Competence Of Language Learners Research Articles

Building Intercultural Competence through Language Education

This paper seeks to highlight the importance of intercultural competence in language learning and teaching. All intercultural encounters incorporate communication between individuals who, rather than belonging to only one culture, belong to a diverse array of different cultures at the same time. They share some of these cultures with the people they are talking to, and some of them they do not. And some of these cultural variations and affinities will influence the way they communicate, and some of them will be totally insignificant.

Les Activités Ludiques comme Outils favorisant l’Apprentissage de la Compétence Langagière : cas des élèves de 5ème AP

Playful Activities as Tools Promoting Language Learning Competence: Case of 5th primary school pupils
 The teaching of the French language is regressing more in Algeria and it is an observation that has sufficiently motivated us to approach this subject, with a view precisely to leading to the diagnostic explanation of an aspect of the didactic situation of French in Algeria. We have estimated, following the reading of many research works which encourage the teaching of poetry from an early age that, through poetry, the child simultaneously learns phonetic competence, enriches his lexicon and learns the initiation where the child appreciates stylistic beauty in rhyme and syllabization…etc. In the perspective of proposing an element of response for the didactization of the oral skill, using playful activities such as the poem and the nursery rhyme, we plan to carry out or exploit different supports: a field survey, recitation , public speaking with the aim of constituting an authentic corpus and subsequently identifying qualifying results, which will serve in a global and conclusive sequence as an element of direct intervention in the change-remediation of the problematic situation of French in Algeria. To this end, several questions are imposed on us as an observer and future researcher, which requires, first of all, a rigorous and scientific analysis of the reality of the teaching / learning of French: why the teaching / learning declines further in Algeria? How can poems and nursery rhymes develop and promote the learning of French in an optimal way and improve the competence in terms of oral expression in the Algerian pupil? Such an approach requires a descriptive approach, pinpointing the nature of the disability phonetically and phonetically. In a global sequence, we try to identify a typology of language defects identified from our research in order to propose an operational didactic tool to constitute an answer to our problem. In this article, we are analyzing firstly the playful aspect in schools, then the interest behind it in Teaching and finally the learning of French as a foreign language. The first objective of this aspect is to facilitate access to Foreign Languages, because it has a positive part in the life of the child and plays a primary and crucial role in the linguistic development through the diversity of forms such as: nurseries rhyme, poems, songs and games...etc.

Relationship between Language Learners’ Attitudes toward Cultural Instruction and Pragmatic Comprehension and Production

Development of target language pragmatic competence in language learners requires not only provision of cultural features of target language community in language classes but also language learner’s willingness to learn and use those cultural features. To investigate the relationship between language learners’ attitudes toward cultural instruction and their gains in comprehension and production aspects of pragmatic competence, the current study was conducted on 50 undergraduate Japanese students of English education at a university in Japan. The adapted version of the attitude questionnaire developed by Albirini (2009) was used to measure language learners’ attitudes toward cultural instruction. A 24-item pragmatic comprehension test developed by Taguchi (2007, 2008) was used to measure language learners’ pragmatic comprehension ability. Finally, a 32-item discourse completion task developed by Bardovi-Harlig (2009) was used to measure language learners’ pragmatic production ability. The analysis of Pearson product–moment correlation coefficient (r) revealed a strong positive relationship between attitude toward cultural instruction and pragmatic comprehension ability as well as attitude toward cultural instruction and pragmatic production ability. The pedagogical implications of the findings suggested incorporation of interesting cultural features of the target language community in language classes and presenting them in interesting ways to attract language learners’ attention and interest. Keywords: Attitude, Cultural Instruction, Pragmatic Comprehension, Pragmatic Production

Global-mindedness Through the Eyes of EFL Learners: Gender and Level of Proficiency in Focus

The major aim of the present study is to find connections between global-mindedness and some important factors such as gender and level of proficiency. To this end, 182 language learners, 92 females and 90 males, participated in the study. These students were selected and categorized based on one-stage cluster sampling from 16 branches of different language centers, namely Safiran, Shoukoh, and Kish. The main phase of the study was conducted through the use of Google Docs platform that provides the researchers with the well-organized data. Language learners were asked to answer all the demographic information by considering their anonymity during the process of data collection. The result of the study, through t-test, showed that there was a significant difference between male and female language learners regarding their level of global-mindedness. The result also showed that the level of proficiency of the female language learners does not influence their level of global-mindedness.
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An investigation into the use of speech acts and language functions in Iranian high school English textbooks

Criticism has been leveled against English textbooks on the grounds that they often fail to provide classroom learners with adequate opportunities for learning authentic language (Vellenga, 2004). This could be due to the fact that, instead of making use of authentic language samples native speakers produce, many textbooks draw on native speakers’ intuitions about language use, which might not always be reliable. This study investigated the use of speech acts presented in Iranian high school English Textbooks I, II, and III. To this end, speech acts in the conversations segments of these books were analyzed from the perspective of Searle’s (1976) speech act model and Lakoff’s (1973) view of politeness. The results revealed that there were, in total, 298 instances of speech acts used in high school textbooks. It was also found that language functions in these books are presented unequally and some of them recur throughout the books, with no specific pattern being followed. Since high school English textbooks in Iran are not communication-oriented, it was concluded that these books cannot possibly develop pragmatic competence in language learners.

Enhancing Communicative Competence through Free Messaging Apps in EFL Classes

Acquiring and enhancing communicative competence in language learning has long been considered as one of the primary and substantial objectives. With impressive development of mobile technology, messaging apps and smartphones are introduced to EFL classes as an effective tool to achieve this goal. Based upon theoretical analysis and situational experiments as well, this paper presents the feasibility and practicality of free messaging apps use in EFL classes. It aims to provide language learners and instructors with refreshing ideas and inspirations along the journey of developing language proficiency in the modern hi-tech era.

Enhancing Intercultural Competence of Language Learners through Drama: An Approach to Culture as Practice

Enhancing Intercultural Competence of Language Learners through Drama: An Approach to Culture as Practice

Interaction in the Concept of Autonomous Language Learning

The study focuses on the role of interactive activities in the process of developing students' autonomy in language learning. The research into the problem of interaction in learner's autonomy involves two aspects: the elaboration of the theoretical grounds for encouraging interaction in autonomous language learning and some practical evidence of exploring those perspectives by empirical means within the communicative and cognitive approach. The article outlines the structure and the constituents of autonomy in language learning, reveals both the universal and the individual components of language acquisition and shows how important these components are for the modern understanding of communicative competence in language learning. The study emphasizes the idea that communicative and cognitive skills that constitute a student's autonomy in language learning are triggered in real communication only through their use in the interaction and cooperation with partners. The concept of interactive autonomous learning is based on the theoretical consequences of a social-interactive view of cognition, learning and language and the idea that autonomy and independence in learning must always be supported by interdependence and collaboration with other learners.

English

Discourse markers are seen as one of the fundamental units in spoken discourse due to their frequent and multifunctional use by native speakers of English. Discourse markers also have significance in foreign language instruction. In this respect, this study explored the perceptions of Turkish EFL teachers towards the use of discourse markers in terms of the pragmatic and pedagogic value and their representations in EFL classrooms. To this end, a questionnaire was administered to 104 EFL instructors working at seven different state universities in Turkey. The quantitative analyses of the data yielded that the teachers had positive perceptions towards discourse markers by finding them necessary for improving pragmatic competence of language learners. They also stated that discourse markers had teaching value so they highlighted them in their instruction. Moreover, the study also discussed the integration of discourse markers into language instruction. The study had some implications for further discussion over the issue of discourse markers in terms of investigating teacher talk, real classroom practices during language teaching instruction and teaching materials. Key words: Discourse markers, English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers, spoken discourse.

Pragmatic competence and the CEFR: pragmatic profiling as a link between theory and language use

The functional and communicative perspective on language advocated in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), hides the fact that, while the CEFR programmatically emphasises the role of pragmatic competence in language learning, it provides little guidance in how to transform the domain of language learning, teaching and testing, accordingly. In the present paper, we argue for an extended and more detailed treatment of pragmatic competence in the context of the CEFR, that we think is necessary to enable practitioners to implement this conception of communicative competence in their everyday work. Whereas a gap between the CEFR’s programmatic vision and practical requirements has been noted and addressed, e.g. by the creation of reference level descriptions (RLDs) for individual languages, the pragmatic component has thus far not been thoroughly covered by the respective initiatives, such as the English Profile. Based on a review of definitions of pragmatic competence in the linguistic literature, we claim that a customised methodology will be necessary to fully integrate pragmatic competence into CEFR-based descriptions of language competence, especially if these descriptions are to be operationalised in language testing and certification. We then present our own approach to the issue of assessing pragmatic competence, which is part of an ongoing research project called Pragmatic Profiling (PRA.PRO). One of the main goals of this project is to establish pragmatic profiles of different varieties of English based on native speaker communicative behaviour, elicited via a variety of tasks in a standardized questionnaire format (the Questionnaire on English Usage), and other methods. The pragmatic norms derived from this empirical data can be directly compared with learner performance, which will ultimately allow us to assess divergence from native speaker norms and, thereby, evaluate levels of developing pragmatic competence in learners. Our primary concern is to point out that more empirical research is needed to link the levels of theoretical description and concrete communicative performance, and that the methodology employed in PRA.PRO is a promising route to achieving this goal

Information Technologies and Translation Instrumental Competence

This paper outlines the types of information technologies applied to translation today and translation sub-competences. A study was made in which students were motivated to participate in building DIY corpus based on a given task and to solve the problems in their former translation. It was found that students instrumental competence was improved in recognizing, evaluating, and utilizing information technologies in solving real translation problems, and that their other translation sub-competences could be acquired when translating a real world task in highly contextualized teaching environment. The purpose of the study is to showcase the necessities of including the revising skills required for online machine translate into instrumental competence of language learners at undergraduate level and the possibilities and limitations of online machine translation system when translating Chinese texts into English.

Language and culture: towards a transcultural competence in language learning

Journal Article LANGUAGE AND CULTURE: TOWARDS A TRANSCULTURAL COMPETENCE IN LANGUAGE LEARNING Get access MONIKA SEIDL MONIKA SEIDL Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universitat WienSpitalgasse 2–4, Vienna, Austria Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume XXXIV, Issue 2, April 1998, Pages 101–113, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/XXXIV.2.101 Published: 01 April 1998