Implications For Second Language Teaching Research Articles

The Present Research and Prospects on Alignment Effects in the Continuation Task

Wang (2012) proposed the “Continuation Task” method to second language learning, which is based on alignment effects that closely integrate language comprehension and output to promote foreign language learning. According to research results, the effect of second language learning is mainly due to alignment effects, and the alignment output is the key to effective language learning. Through searching the keyword “continuation task” of the Foreign Languages and Literatures from 2018 to 2022 in the CNKI, there are 155 journal papers at home and abroad. Based on these journals, this paper makes a review and evaluation of alignment effects in the continuation task from its theoretical research and present research status. It divides the research status into two categories: the continuation task research for Chinese learners of English and foreign learners of Chinese. Besides, this paper looks into the research prospect of alignment effects in the continuation task, especially its implications for second language teaching, which can provide new ideas and directions for foreign language teaching in China.

A Qualitative Phenomenological Investigation of Pre-university English as a Second Language Learners’ Experiences in Malaysia

This research study explicitly analyses pre-university learners’ individual learning experiences of English as a second language in a public university in Malaysia. In an attempt to gauge participants’ individual learning experiences, this study drew from Skinner’s (1957) behaviourism, Krashen’s (2020) nonnative language acquisition and Vygotsky’s (1974) sociocultural theories of learning. The behaviourism theory puts forth that learning a second language is a mechanical process which relies heavily on habit formation (Skinner, 1957). Krashen’s (2020) nonnative language acquisition and Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theories, on the other hand, posit that a new language is naturally and effortlessly acquired through social interactions that require cognitive reasoning (Vygotsky, 1978). The qualitative findings received from one to one unstructured interviews were analysed in relation to the aforesaid theories. The findings revealed that informants studied English for university admission and that their sociocultural environment inhibited them from speaking the language outside the classroom. Discerning that the conventional teaching of English would not help them to attain their goal, informants though asserted to experience a drop in motivation throughout their English course, established an artificial linguistic environment for them to receive comprehensible inputs of English from various sources. Four out of five informants affirmed their preference to learn English in English speaking nations to be able to practice English in the wider community, while one underlined his/her preference for non-English speaking nations due to the fear of having difficulties in understanding accented English and of being laughed for his/her poor command English by native English speakers. Frequent addition of the linguistic suffix ‘lah’ from Bahasa Malaysia was added to standard English by local informants, leading to the creation of a hybrid landscape. Pedagogical implications for second language teaching and learning are raised alongside a revision of the structure, content and teaching strategies of existing English as a second language course.

Native and non-native variation in adverbial and adjectival intensification: A corpus-based study of UK and Ghanaian parliamentary debates

Studies on the use of adverbs and adjectives by nonnative speakers of English have largely focused on learner corpus. Using Hansards of British and Ghanaian parliamentary debates as data, this paper attempts to partly fill this gap by comparatively examining the use of adverbs and adjectives as intensifiers by British parliamentarians as first/native speakers of English and Ghanaian parliamentarians as second language/non-native speakers of English. Parliamentarians’ use of adverbial and adjectival intensification is consequent on parliamentary debates being truth and validity judgement, which includes speaker involvement and commitment. While both groups of MPs employ intensifiers to strengthen their convictions and arguments, it leads to exaggeration. However, the British parliamentarians use more complex adverbs and adjectives than their Ghanaian counterparts, who use simpler forms. The paper has implications for second language teaching and learning, the theory of nativisation and the characterisation of Ghanaian English.

Cross-linguistic issues in the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese negation by Shona–English bilinguals at the University of Zimbabwe: implications for second language teaching

This article provides insights into the nature of the transitional language during the acquisition of Mandarin Chinese as an additional foreign language by students at the University of Zimbabwe. The students concerned are first language speakers of Shona and English as their second language. The article examines linguistic features apparent in the intermediate stages of the acquisition of Mandarin negation systems in a formal learning environment. In establishing this, the researchers employed discourse completion tasks, semi-structured interviews with learners and language instructors, and personal reports as methods of gathering data. Secondary sources, including Mandarin textbooks and Mandarin language instructors, were also consulted to assist in error identification, description and explanation. From the findings, it is apparent that, during the acquisition of Mandarin negation, the intermediate stages can be characterised by a complex system of rules and syntactic-semantic permutations which are independent of both the target language and of previously-acquired languages. The research contributes to an understanding of the development of learner’s language during the acquisition of a typologically-dissimilar foreign additional language, and has further implications for solving problems in foreign language teaching and learning.

Embodying rhythmic properties of a foreign language through hand-clapping helps children to better pronounce words

This study tested the effects of hand-clapping to the rhythm of newly learned French words on the pronunciation of these words by 7- to 8-year-old Catalan children. In a short training experiment with a pre- and posttest design, 28 children either repeated cognate words in French (e.g. French aspirateur, Catalan aspirador ‘vacuum cleaner’) while clapping to the rhythmic structure of those words or only repeated the words. Participants’ oral productions before and after training were rated for accentedness by three French native speakers. Results showed that in both groups, participants’ pronunciation improved after training, and crucially, children in the clapping group improved significantly more than those in the non-clapping group. Additionally, an acoustic analysis of the duration of word-final vowels indicated that only children in the clapping group significantly lengthened the final vowel after training, thus producing more target-like durational patterns. Our results suggest that a brief embodied intervention based on highlighting the rhythmic structure of words through hand-clapping has the potential to enhance pronunciation in a foreign language. The implications for second language teaching of pronunciation are discussed.

Errors in air-ground pilot communication: an experimental study

Understanding aviation communication has obvious implications for flight safety and for the training of pilots and Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs). Its study also sheds light on the use of Aviation English as a type of English for a very specific purpose and on real-world communication constraints in a high-stakes environment. We present results from a study combining human factors and linguistics, in which pilots were recorded in flight simulator experiments probing communication accuracy under diverse conditions. An analysis of the audio recordings in terms of whether errors were omissions or mistakes, whether errors occurred with words or numerals, and which types of aviation information were affected, revealed complex interactions between language background, pilot qualification, workload and ATC speech rate. The differences between native English speakers (NES) and non-native English speakers (NNES) are complex and more nuanced than might be expected. These results not only are relevant for aviation safety, training and testing, but they also provide insights on communication under challenging conditions and on the relation between language proficiency and cognition, with implications for second language teaching and the use of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in highly constrained environments.

A Pragmatic Study of Humour in Udurawana’s Joke Stories of Sri Lanka: Implications for Second Language Teaching and Learning

This paper presents a step by step approach of unpacking humour in joke stories from Udurawana in Sir-Lanka. The analysis has employed two theoretical models: Grice’s (1975) theory of Conversational Implicature, and Juckel, Bellman and Varan’s (2016) Taxonomy of Humour Techniques. The study has demonstrated that understanding humour involves going through different layers of language given that humour itself does not reside at the surface; but rather inside meanings of words and phrases. The paper appeals to language teachers to utilise humour as a teaching tool owing to the enormous joys it brings in facilitating the teaching and learning of the second language. We conclude that helping learners take baby-steps to decipher humour can lead them into better understanding and fluency of second language learning; an indication of advancement in language acquisition.

The Conceptualisation of Argument in Writing for Academic Purposes

Despite the long-standing tradition in research on conceptual metaphor, little attention has been paid to the use of conceptual metaphor in academic writing. The present study aims to investigate how the concept of ARGUMENT is realized in two academic contexts: i L2 speakers writing in English, and ii L1 speakers writing in Swedish. Following Lakoff and Johnson 1980/2003, four related conceptual metaphors AN ARGUMENT IS A JOURNEY; AN ARGUMENT IS A BATTLE; AN ARGUMENT IS A BUILDING; AN ARGUMENT IS A CONTAINER were identified and examined in a sample of Bachelor and Master theses written in English or Swedish by native speakers of Swedish. The main questions here are i to what extent the students employed these metaphors in their conceptualization of an argument and ii whether there are any differences in the patterns of conceptual metaphor depending on the language in which the texts were produced. The results suggest that while for the most part, academic texts written in English and Swedish both employed metaphorical conceptualizations of ARGUMENT as a JOURNEY and as a BUILDING, precisely which linguistic expressions predominated differed between the two languages. The findings have implications for second-language teaching, such as the development of academic writing courses, in particular in the context of English for non-native writers and for the training of instructors for such courses.

Gesture as a window onto conceptualization in multiple tasks: Implications for second language teaching

Abstract This paper demonstrates that it is necessary to look at learners’ gestures and speech to have a complete picture of their conceptualizations in their L2. It argues that context and task affect learners’ speech and gesture and need to be considered in SLA. A comparison of the speech and gesture of an L2 learner in two tasks (an oral proficiency interview and a narration task) over a fourteen-year period of time shows that fewer gestures per clause and primarily metaphoric gestures were produced in the oral proficiency task and more gestures per clause and primarily iconic gestures were produced in the narration. Implications for second language teaching are discussed.

The Interplay between Gender and Learning Styles: Implications for Second Language Teaching

Learning styles refer to the variation that exists in the ability of people to accumulate interpret and assimilate information. A learning style is an individual’s preferred way of learning and scholars (Reid (1995), Wagaman (2008), Montgomery and Groat (1998) to mention a few) have established that when a teacher’s style matches the student’s learning styles then learning will occur. Research evidences (Howe 1997), Burham (2008) and Sax Leonard (2008)) support that gender plays a unique role in the way we learn. This paper thus seeks to investigate the relationship (if any) between gender and learning styles with its’ possible implications for language teaching. The paper draws conclusions that majority of females’ preferred learning style is the diverging and assimilating (thinkers than doers) while a greater percentage of the males fall under converging and accommodating learning styles (doers than thinkers). Girls are motivated by the desire to impress adults while boys are motivated by the object or material to be learnt. This of course has serious implications for language teaching. Lastly, language teachers are encouraged to develop their instructional packages to cater for the differences in the students’ gender and learning styles. Other stakeholders in the education industry are to accommodate the knowledge of different genders and learning styles in educational planning.

Editor's Message: Scholarly Journals and Data: A Case of Academic Celebrity?

Editor's Message:Scholarly Journals and Data: A Case of Academic Celebrity? Sheri Spaine Long, Editor Like our academic siblings in the sciences for decades, humanities scholars are paying more and more attention to hits, views, and citations. Are we becoming aspiring academic "rock stars" who want to be listed on the citation hit parade? Lately, for better or worse, scholar-teachers in languages, literatures, and linguistics are increasingly self-conscious of our quantitative as well as our qualitative profiles. Why? Digitization has made it easier than ever to track and count almost everything. Society is smitten with data reporting and tracking. Because sometimes all of this counting appears to be more of a sport than a reflection of the seriousness of purpose rooted in the humanities and social sciences, we might be inclined to say: Who cares about these data? However, increased accountability has motivated instructors, researchers, and administrators alike to seek more numerical documentation to justify our importance and productivity to various stakeholders such as deans, department heads, trustees, and so on. In a day in my life as Editor of Hispania, I am able to view in JSTOR some intriguing usage statistics about the journal. JSTOR is a nonprofit online system for archiving academic journals. One can view electronically the complete contents of all back issues of Hispania since 1917 up to three years short of the current volume. Since our affiliation with JSTOR in 2002, there have been more than 2.5 million views of Hispania articles online. The fact that users can view, search, and print back issues of Hispania articles has given unprecedented exposure to our content and produced some so-called academic celebrities due to frequent consultation. Beyond simple popularity, what can we learn by studying the data and examining these lists? How do we interpret this usage information? Is there a back story? How do titles and topics add to the discourse on literary canon formation and/or pedagogical trends? The top three most-viewed and most-downloaded Hispania articles that are listed on the next page rightly reflect our broad scope and the diverse interests of the AATSP membership. Before we proceed further, take a moment to review the Hispania mission statement printed below so that you will appreciate the broad sub-fields (italicized) in which we publish regularly. Then look at the lists of the most-viewed and most-downloaded articles that follow. Hispania, the official journal of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese (AATSP), invites the submission of original, unpublished manuscripts on language, linguistics, literature, literary criticism, film, culture, cultural studies, applied linguistics, and pedagogy having to do with Spanish and Portuguese. Throughout Hispania's history since its founding in 1917, it has published scholarly articles and reviews that are judged to be of interest to specialists in the discipline(s) as well as to a diverse readership of teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. All manuscripts submitted for publication should display thorough and comprehensive knowledge of the subject and field. Further considerations in the evaluation of manuscripts include their contribution to the advancement of knowledge, originality of method or focus, organization, and clarity of expression. Most Frequently Viewed Hispania Articles in JSTOR (To Date) 1. Poeta, Salvatore J. "Poetic and Social Patterns of Symmetry and Contrast in Lorca's La casa de Bernarda Alba." Hispania 82.4 (1999): 740-49. 2. Mujica, Barbara. "Teaching Literature: Canon, Controversy, and the Literary Anthology." Hispania 80.2 (1997): 203-15. 3. Ramírez, Arthur. "Juan Rulfo: Dialectics and the Despairing Optimist." Hispania 65.4 (1982): 580-85. [End Page vii] Most Frequently Downloaded Hispania Articles in JSTOR (To Date) 1. Poeta, Salvatore J. "Poetic and Social Patterns of Symmetry and Contrast in Lorca's La casa de Bernarda Alba." Hispania 82.4 (1999): 740-49. 2. Citron, James L. "Can Cross-Cultural Understanding Aid Second Language Acquisition? Toward a Theory of Ethno-Lingual Relativity." Hispania 78.1 (1995): 105-13. 3. Horwitz, Elaine K. "Some Language Acquisition Principles and Their Implications for Second Language Teaching." Hispania 69.3 (1986): 684-89. The JSTOR lists make us mindful of the second part of Hispania's full title—A journal devoted...

The Selective Fossilization Hypothesis and its Putative Implications for Second Language Teaching

Issues of learnability and teachability of linguistic features have long been a core interest in instructed second language acquisition (SLA) research. Following Lyster and Ranta (1998), a great deal of empirical work has approached second language (L2) teachability by investigating the efficacy of all types of corrective feedback (e.g., oral recasts, elicitation, repetition) vis-a-vis the acquisition of L2 English structures such as third-person singular -s, past tense ending -ed, and the use of first mention a/an. That said, the choice of these linguistic targets appears to be quite arbitrary. In other words, they were chosen because they were “thought” to be somewhat unlearnable, often without further explanation as to how the estimated level of learnability was determined. In this light, Han’s (2009) Selective Fossilization Hypothesis (SFH) seems promising in informing L2 teaching practices, as it approaches the learnability issue – generally believed to be the flipside of the phenomenon of fossilization – both a priori and a posteriori.

The effect of bilingualism on the use of manual gestures

Gestures are often used while speaking to aid in the speaker's packaging of the verbal message and/or to aid the listener in decoding the message. The ways in which bilinguals use gestures are reviewed in this article. Researchers have predicted that bilinguals' gesture use is related to bilinguals' language proficiency. However, no clear pattern of a link between proficiency and gesture use has been observed across studies, probably because gestures rarely compensate for weak language proficiency, functioning instead to facilitate speech production in both first and second language use. Researchers have reported bilinguals using language-specific gestures in the other language. In addition, bilinguals have been shown to use gestures at a higher rate than monolinguals. These results suggest that cross-linguistic transfer can apply to gestures, as well as to other linguistic units. In conclusion, gestures play an important role in accessing language in the process of speech production. This conclusion has implications for second-language teaching; teaching through gestures and speech might be more effective than teaching the spoken component alone.

Teaching grammar as a liberating force

The idea of grammar as a ‘liberating force’ comes from a paper by Henry Widdowson (1990) in which grammar is depicted as a resource which liberates the language user from an over-dependency on lexis and context for the expression of meaning. In this paper, I consider the implications for second language teaching of the notion of grammar as a liberating force, and identify three key design features which, I propose, need to be present in any grammar production task in which this notion is given prominence. These are: learner choice over which grammatical structures to use; a process of ‘grammaticization’ where the learners apply grammar to lexis; and opportunities to make comparisons and notice gaps in their use of grammar. I then discuss, with practical examples, types of grammar task which exhibit these features. These tasks all derive from traditional ELT practice, but have been revitalized to support an approach to teaching grammar which emphasizes its liberating potential.

Some Language Acquisition Principles and Their Implications for Second Language Teaching

Some Language Acquisition Principles and Their Implications for Second Language Teaching

The Role of Input in Language Acquisition: Some Implications for Second Language Teaching

The Role of Input in Language Acquisition: Some Implications for Second Language Teaching

The Role of Input in Language Acquisition: Some Implications for Second Language Teaching

The Role of Input in Language Acquisition: Some Implications for Second Language Teaching