L2 English Classroom Research Articles

Closeness facilitating interaction among Japanese learners of English

Abstract This study investigates the perceived effect of friendship on the difficulty arising from the fear of negative evaluation experienced by Japanese university students when engaging in pair work and speaking English. Furthermore, this study aims to determine the perceived effectiveness and opinions towards friendship-building activities in an L2 English classroom. The investigations administer a questionnaire to students after 14 weeks of friendship-building activities that include icebreakers, games, and randomly assigned seating. Students report their perceived level of difficulty when engaging in pair work and speaking English with friends and non-friends. Additionally, students report on their perceived effectiveness and opinions towards friendship-building activities. The investigations find that learners associate less difficulty with pair work and speaking English among friends. Moreover, the results indicate that learners perceive friendships as a mitigator of the fear of negative evaluation and its effects. The results also suggest that friendship-building activities facilitate the creation of friendships and are perceived as necessary and positive by learners. The study promotes the use of friendship-building in the classroom, particularly for learners with sociocultural backgrounds that are more prone to experiencing the fear of negative evaluation.

Encouraging Vietnamese Students’ Willingness to Communicate Inside L2 English Classrooms

Encouraging Vietnamese Students’ Willingness to Communicate Inside L2 English Classrooms

Teachers’ and Students’ Attitude Toward Code Alternation in Pakistani English Classrooms

This research is an attempt to explore students' and teachers‟ attitude towards code alternation within English classrooms in Pakistan. In a country like Pakistan where official language is English, the national language is Urdu, and every province has its own language, most of the people are bilinguals or multilingual. Therefore, the aim of this study was to find out when and why teachers code switch in L2 English classrooms. It has also explored student's preferences of language during learning second language. It has also looked into teachers' code-switching patterns and the students‟ priorities. Ten teachers responded to an open ended questioner and 100 students responded to a close ended questioner. Results of teacher's responses indicated that they mostly code switch when student's response in relation to the comprehensibility is negative and they do not grasp the concepts easily in L2. They never encourage students to speak Urdu. Student's results showed that they mostly prefer code-switching into their L1 for better understanding and participation in class. Analysis revealed that students only favored English while getting instructions of test, receiving results, and learning grammatical concepts. In most of the cases, students showed flexibility in language usage. Majority of students (68%) agreed upon that they learn better when their teachers code switch in to L1.

Teachers’ and Students’ Attitude Toward Code Alternation in Pakistani English Classrooms

This research is an attempt to explore students' and teachers‟ attitude towards code alternation within English classrooms in Pakistan. In a country like Pakistan where official language is English, the national language is Urdu, and every province has its own language, most of the people are bilinguals or multilingual. Therefore, the aim of this study was to find out when and why teachers code switch in L2 English classrooms. It has also explored student's preferences of language during learning second language. It has also looked into teachers' code-switching patterns and the students‟ priorities. Ten teachers responded to an open ended questioner and 100 students responded to a close ended questioner. Results of teacher's responses indicated that they mostly code switch when student's response in relation to the comprehensibility is negative and they do not grasp the concepts easily in L2. They never encourage students to speak Urdu. Student's results showed that they mostly prefer code-switching into their L1 for better understanding and participation in class. Analysis revealed that students only favored English while getting instructions of test, receiving results, and learning grammatical concepts. In most of the cases, students showed flexibility in language usage. Majority of students (68%) agreed upon that they learn better when their teachers code switch in to L1.

English as a lingua franca defined by pre-service teachers: insights from theory and practice

Abstract Despite the sheer reality of English used as a lingua franca in and outside L2 English classrooms, many teachers are still unaware of the concept of English as a lingua franca (ELF), which makes integration of ELF awareness into teacher education essential. This study presents an “ELF-aware” education model for pre-service teachers and analyses the definitions of ELF made by the pre-service teachers exposed to this model before, during and after their training and documents the ways they changed, if any. The data were collected by an open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interviews which were thematically analysed. According to our findings, ELF conceptualizations reveal increased awareness. Perceptions of ELF changed from a global concept to a communicative construct and ultimately to a humanistic pedagogical perspective accepting non-native users of English with their own variability. The data imply the evolving roles of the participants from (i) outsiders to ELF to (ii) ELF-aware users and owners of English and ultimately to (iii) potential ELF-aware practitioners and disseminators of ELF knowledge. With variability of definitions and implied roles changing at each phase of the training, the ELF-aware pre-service teacher education model has proved to be effective in making the participants increasingly aware of the ELF concept.

Voices from the periphery: Perceptions of Indonesian primary vs secondary pre-service teacher trainees about corpora and data-driven learning in the L2 English classroom

Data-driven learning (DDL), or the use of language corpora for the purposes of language learning and teaching, has seen a marked increase in research interest within ICT-rich WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich and Democratic) contexts. However, less is known about its adoption in nations such as Indonesia where ICT/CALL training is underdeveloped, a situation indicative of a potential “digital divide” between the haves and have-nots when it comes to adoption of DDL worldwide. The present study reports on a series of DDL workshops and lesson planning activities within a CALL training program for pre-service L2 English-as-a-foreign-language teachers in Indonesia at both primary and secondary school levels. Training included an online course in DDL for academic writing, DDL expert's comments on trainees’ lesson plans, and a series of online workshops. Trainees’ perceptions of the training and the potential implementation of DDL within the Indonesian L2 English teaching context were explored through questionnaire and interview data. The findings painted a mixed picture of pre-service trainees’ appreciation for the potential of corpora to greatly assist the practice of language learning and teaching, tempered by acknowledgement that integrating corpora into classroom practice in the Indonesian context would be a considerable challenge. Primary school teachers were also significantly less likely than secondary school teachers to be willing adopt corpora in their future teaching practice. We address the source of these concerns while offering suggestions for future DDL training involving pre-tertiary educators.

Language control network adapts to second language learning: A longitudinal rs-fMRI study

The current longitudinal resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging study examined changes in language control network after one year of L2 English classroom learning. A group of Chinese college freshmen majoring in English underwent two scans, one before (i.e., Session 1) and one after (i.e., Session 2) the one-year L2 courses. Learners' language control abilities were assessed via a behavioral language switching task. Our graph theory and functional connectivity analyses revealed that with increased exposure to the L2, nodal betweenness in language control areas, such as the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), decreased and connectivity between dACC and pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) increased. Critically, these neural changes were correlated with participants' behavioral performance on the language switching task. Taken together, these findings suggest that the language control network in resting brain could be modulated by long-term L2 learning in a naturalistic classroom setting, and that the dACC/pre-SMA complex appears to play a critical role in language control.

The Effects of Explicit Instruction on Intransitive Verb Structure in L2 English Classrooms

The Effects of Explicit Instruction on Intransitive Verb Structure in L2 English Classrooms

First and second language use in Asian EFL: A book review

AbstractThis book directly addresses the issue of L1 usage in the L2 English classroom. The intended audience for the book includes teacher trainers, local English teachers in Southeast Asia, and Western English-language teachers looking to work abroad. However, the book could also be useful to administrators of English acquisition programs in Asian universities and policy makers in Southeast Asia tasked with creating pedagogical standards for English-language instruction at the university level.

Knowledge of syntax and verbal morphology in adolescent L2 English: A Feature Reassembly account

This study investigates knowledge of both syntax and verbal morphology by L2 English classroom learners with L1 Japanese in affirmative sentences with VP-adverbs (e.g., She usually eats breakfast at nine2). It proposes that the findings are consistent with the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2008, 2009) which the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis underlies3. Results are obtained from an elicited production task: for written data with 90 junior high school students (12-15 years old) and 30 university students (19-20 years old), as well as for spoken data with 12 junior high school students (12-13 years old). It is observed that the pattern of use of verb forms is different from that found in other L2 English studies. The key differences are: (1) high omission of copula is in copula is+adverb contexts; (2) two kinds of commission error where tense/aspect forms replace each other. It is argued that such variability in verbal morphology could be accounted for by the differences in the processes and conditions by which relevant morphosyntactic and semantic features are assembled between L1 and L2, which is consistent with the key claim of the Feature Reassembly Hypothesis.

International students' attitudes toward L2-English classroom activities and language skills in the USA

Pedagogical proponents of both communicative language teaching and the postmethod philosophy argue for the importance of considering learners' needs in classroom planning. This requires understanding learners' attitudes toward a variety of classroom realities. The present study reports on the attitudes of 131 adult, international learners of English, studying English for 20 hours a week in a US-based Intensive English Program. To investigate these learners' attitudes for classroom activities, I administered a questionnaire designed to measure attitudes toward various reading, writing, listening, speaking, and grammar activities. Factor analysis of the responses revealed four components: explicit grammar instruction activities, personal entertainment listening activities, interactive listening–speaking activities, and literacy activities. Learners across ages, genders, and course levels were largely homogeneous in their preferences for listening–speaking activities, and on several measures, learners reported liking listening or speaking activities more than writing activities; however, there were differences in preferences for literacy and explicit grammar activities. I argue that preferences concerning instructional activities can be explained based on learners' backgrounds, current learning context, and proficiency levels. In order to support the autonomy of learners while expanding their capabilities, educators should seek to understand and capitalize on learners' preferences.