Foreign Language Settings Research Articles

Multiple uses of Applied Linguistics literature in a multidisciplinary graduate EAP class

In this paper I discuss ways that Applied Linguistics literature on topics in academic and professional writing can be used in a multidisciplinary graduate‐level EAP class. I focus on three main uses: providing students with information about issues in academic and professional writing; helping them make comparisons of form and style with academic articles in their own fields; and serving as resources for common and formulaic expressions that can be incorporated into their own writing. The paper includes a discussion of the strengths and limitations of this approach in a foreign language setting.

Approximations in impromptu interlanguage

Abstract This paper deals with approximations in the impromptu speech of Congolese students of English. The paucity of vocabulary knowledge prompts foreign language learners to fall back on readily accessible resources in spontaneous speech, such as approximations. The latter are characteristic of an elementary stage in target language development, their frequency relatively decreasing with advanced students. Approximations can be accounted for in terms of communication strategies and in the light of semantic findings. In respect of semantics, three categories of approximations are distinguished : superordinate terms, hyponyms, and cohyponyms. Approximations in a foreign language setting may stem from teachers' negative attitude to vocabulary instruction and from learners' inadequate input. Another source is passive vocabulary, which causes retrieval problems. To minimize this situation, teachers must pay particular attention to vocabulary instruction by teaching vocabulary systematically, rather than leaving it to develop independently.

L2 learner interaction in a foreign language setting: Are learning needs addressed?

The following study was undertaken to address questions and concerns about the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom as an environment that promotes input, feedback and the production of output for second language (L2) learning. In order to address these concerns, the interaction of seven dyads of EFL learners was compared with that of seven dyads of EFL learners and English NSs on two communication tasks. The comparison revealed that the learner-learner dyads were not significantly different from the learner-NS dyads with respect to their contribution of input, feedback and output as they participated in the communication tasks. Results of the study supported the EFL environment as a learning environment; however, linguistic inaccuracies on learners' part suggested that in addition to communicative activities, more targeted, grammar-oriented approaches may also be in order.

The Process of Reading‐to‐Write Used by a Skilled Spanish‐As‐a‐Foreign‐Language Student: A Case Study

The purpose of this study was to explore how one skilled Spanish‐As‐a‐Foreign‐Lan‐guage (SFL) student in a third‐year level class performed reading‐to‐write tasks. Case study research methodology was used to investigate the processes of reading‐to‐write within an academic foreign language (FL) setting. The subject of the study was a skilled Advanced‐Level SFL student from a composition class in a large southeastern university. She did one reading‐to‐write task as part of her class assignment which was analyzed in the study. Data were collected using stimulated‐recall interviews. The subject kept reading and writing logs to help her stimulate recall of the processes she used. Results led to the design of a preliminary identification of the reading‐to‐write process that has important consequences for future research and implications for teaching.

Second Language Learning in a ‘Community of Practice’: A Case Study of Adult Japanese Learners

This paper examines adult students learning Japanese as a foreign language (JFL) in a university course. It explores the relevance of Lave and Wenger's (1991) notion of community of practice (COP) in a foreign-language setting. The portfolio project described in this paper was introduced to investigate the forms of interaction that characterized the COP in this multilevel class. Drawing on audiotaped data from student-teacher conferences and the students' sharing sessions, this paper focuses on the experiences of three students and provides illustrative examples of the way in which the COP was instantiated in the classroom. Although the characteristics of learning in this JFL classroom identified in the data fit Lave and Wenger's description of a community of practice, the analysis revealed that this notion needs to be extended to account for the significant role of the teacher and of more capable peers in enabling the students to learn in their zones of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978, 1987).

Introduction of Communicative Language Teaching in Tourism in Cuba

In the early 80's, ideas of the communicative approach filtered through to Cuba, but in no way are these ideas widely used in language teaching in the country today. The importance of the tourism industry to Cuba over the past few years has resulted in a careful examination of language teaching for workers in the industry. As a result of this analysis, an experimental programme based on the ideas of the communicative approach was implemented at the Centre for Studies in Tourism in Havana in September 1987. A description of this programme will be presented. Special emphasis will be given to the difficulties encountered by teachers in a foreign language setting who had been previously used to teaching prescribed, teacher-centred, structural methods. One of the other experimental features of this programme was the incorporation of a Canadian focus into the teaching of English in tourism, in an attempt to move away from the consideration of the U.S. and Great Britain as the only sources of English language content and social context. Attempts to extend this type of programme to all sectors of tourism will also be described.

The Teleprompter: A Simulating Device for Developing Communicative Competence

<ALLO,, -DIGA, (,PRONTO,), GUTEN TAG. With one of these greetings among others, English-speaking students, who must immediately begin to communicate by telephone with the speaker of another language, face a unique and increasingly common challenge in the foreign language learning process. They can rely neither on the facial expressions nor the gestures of the interlocutors nor the physical surroundings, which, until this moment, they have taken for granted to facilitate the interchange of ideas and feelings. They are solely dependent on another's voice in a new cultural environment, on occasion over imperfect connections and background noises, such as those of airports, electronic media, or traffic. In view of these circumstances, some time in the foreign language classroom should be spent creating a number of realistic situations in which students gain valuable experience in telephone communication. Such an experience will minimize the uneasiness the English speaker may feel in what could well be his initial contact with a foreign language setting. Moreover, in light of the vast amount of research regarding communicative competence in recent years, the teleprompter may serve as a valuable resource for simulating communicative activities in the classroom. The teleprompter's original name is the teletrainer, made available to the general public by the Public Relations Department of the Bell Telephone System. The teletrainer was developed as an educational device to instruct children on the operation of the telephone. However, foreign language instructors who would like to make use of this apparatus may do so by making a reservation for one with their local telephone company. There is no charge for this service.1 The teleprompter consists of two telephone units and a loudspeaker mounted in an electric control panel that has buttons for operating an authentic dial tone, busy signal, and ring for both telephones. Each telephone has a lengthy cord that connects to the console. A typical class set-up for the teleprompter faces the control panel, with the loudspeaker toward the students, on a table along the front or a side wall. One student then goes to a telephone unit located in a far corner of the room and sits facing away from the other students. Another classmember goes to the other unit outside of the classroom in the corridor

Attitudes and Attained Proficiency in ESL: A Sociolinguistic Study of Mexican Americans in the Southwest

ficiency. The hypothesis that the observed relationships would be stronger for learners in a second language setting than for learners in a foreign language setting was again sustained. The learners in this study did better on the ESL proficiency test if they saw themselves and Mexicans in general as high on factors that could be interpreted roughly as willingness to receive instruction. They appeared to be anti-integratively motivated towards the Anglo American majority. This was strikingly apparent in the fact that if subjects rated Americans as high on a factor defined principally in terms of positive personal traits they did more poorly on the ESL test. As they became more proficient in ESL they appeared to become more negative toward Americans. This is also consistent with the finding that some traits valued positively if attributed to self or the native language group were valued negatively with reference to Americans. This report concludes a series of four studies of the relationship between attitudes and attained proficiency in a second or foreign language.1 The first report (Oller, Hudson, and Liu, in press) was based on research begun in the fall of 1974. It involved a population of Chinese graduate students in Albuquerque, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas. Technically, the subjects in that first study were learners in a second language (SL) context as * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic Research Colloquium at the 1976 TESOL Convention in New York City. The authors wish to express their thanks to Alan Hudson, Wallace Lambert, and Robert Gardner for providing them with some of the manuscript material cited in the text. Mr. Oiler, Associate Professor of Linguistics and Educational Foundations, University of New Mexico, has been on a visiting appointment at Southern Illinois University this yast year. He has written widely on language testing, psycholinguistics, and pragmatics and is co-editor (with Jack C. Richards) of Focus on the Learner (Newbury House, 1973). Ms. Baca, Graduate Assistant, Department of Linguistics, University of New Mexico, is currently researching the role of Spanish in New Mexico. Mr. Vigil is an undergraduate student at the University of New Mexico. This distinction was first called to our attention by Richard Van der Mortel at UCLA. Its usefulness in this connection was discussed by a group of students which included Stephen Krashen and Marianne Celce-Murcia among others. They reasoned that the relationship between attitudes and attainment of proficiency in a target language might be very different in a second language context than in a foreign language context.