Low-level Learners Research Articles

Embedding Grammar while Developing Communicative Competence in English: Relevant Cultural Contexts and Teaching Approaches

This article examines Arab-heritage learners’ preferences on how grammar is taught in English classes with a communicative competence focus, serving as a basis for developing principled teaching practices and teacher-training. Data was collected via a questionnaire from 336 adult learners that attend a private teaching facility using primarily Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) methods. In the study, learners were pooled into lower-level, or higher-level groups depending on their Common European Framework (CEF) language level. Data was collected on learners’ preferred teaching/learning strategy choices including:(i) deductive or inductive approaches, (ii) embedding grammar in local or ‘international’ cultural contexts, (iii) use of tasks and exercises or activities, and (iv) immediate or delayed teacher intervention. Results indicate Arab learners’ overall preference of grammar instruction practices based on deductive approaches, conditional to teaching practices being embedded in meaningful contexts. Lower-level learners prefer local cultural contexts, while higher-level learners prefer Western/international ones. Very few Arab-heritage learners prefer methods based on guided inductive approaches using tasks and exercises with periodic teacher-intervention, and almost none chose the deep-end CLT inductive approach. Conversely, shallow-end inductive approaches, with contextualized tasks, activities and delayed teacher intervention are almost as popular as contextualized deductive approaches. This study indicates the importance of meaningful cultural contexts for embedding grammar instruction, reappraising contemporary deductive methods, and the balanced use of shallow-end CLT and inductive approach. These results should therefore help teachers and teacher-trainers realign popular Western beliefs about English teaching and teacher-training when operating in Arab-heritage communities.

Perceptual Vowel Insertion in English-based Nonsense Words by Korean Learners

This study explores the role of L1 constraints in sound perception in English-based nonsense words by Korean learners of English. Specifically, the study examined the effect of the unreleased coda constraint in Korean when perceiving word final palatal sibilants in English-based nonsense words. Korean learners in low and high levels of English proficiency participated in the study. The results showed that the learners with low proficiency levels in English were more likely to perceive the illusory vowel /i/ following a word final palatal sibilant in nonsense words. Their perception showed the influence of frication duration after a word final palatal sibilant. Compared to the high level learners, the low level learners were more sensitive to acoustic properties of frication noise of a word final palatal sibilant, yet incorrectly employed them as the cues to the vowel /i/. The high level learners showed a different pattern in that their perception was influenced by the relative duration of the vowel instead of frication duration. The results of the present study using English-based nonsense words indicate that Korean low-level learners of English are significantly under the influence of L1 constraints in L2 perception of word final palatal sibilants.

A Study on a model lesson for effective Writing of low-level Japanese learners - Focusing on the correlation between student's satisfaction and achievement-

A Study on a model lesson for effective Writing of low-level Japanese learners - Focusing on the correlation between student's satisfaction and achievement-

Development and Validation of an EFL Self-Regulated Learning Questionnaire

Self-regulated learning, strangely enough, though having swept educational psychology's literature like a tidal wave and also, compared to other constructs such as metacognition and learning strategies, has remained rather uncharted in language education literature and L2 research. Hence, among the main purposes of the current study was to form a link, even tenuous, between the two fields by developing a questionnaire in English and Persian to measure self-regulated language learning capacity and behaviour of Iranian EFL learners. The development of the inventory was guided by two pilots (412 participants), content validation by expert judgment, cognitive interviews, expert review of the items, translation quality checks and factorial validation by exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Drawing on the literature of educational psychology and the results of EFA (exploratory factor analysis), thirteen sub-scales with 41 items were yielded in the study: intrinsic motivation, self-efficacy, locus of control orientation (attribution), attitude, organisation, memory strategies, self-monitoring, self-evaluation, planning and goal setting, concentration and sustained attention, effort regulation, regulation of environment, and help seeking. In addition, some linguistic criteria were used as benchmark to simplify the items. The words comprising the items of the English version of the questionnaire are within the 2 000 most frequent words of the BNC and COCA corpora, which increases the readability of the questionnaire for lower-level language learners. The results show that the inventory enjoys satisfactory psychometric properties and construct validity.

Multiple Requests in Arabic as a Second Language

AbstractResearch in second language pragmatics is increasingly investigating the sequential organization of interaction and how it might be affected by second language learners’ developing proficiency. In this paper, we are focusing on a specific aspect of request organization, namely multiple requests. Through data from natural interaction and role plays, we found that multiple requests occurred in a single turn, either as an original request and its same-format reiteration bracketing accounts and explanations or as repetitions with a more complex and polite format. Multiple requests across turns served a repair function. We argue that same-turn multiple requests are recipient designed to increase the likelihood of acceptance. Higher-level learners of Arabic were more likely to produce multiple requests in the same turn than low-level learners whereas the latter exhibited more multiple requests across turns. The data collection method did not have a discernible effect on findings.

An empirical examination of the effect of guessing on vocabulary size test scores

The Vocabulary Size Test (VST) was created to provide a reliable estimate of a second language learner’s written receptive vocabulary size, measuring from the most frequent fourteen 1,000 word families of the spoken subsection of the British National Corpus. While some have recommended that users should limit the amount of the test taken to only slightly above a student’s level, others argue that learners should take every level of the test. However, this raises concerns that correct responses on lower frequency levels could largely be attributed to guesses rather than vocabulary knowledge. In this paper we analyze a data set of 3,373 Japanese university students’ responses to the first eight levels of the original VST under the 3PL model, in order to determine the minimum expected score on the test for learners of low ability, examine the proportion of low-level students’ scores on the lowest frequency level tested that can be attributed to guessing under the 3PL model, and conduct a model fit comparison to determine whether the 3PL model offers a significantly better description of the data than the Rasch model. The results indicate that a substantial portion of lower level learners’ scores on items testing low-frequency words can be attributed to guessing and support the position that students should not sit every level of the test. The authors recommend using the results of the 3PL analysis in order to determine which sections of the test learners of different proficiency levels should sit.

The authenticity continuum: Towards a definition incorporating international voices

The choice of what materials to use in the language classroom is perhaps one of the most fundamentally important and difficult decisions teachers and those responsible for choosing textbooks are faced with. Authenticity is often seen as a desirable component in the content we select and adapt for our language learners, and it has been shown that authentic materials are more motivating, even for low-level learners (Peacock, 1997). The term authentic is often used to describe materials which were not originally designed for the purpose of language learning, but that were designed to have some purpose within the target language culture, such as a newspaper or novel. An unfortunate consequence of this is that authenticity is still often defined in reference to the target language's ‘native speakers’ or L1 community, particularly in EFL contexts, or what Kachru (1985) would label the Outer Circle communities. In other words, where English is taught as a foreign language, both teachers and students often regard ‘native-speakers’ as being the ideal model and therefore an example of authenticity. For example, Tan (2005) criticises corpora investigations of learner English for holding the view that authentic language use is equivalent to ‘native-speaker’ usages. She goes on to criticise not only corpus research but also textbook publishers for still not taking into account ‘the inextricable link between language and culture’ (2005: 127). In the academic world, culturally embedded notions of authenticity relating to ‘native-speakers’ have been challenged for decades (Smith, 1976). And yet I would argue that in mainstream textbooks and in most EFL language classrooms the native speaker still retains a ‘privileged position’ (Clark & Paran, 2007: 407). As Widdowson (1996: 68) puts it:Authenticity concerns the reality of native-speaker language use: in our case, the communication in English which is realized by an English-speaking community. But the language which is real for native speakers is not likely to be real for learners […] They belong to another community and do not have the necessary knowledge of the contextual conditions which would enable them to authenticate English in native-speaker terms. Their reality is quite different.

The Effects of Dictogloss Listening Activity on Each Part of TOEIC LC and Learning Attitude: Focusing on Low Proficiency Level Learners

The Effects of Dictogloss Listening Activity on Each Part of TOEIC LC and Learning Attitude: Focusing on Low Proficiency Level Learners

Preference structure in L2 Arabic requests

Preference structure is a fundamental organizational principle of talk, and research has shown that preferred actions tend to be done immediately and without mitigation whereas dispreference is indicated by delays, elaboration, hesitation, and mitigation. However, little research exists on how second language learners do preference and dispreference. In this study, we investigate how 67 learners of Arabic at four proficiency levels managed preference structure in requests and how their management of preference changed over a five-month period. We found a strong increase in the use of preliminary moves with proficiency level, and also greater occurrence of preliminary moves over the five-month period among lower-level learners. Absence of clear dispreference marking with lower-proficiency learners led to repair sequences, and only high-proficiency learners used multiple preliminary moves. Offers by the interlocutor were rare and limited to interactions with high-proficiency learners. We conclude that interactions involving second language learners can be affected by the learners' developing L2 proficiency, which limits their ability to carry out social actions in a conventional way in the target language.

Lexical Aspect and the Use of Simple Past Tense by Thai Learners of English

This cross-sectional study investigated the use of the simple past tense form by twenty Thai learners of English at two levels of proficiency. A cloze test developed by Ayoun and Salaberry (2008) was adopted. The findings showed that the learners in the high proficiency group used the past tense form more accurately than the learners in the low proficiency group. When verbs were categorized according to lexical aspect, both groups of learners were found to use the simple past tense form most often with telic events as well as with states. This did not correspond to the prediction of the Aspect Hypothesis, which asserts that low-level learners tend to use the simple past tense form with telic events first. The distributional bias in the input could account for the pattern found in this study.

Insert and post-expansion in L2 Arabic requests

Abstract Research on requests is a mainstay of interlanguage pragmatics work but has rarely investigated the development of learners' ability to participate in extended interactions. In this study, we are comparing requestive interactions involving learners of Arabic as a second language at four proficiency levels from beginner to advanced. Interactions took place in an institutional setting and were semi-authentic, i.e., triggered by an artificially created problem but not elicited or role played. Employing CA as a data analysis tool in an interlanguage pragmatics study, we focus on insert expansions between the request and request response as well as post-expansions subsequent to the response. With regard to insert expansions, we found that the interlocutor was affected by the learners' proficiency level in that he produced more post-first and fewer pre-second insert expansions with lower-level learners but this tendency was reversed for higher-level learners. In terms of post-expansions, lower-level learners barely used even minimal post-expansions while those were common among higher-level learners. Only advanced learners produced non-minimal post-expansions. We conclude that interlocutors use learners' display of their interactional abilities to adjust their own participantship, and that the social action of pursuing a desired response interacts with learners' second language proficiency.

Effects of Role Assignment and Proficiency Difference in Low Level Learners’ Pair Interaction in English

This study investigated whether role assignment and proficiency difference in pair work affect low level learners' production and task...

The interface between feedback type, L2 proficiency, and the nature of the linguistic target

This study investigated the interactions between feedback type, proficiency, and the nature of the linguistic target in the learning of Chinese as a foreign language. Seventy-eight learners from two large US universities participated in the study. The participants were divided into two proficiency levels based on their performance on a standardized proficiency test. At each proficiency level, they were randomly assigned to three feedback conditions: recasts, metalinguistic correction, and control. Learners in the experimental conditions received feedback on their nontargetlike use of classifiers and the perfective -le. Results revealed that for the perfective -le, recasts benefited the high-level but not low-level learners; at the high proficiency level, the effects of recasts were more sustainable than those of metalinguistic correction. With respect to classifiers, recasts were effective for learners at both proficiency levels. For both target structures, metalinguistic correction showed larger effects than recasts for the low-level learners, but the two feedback types were equally effective for the advanced learners. The results underscore the importance of taking an interactional approach to the investigation of corrective feedback. The results also undermine the commonly believed superiority of explicit feedback over implicit feedback.

A brief examination of predictors of e-learning success for novice and expert learners

As the prevalence of e-learning continues to grow in higher education settings, so too does the need for empirical research examining the antecedents of success in this environment. Previous research has suggested some characteristics that may determine success in an online course; however, little empirical evidence exists relating potential predictors of e-learning success with actual performance outcomes, particularly for different levels of learners. Students new to college may need different kinds of support to succeed in an online course compared to students with more experience in taking college-level courses, whether online or in-class, and navigating institutional resources. A primary goal of the current study is to determine the kinds of support needed to help lower-level and upper-level learners succeed in an e-learning environment. We assess several predictors of e-learning success and compare the relative effectiveness of these characteristics across novice and expert learners. Findings suggest that for lower-level students, access to technology predicted learner performance, whereas for upper-level students, motivation and self-discipline predicted learner performance. We discuss the implications of these results for e-learning instructors, instructional designers, and knowledge management practitioners.

Formulaic sequences and EAP writing development: Lexical bundles in the TOEFL iBT writing section

Formulaic sequences are widely used in academic writing and are known to be an important aspect of EAP writing development. However, little research has investigated the frequency, function and degree of fixedness of their use by ESL writers across proficiency levels. This study examines the use of lexical bundles in written responses across three proficiency levels in the TOEFL iBT (N = 480). Bundles that were identical to those found in the prompts were analyzed separately. Biber, Conrad, and Cortes' (2004) taxonomy was used to identify bundle functions. Following Biber (2009), the degree of fixedness for each of the four slots in the bundle was investigated in relation to the other three. The results indicate that lower level learners used more bundles overall but also more bundles identical to those in the prompts. In contrast, the functional analysis reveals a similar use of stance and discourse organizing bundles across proficiency levels and very few referential bundles used by any of the groups. In addition, there were few differences in fixed versus variable slot bundles across proficiency levels. These findings have important implications for instruction and assessment of EAP writing.

Second Language Listening Difficulties Perceived by Low-Level Learners

The purpose was the develop a questionnaire to identify the specific listening difficulties of second language (L2) learners. Based on previous research, a questionnaire containing 31 items was developed and administered to 1,056 college freshmen. The whole sample was split randomly into two subsamples, each containing 528 cases. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to analyse the first subsample, and six factors were extracted, explaining a total of 57.1% of variance. To test the factor model, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted with the second subsample. Various fit indices were examined. The best fitting model for the data was a 23-item, six-factor model representing text, input channel and surroundings, relevance, listener, speaker, and task. Apart from the listener factor, all components are external ones and deemed to be uncontrollable by listeners. L2 learners must take an active role in listening practice to overcome L2 listening difficulties.

Anaphora Resolution by EFL Learners

In order to understand how grammatical and thematic roles cues influence the anaphora resolution processes of Korean EFL learners and how they differ from those of native speakers of English and Korean respectively, an experiment employing a self-paced reading task was performed with native speakers of English (NSE), higher-level learners (HLL), lower-level learners (LLL) and native speakers of Korean (NSK). The results suggest that, in general, grammatical and thematic role cues seem to influence anaphora resolution processes by Korean EFL learners. It was faster for them to read sentences starting with the subject reference than the object-of-PP reference. It also took shorter time for them to read sentences with Goal reference than those with Source reference. In addition, it took longer for the learners, especially lower-level learners, to read sentences with pronouns than those with proper nouns. When comparing the data of target language and native language speakers, surprising similarities were found in both native speaker groups and higher-level learners, confirming the existence of a universal nature of language processing. The lower-level learners’ anaphora resolution processes, on the other hand, showed an independent pattern, possibly because of their limited proficiency and their dependency on semantic cues.

Learner Perspective on English Pronunciation Teaching in an EFL Context

This paper reports on an interview study with EFL learners that aimed to explore learners’ perceptions and views on English pronunciation teaching. The participants of the present study were ten EFL learners studying in the public educational system of Finland. Six of the participants were pupils attending basic education class nine, i.e. 15- to 16-year-old lower secondary level pupils. Two were primary level pupils attending basic education class four (aged 10), and two were upper secondary school pupils (aged 18). The interviews were thematic, and the learners were encouraged to speak freely about the English pronunciation teaching they were receiving and their opinions on this. In addition, they were asked to discuss their goals in English pronunciation, and to consider their pronunciation learning in class and out of class. The interviews were part of a wider study, mapping English pronunciation teaching practices in the context of Finnish schools. On the basis of the findings, the learners do not seem to have aspirations to native-like pronunciation, but rather aim at achieving intelligible and fluent speech. Only few reported an accent preference (British or American). The primary level learners expressed satisfaction with the amount of pronunciation teaching, whereas most of the lower and upper secondary level learners claimed that pronunciation teaching was insufficient. Despite their criticisms of their pronunciation teaching, the learners reported that they had learnt English pronunciation at school. In addition, many of the learners described learning pronunciation outside school, e.g. through media and personal encounters.

DECONSTRUCTING COMPREHENSIBILITY

Comprehensibility, a major concept in second language (L2) pronunciation research that denotes listeners’ perceptions of how easily they understand L2 speech, is central to interlocutors’ communicative success in real-world contexts. Although comprehensibility has been modeled in several L2 oral proficiency scales—for example, the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) or the International English Language Testing System (IELTS)—shortcomings of existing scales (e.g., vague descriptors) reflect limited empirical evidence as to which linguistic aspects influence listeners’ judgments of L2 comprehensibility at different ability levels. To address this gap, a mixed-methods approach was used in the present study to gain a deeper understanding of the linguistic aspects underlying listeners’ L2 comprehensibility ratings. First, speech samples of 40 native French learners of English were analyzed using 19 quantitative speech measures, including segmental, suprasegmental, fluency, lexical, grammatical, and discourse-level variables. These measures were then correlated with 60 native English listeners’ scalar judgments of the speakers’ comprehensibility. Next, three English as a second language (ESL) teachers provided introspective reports on the linguistic aspects of speech that they attended to when judging L2 comprehensibility. Following data triangulation, five speech measures were identified that clearly distinguished between L2 learners at different comprehensibility levels. Lexical richness and fluency measures differentiated between low-level learners; grammatical and discourse-level measures differentiated between high-level learners; and word stress errors discriminated between learners of all levels.

The Effects of English Proficiency and Text Difficulty on Collaborative Dialogue During Dictogloss

It is well known that L2 learners’ interaction during focus-on-form tasks is influenced by many factors such as proficiency, familiarity, gender, task type and so on. Of these potential factors, this study investigated how learners’ English proficiency and text difficulty affect collaborative dialogue during a dictogloss task. Twenty-four first grade middle school students were divided into six groups of four members in terms of their English proficiency: two high homogeneous groups, two intermediate homogeneous groups, and two high-intermediate mixed groups. The groups were engaged in two dictogloss tasks targeting present and past tense, once with a relatively easy text and once with a more difficult text. Their performances were recorded and analyzed in terms of the amount, type (word, sentence, or discourse level), and outcome (correct, incorrect, or unresolved) of focus-on-form episodes (FFEs). The results revealed that all groups tended to focus on forms including target forms. The mixed and intermediate groups showed the most frequent FFEs and the better resolution of them in dictogloss with an easy text. When the text became difficult, however, the number of FFEs sharply decreased for these groups, indicating that the lower level learners were more sensitive to text difficulty in dictogloss. Also collaborative orientation seemed to be more important than proficiency difference in interaction. These findings suggest that if the teacher selects a proper level of text and promotes a collaborative orientation among learners, middle school students can contribute to and benefit from a dictogloss task regardless of their English proficiency.