (in China or the U.S.A.), English–Chinese bilingual language users demonstrated a significant difference in connotative meaning knowledge of noun word concepts and idiomatic concepts, compared with English native speakers; (2) the synergic concepts were detected in all experimental concepts and demonstrated the conceptual blending to a varying degree that affects their translating process and its outcomes: the domineering L1 socio-cultural concept, the well-blended L1 and L2 socio-cultural concept that results in a “third culture”, and the assimilating L2 socio-cultural concept; (3) the synergistic blending of two socio-cultural loads embedded in lexical concepts detected in the bilingual students in the U.S.A. was more robust than those in China, resulting in significantly fewer sophisticated words and lexical idiosyncrasies in their English translated essays. The study sheds new light on understanding the dynamism in bilingualism via translation tasks to indicate bilingual learners’ lexical development. Implications for using translation tasks and analysis of word concepts across languages to support bi/multilingual students in language and academic learning are discussed.

English‐speaking international students’ perceptions and experiences in a bilingual university: A geographical approach to linguistic capital

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Investigating reading motivation in Latinx college students: qualitative insights from bilingual readers

ABSTRACT The existing literature on reading motivation primarily focuses on monolingual children and adolescents using quantitative approaches. To date, there is an absence of qualitative studies exploring bilingual college students’ reading motivation that can provide details of participants’ views, beliefs, and experiences related to reading motivation. To meet this need, this qualitative study used the bioecological model of human development to explore sociocultural impacts on multidimensions of reading motivation in Latinx college students. Twenty-eight Latinx bilingual college students participated in individual and semi-structured interviews and generated written literacy journeys that focused on understanding factors affecting the multidimensionality of their reading motivation and ways to motivate them. Our data suggest Latinx college students’ reading motivation was influenced by the three systems of the bioecological model of human development: microsystem, exosystem, and macrosystem. Furthermore, we found that reflective, autonomous, and interactive learning environments were effective for enhancing their reading motivation.

Description of the Leadership Experiences of Alumni of the Christian Bilingual University of Congo in the Workplace

This study investigated the leadership experiences of alumni of the Christian Bilingual University of Congo (UCBC) in the workplace, using a holistic leadership approach as a context, with the aim to learn the nature and challenges of their leadership practices and identify areas of need for leadership development in order to enhance their leadership effectiveness in a challenging work environment. Leadership experiences in the workplace represent both a daily challenge and a developmental opportunity that many leaders face and fail to handle in the current Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous global context. Inaptitude in leadership has been almost always associated with Africa’s current miserable and underdevelopment state. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, poor leadership and mismanagement have been paralyzing the whole nation in the last several decades since independence in 1960. This alarming situation has been translated through ineffective political leadership, lack of economic development, social crisis and chronic instability, corruption, injustice, greed, selfishness, duplicity, pride and many more vices that continue to describe leadership practices at all levels. A qualitative study using phenomenological research design described lived leadership experiences of 13 purposefully selected UCBC alumni in the workplace. Data were collected through one to two hours of in-depth interviews and analyzed through qualitative content analysis procedures. Findings revealed nine major themes that emerged through first-cycle and second-cycle coding processes. The themes were discussed along with literature reviews and recommendations made for contemporary practitioners and future research.

UNIVERSITY TEACHING THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF ENGLISH: CODE MIXING OR CODE SWITCHING?

The internationalization of Russian higher education contributes to the steady increase in the number of courses and programmes in the intermediary language, which in most cases is English, steadily gaining the status of the language of instruction. The article deals with the linguistic phenomena of code-switching and code-mixing in the context of university teaching of special disciplines in English, which is a foreign or a second language for all participants in the educational process - teachers and students. Particular attention is paid to the distinction between the terms “code-switching” (PC) and “code-mixing” (SC), which is of practical significance for the formation of the methodology of teaching special disciplines in an intermediate language as a special field of professional linguodidactics, as well as for the formation of the content of professional development programmes for university teachers. The phenomenon of code switching discussed in the article deserves close attention of linguists and psycholinguists, but in this article the author limits herself to studying speech behaviour of bilingual university teachers from the linguodidactic point of view. Thus, this study lies in the field of pedagogy and is an attempt to determine the nature of switching from English as the language of instruction or intermediary language to Russian as the native language in the aspect of the English-Russian code mixing and code switching. The subject under study in this case is the attitude of Russian-speaking university teachers to the role of the native language in the process of teaching the subject in English by means of a survey. The results of the survey, though subjective, allow us to make a primary statement that the observed transitions from the language of instruction (English) to the native language (Russian) in the teacher‟s speech represent cases of marked and conscious code switching, carried out in the context of the educational process, rather than code mixing. The study was conducted at St. Petersburg State University, the participants included teachers of special disciplines of a wide range of the humanities and sciences.

Telephone support for dementia family caregivers during the COVID‐19 pandemic: Experiential differences in spouse and adult‐child caregivers

BackgroundDue to the COVID‐19 pandemic, family caregivers stayed home with their person with dementia (PWD) continuously for 24/7. They faced limited social activity with lack of essential services such as adult daycare and in‐home services. Social restrictions can worsen cognitive deterioration and increase behavioral problems of PWD, causing increased caregiver burden, distress, and loneliness. Caregiver research team developed a telephone support intervention with trained university students who provided emotional support, and COVID‐19 information. The objective of the study is to identify the different needs in caring between spousal caregivers and adult‐child caregivers for community‐dwelling PWD during this pandemic.MethodsFamily caregivers were recruited through our previous home‐visit family caregiver study. Trained bilingual university students conducted telephone support calls in English, Spanish, Korean or Vietnamese as preferred by caregiver participants, once a week during the 3 month of the early pandemic period. Students summarized each conversation in a call log for debriefing by a gerontology faculty. Thematic analysis using call logs was conducted and coded by two independent raters by using Dedoose, a qualitative data analysis tool. Similarities and differences between spousal caregivers and adult‐child caregivers were identified.Results14 spousal caregivers (11 were wives and 3 were husbands, mean age 67.4) and 11 adult‐child caregivers (daughters, mean age 49) participated in the study. Three themes were identified: (1) spousal caregivers had high sense of being left alone and isolated while adult‐child caregivers felt a greater responsibility for the family including PWD care, (2) both groups showed increased stress but for spouse caregivers it was due to worsening PWD behaviors, for adult‐child caregivers it was the restriction on social interaction and concerns about losing jobs, (3) similarities in adapting to the COVID‐19 safety recommendations and incorporating it into everyday life.ConclusionThe findings showed an increase in stress and anxiety in both groups but the differences were: for spouse high level of loneness, difficulty with PWD behaviors; for adult‐child caregivers greater burden due to family and reduced social life. Both groups followed COVID‐19 safety protocol and highly appreciated the telephone‐based emotional support during the pandemic.

Monolingual and Bilingual College Students’ Performance on English and Artificial Stroop Tests

Monolingual and Bilingual College Students’ Performance on English and Artificial Stroop Tests

Why Code-switch on WhatsApp? A Quantitative Analysis of Types and Influences of Code-switching

This paper examines an asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) between bilingual university students in Malaysia, in particular via Whatsapp by appropriating a functional approach in scrutinizing the diverse types and influences for codeswitching (CS). A quantitative methodology was employed wherein a survey was designed and administered to undergraduate students from the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM). A dataset from a total of 90 respondents was collected from five faculties; Academy of Language Studies, Faculty of Law, Faculty of Communication and Media Studies and Faculty of Education. The yielded findings postulate that inter-sentential code-switching was the most used type of code-switching among the respondents and habitual expression is the main factor that influence them to code-switch.

French translation, cultural adaptation and assessment of preliminary psychometric properties of the Protective Behavioral Strategies for Marijuana Scale

Young adults (18- to 24-year-olds) constitute the age group with the highest proportion of cannabis users. In the context of legalization, it is important to promote lower-risk cannabis use. The Protective Behavioral Strategies for Marijuana Scale (PBSM-17) identifies strategies used by consumers. However, this scale is not available in French and is not adapted to the Canadian context. This article presents the process that led to the translation, cultural adaptation and evaluation of the preliminary psychometric properties of PBSM-17. The methodological study was carried out in six steps. The first four steps led to the translation towards French and adaptation of the scale. A validation among 12 young people contributed to establish the criterion equivalency (step 5). The evaluation of psychometric properties (step 6) was carried out among 211 bilingual university students (61 % women; mean age 22 years old). The French version presents satisfactory preliminary psychometric properties: internal consistency is acceptable (α = 0.88); criterion equivalency was established between the French and the original English version (t (210) = 1.04, p = 0.30; 95% CI [-0.20, 0.63]). The scores obtained on both versions by the same participant were found to be strongly correlated (r = 0.95, p <0.001). The results support the use of the French version of PBSM-17. The proposed protective strategies can be used as a measurement tool and represent behaviors that can be targeted in a lower-risk cannabis use context.

Linguistic Risk-Taking: A Bridge Between the Classroom and the Outside World

This article describes an initiative launched at a Canadian bilingual university in order to encourage L2 French and L2 English learners to take ‘linguistic risks’: authentic, autonomous communicative acts where learners are pushed out of their linguistic comfort zone. The initiative was operationalized through the development of a Linguistic Risk-Taking Passport, which contains 74 linguistic risks that students can take in their L2 across the university campus and in their everyday life. An analysis of interviews with participating teachers (n=6) and learner self-report data from completed passports (n=410) examines how the initiative was integrated into the classroom and which passport items were perceived by students as particularly high-risk. A cyclical process of risk-taking within a broad Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) framework is described in which risks are viewed as learner-selected tasks with a dynamic affective slant; risks can be used to connect classroom learning with real-life L2 use and vice versa. The data illustrate that linguistic risk-taking can help TBLT practitioners generate ideas on how to narrow the gap between the classroom and the real-world. The article concludes with a list of practical implications and suggestions for adapting linguistic risk-taking to other institutional contexts.

A novel approach to assessing language proficiency in adults: A pre-pilot classification accuracy study

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: Speech–language pathologists who speak more than one language and who are members of the American Speech–Language–Hearing Association self-identify in one yes/no question whether they have the proficiency level to be bilingual service providers. This research note describes a preliminary attempt to address the very practical issue of whether and in what circumstances Spanish–English bilinguals can accurately judge their proficiency levels in both languages. The research question is: Will bilingual adults accurately identify their first language and second language proficiency levels using a self-assessment when compared to a commonly used standardized norm-referenced test (SNRT) in both formal and informal contexts across the following outcome measures: (a) overall proficiency; (b) listening; (c) speaking; (d) reading; and (e) writing? Design/methodology/approach: Classification accuracy studies require at least 34 participants. Thirty-nine participants completed the commonly used Language Use Questionnaire (LUQ) self-assessment and the commonly used Woodcock–Muñoz Language Survey SNRT (WMLS-III). For this pre-pilot study, participants were Spanish–English bilingual university students. Data and analysis: Forty likelihood ratios (LRs) were calculated. Benchmarks for interpreting LRs for classification accuracy studies were applied to identify the likelihood of an individual being proficient or non-proficient in two languages. Findings/conclusions: For the overall proficiency and formal speaking proficiency outcomes in Spanish, positive LRs met the benchmark for strong agreement. Originality: The current study is the first to show that Spanish–English bilingual adults can accurately judge their Spanish proficiency levels for two specific outcome measures. Significance/implications: These results are important for two reasons. First, they suggest that Spanish–English bilingual adults can accurately judge their overall proficiency levels in Spanish. Second, they identify which outcome measures from the LUQ and WMLS-III should be considered in a future classification accuracy study.

Address practices of Deaf undergraduate students and faculty: A study of language, identity, and community

The members of a community have conventionalized linguistic structures to convey both the content of a message and the social status of the interlocutors. Crucial in the codification of interpersonal relations are address terms, which are determined by pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic norms (Leech, 1983:11) related to the language system, the local communicative event and the broader social context. The study examines the usage of address terms (direct address, reference, introductions) at a bilingual university that uses American Sign Language (ASL) as language of instruction and socialization, and English in teaching/learning materials, email correspondence, written announcements, inter alia. Based on interviews with Deaf undergraduate students and Deaf faculty members, the study investigates the production of address terms in this bilingual academic setting and discusses the factors that shape their usage, including ASL linguistic structure, English address norms, participants’ educational background, age and status, sociocultural characteristics of the Deaf community, and assumptions from society-at-large. The results reveal that Deaf students and faculty have expectations about address practices inside and outside university campus and follow a complex set of norms in ASL and written English. The findings also provide insights into how members of the Deaf community experience linguacultural contact between signed and spoken/written languages.

Translation and Validation of Personal Growth Initiative Scale-II for Pakistani Adults

Personal growth initiative is a person's active and intentional involvement in changing and developing as a person. Personal Growth Initiative Scale-II (PGIS-II; Robitschek et al., 2012) provides evidence of multidimensionality of construct of personal growth. Present research was accomplished in three phases with aim to translate and validate PGIS-II in Urdu. Phase 1 addressed the translation of measure through forward-backward translation method. To establish the cross-language validity, translated and the English version was administered on bilingual university students (N = 100). Reliability of both versions was determined by computing test-retest technique with 15 days interval. Phase-2 was aimed to establish the construct validity by carrying out. Exploratory Factor Analysis on adult women (N = 300) with age range of 21 to 52 years. Results showed four factors namely, Planfulness, Readiness for Change, Intentional Behavior, and Using Resources are reflection of personal growth initiative. Phase-3 of the research was aimed to confirm the factorial validity on sample of women (N = 300) with age range from 19 to 50 years. Findings confirmed four factor solutions and suggested that PGIS-II Urdu version can be utilized as a valid and reliable measure for the assessment of personal growth initiative among adults in Pakistan.

How Teachers Balance Language Proficiency and Pedagogical Ideals at Universities in Indigenous and Postcolonial Societies: The Case of the University of Greenland

ABSTRACT Based on Bourdieu’s theory of practice, this article explores pedagogical ideals and educational policies in teachers’ everyday practice in a postcolonial bilingual university setting in Greenland. Greenlandic and Danish teachers’ teaching ideals were explored during a one-year pedagogy qualifying course for assistant professors organised by the (Danish) authors in cooperation with University of Greenland. The overall pedagogical agenda placed an emphasis on student activity. Both Greenlandic and Danish teachers’ representations of their practice accounted for the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of their indigenous students, but they did so in different ways. Whereas Greenlandic teachers tended to emphasise formal correctness in the use of Greenlandic language and student understanding and translation of the learning objectives, Danish teachers tended to lower their own perceived academic norms and graded certain students more leniently in order to compensate for both their dominant role as teacher and for postcolonial dominance.

Cross-Linguistic Pedagogy and Biliteracy in a Bilingual University: Students’ Stances, Practices, and Ideologies

Inspiré de la notion de bilittératie comprise comme « la conjonction de la littératie et du bilinguisme », l’article qui suit rend compte d’études de cas multiples en cours avec des étudiantes universitaires multilingues développant des littératies universitaires simultanément en français et en anglais. Des entretiens et des documents textuels et vidéo décrivant les pratiques d’écriture des étudiantes ont servi à l’analyse des prises de position et des idéologies des étudiantes à l’égard de pratiques interlinguistiques et du développement de la bilittératie. Les perspectives des étudiantes témoignent de leurs divers positionnements par rapport à leurs langues d’héritage, d’expertise et d’affiliation, ainsi que de leurs expériences de littératies préuniversitaires. Les représentations des étudiantes font également écho à certaines tensions retrouvées dans les écrits liées aux idéologies qui prônent la séparation des langues, le souci de protéger les langues minoritaires et le potentiel éducatif de synergies interlinguistiques.