Native-like Competence Research Articles

Multisemiotics, Race, and Academic Literacies

This study examines the trajectories of two multilingual, racialized academic writing faculty, presenting how we brought our Southern onto-epistemologies (e.g., Santos, 2016) to curriculum, teaching, and assessment. Although plurilingualism has become a significant dimension of Canadian higher education (Marshall, 2020), monolingual norms that emphasize native-like competence continue to be a mainstream discourse in many academic writing courses. Building on the recent raciolinguistic critique (Rosa & Flores, 2017) of the lack of discussion of racism in academic literacies discourse, we acknowledge that academic literacies continues to force plurilingual, international students into a white subject position. Acknowledging the tension between the monolingual ideal and multilingual realities, we explore how two plurilingual, non-white faculty challenge an academic writing tradition that is constructed by the white listening subject. By co-creating duoethnographic narratives that provide insight into our complex biographical journeys as cycles of becoming (Thibault, 2020), our story shows how teaching academic writing is not simply teaching a skillset but involves constant negotiation between students’ and teachers’ lived experiences. Through this process, we conceive of teaching academic literacies as both an ideological construct and a multisemiotic process that involves multiple histories and meaning-making resources across diverse time and place scales.

Lexical encoding of second language tones in English learners of Mandarin

The study investigates how native and non-native differences in tone perception influence lexical encoding of second language (L2) tones. Previous work shows that tone language listeners perceived tones as phonemic categories while non-tone language listeners relied more on psychoacoustic cues such as pitch height to discriminate stimulus tones. However, little is known about the influence of such differences in perception on L2 tonal encoding. In the present study, two experiments were conducted with nineteen English learners of Mandarin and 20 Mandarin native speakers. Experiment 1 was an ABX task. Results showed that while native speakers’ overall performance was superior to L2 listeners’, both groups poorly discriminated tone pairs with shared tone contours (i.e., T2-T3). Experiment 2 was a medium-lag repetition priming task. In the repetition condition, significant facilitations were observed in both language groups. In the minimal-tone-pair condition, despite T2-T3 contrasts posing greater challenge for both groups to accurately distinguish than other tonal contrasts as shown in Experiment 1, positive priming was observed only in the L2 group. The findings from the two experiments suggest that the L2 listeners, although quite proficient in Mandarin, have yet to achieve native-like competence in regard to lexical tones.

Delayed Exposure to Second Language Acquisition: The Robustness of Critical Period Hypothesis and the Limitations of the Plasticity Theory

Studies of language acquisition have shown that language learning ability declines with age. It has been documented that the overwhelming majority of learners who begin the process of second language (L2) learning after passing the critical period — after a certain age – cannot attain native-like competence (underlying knowledge of language) at the end state. There is a universal folk belief, shared by almost all psycholinguists, that at an early age, the brain is plastic; it can modify its own structure, organization and function as a direct consequence of experiences and learning. According to this belief, the plasticity of the brain fades with age and with the increasing specialisation of the different hemispheres and areas of the brain. However, recently neuroscientists, equipped with the complementary aid of brain neuroimaging, have discovered that mature brain is far from being fixed as previously thought; it has the ability to continuously adapt its structure and function based on internal and external environmental changes and/or input such as experience, ageing, illness, injury and learning, meaning that the brain remains plastic throughout life. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to illustrate that the theory about the loss of brain plasticity during natural maturation is not valid in explaining the question why L2 learning is affected by delayed exposure to a language? It should be mentioned here that until now, the overwhelming majority of L2 researchers tend to think of plasticity as a phenomenon confined to early development; and therefore, evidence supporting plasticity is generally ignored.

English as a Lingua Franca in an Indonesian Multilingual Setting: Pre-Service English Teachers’ Perceptions

The notion of English as Lingua Franca (ELF) has challenged the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) paradigm, which mainly aimed to attain native-like competence. Generally, ELF-informed teaching promotes creative use of English in a multilingual environment to meet communication needs. It also emphasises intelligibility in ELF spoken communication rather than pursuing standard English only. This study aimed to examine the perceptions of Indonesian pre-service English teachers regarding ELF. Using the sequential explanatory design, this study distributed close-ended questionnaire items to 150 participants in the first stage of data collection, followed by Focus Group Discussion (FGD) with five participants in the second stage. Descriptive statistics and thematic analyses were used to explore the research data quantitatively and qualitatively. The results of this study demonstrated that the participants still favoured the English native-speaker model in teaching English. They believed that students should imitate English native speakers in communication. The findings of the qualitative data analysis, however, showed that their perceptions towards ELF were still constrained by the ideological rankings between native English and other varieties of English. This study suggests that ELF-informed teaching should be introduced and reflected in teacher preparatory programmes, so that it could develop future English teachers’ awareness of the importance of implementing the principles of ELF in the Indonesian educational setting.

Future Saudi female teachers' perceptions of native-like English pronunciation and English as a Lingua Franca

PurposeThe present study aims to examine the attitudes of future Saudi female English as a Foreign Language (EFL) student-teachers toward English native-like pronunciation to investigate their misconceptions about English as a Lingua Franca (ELF).Design/methodology/approachThe researcher used a questionnaire to collect the data for the study.FindingsThe results indicate that students and teachers have positive attitudes toward native-like pronunciation. However, the results also show a realization on the participants’ part about the status of ELF. The study concludes that although they have positive attitudes toward native-like English pronunciation, students use ELF and recognize that such pronunciation is not essential for global communication. The study results show that the participants are aware of ELF, filling a vacuum in the literature about how Saudi students perceive ELF. It encourages EFL teachers, syllabus designers, developers and researchers to provide more information on this topic and stresses international communicative ability, as ELF speakers require.Research limitations/implications As the study has some limitations that could be addressed in future research, other researchers should address these deficiencies in future studies. One limitation is that the study only involved Saudi female future teachers. Further researchers can investigate male Saudi future EFL teachers. Another limitation is that the study focused on future teachers of English in Saudi Arabia in only one institution. Other Saudi EFL teachers and other Arab future teachers could be further investigated to reject or support the study’s findings. Additionally, a more detailed demographic background could be specified in further research for more comprehensive results. In addition, similar studies could be conducted with participants from different EFL-speaking countries. Another limitation of this study is that it covers the attitudes of EFL future teachers toward native-like pronunciation and indirectly investigates their views on ELF. More research is needed to determine how EFL learners and teachers perceive ELF. The actual use of English globally could become more enlightened with further study.Practical implicationsThis study’s findings have implications for instructors, syllabus designers and researchers. The results suggest that EFL instructors, syllabus designers and researchers should focus more on international communicative competence than native-like competence. While designing course materials or teaching, teachers and syllabus developers should be fully aware of the status of ELF. Designers of syllabi should include conversations among speakers from different linguistic backgrounds. Effective communication is a priority. Students should become more familiar with global communication outside the classroom and be prepared to engage in it.Social implicationsStudents should become more familiar with global communication outside the classroom and be prepared to engage in it.Originality/valueNative varieties of English have gained popularity over the years among EFL teachers and learners. However, researchers have debated the importance of EFL students achieving native-like English proficiency.

Nativeness versus intelligibility as goal of English pronunciation teaching in China: Changing attitudes in national syllabi and curriculum standards

Since the 1990s, the emphasis on intelligibility as a goal in pronunciation teaching rather than near-native or nativelike competence has been reinforced by the increasing use of English as a lingua franca. The insight of the intelligibility principle has greatly impressed researchers in China’s English education, but has “very limited and weak” impacts on English pronunciation teaching and learning in China. English education in China has been systematically conducted from schools to universities under the direction of national syllabi and curriculum standards issued by the Ministry of Education. Using the documentary research method, this paper, the first try of its kind, takes a historical look at China’s national syllabi and curriculum standards for schools issued after 1949, focusing on the conception of the nature and the role of pronunciation and pronunciation teaching, pronunciation goals, teacher’s role, as well as requirements or suggestions about what to teach and how to teach. By tracing the process of developments in pronunciation teaching notions and principles that were and/or are officially advocated in China, the paper reveals two important facts. First, the English national syllabi and curriculum standards have encompassed both the nativeness principle and the intelligibility principle, though implicitly giving dominance to the former one, which in part accounts for the favor for the nativeness principle in formal English education, especially in schools, in China. Second, with the notion of English as a lingua franca adopted in the syllabi and curriculum standards, the intelligibility principle has been gaining more and more weight. Consequently, by elaborating that the two principles are by nature not incompatible, it is proposed that the current curriculum standards go further to take balanced attitudes towards the two principles so as to lead Chinese English teachers and students to set more realistic and instrumental-pragmatic pronunciation goals in line with varying English learning purposes. The findings and the proposal could be adopted by teachers and learners so as to change the school reality and may shed light on future relevant revisions of the current national English curriculum standards, teaching material development, teacher training, and pronunciation teaching methodology research.

Fossilization in Second Language Performance: The Concern of Ultimate Attainment

The issue of fossilization has been a concern for researchers, in the area of second language acquisition, many of whom have investigated its possible causes, in what form they appear, and at what age. However, it is evident that second language learners fail to reach native-like competence in the target language. Consequently, this study examines the issues of fossilization in relation to ultimate attainment. It compares two main hypotheses, pointing out their underlying focus. The methodology used in this study is documentary derived from extensive reading of extant literatures in the area of second language acquisition. The findings, here, point to the fact that the crux of the discussion on fossilization is ultimate attainment drawing from the UG theory. Finally, the study concludes, aligning with Han’s position, that fossilization is inevitable, and also that it has great significance on second language acquisition.

A Sociolinguistic Assessment of Language Shift in Hyam

This paper dubbed “A Sociolinguistic Assessment of language shift among Hyam speakers”
 examines the sociolinguistic concepts of language shift and its resultant effect of language death or extinction. This is against the backdrop that like many other minority languages, the Hyam language is still in competition with other more sophisticated and standard linguistic codes. To achieve this aim, a total of two hundred (200) structured questionnaires are administered to both the home and the Diaspora populations respectively. findings reveal that even though people speak the language with their children and still have native-like competence, a greater number of them still speak or prefer other language varieties. They equally do not use the language with their friends or non-native speakers because it is not mutually intelligible. Nevertheless, the degree of solidarity and loyalty for the Hyam language are still very high regardless. It is however disturbing to say that the language is not standardized, literatures are very much lacking in the language, making teaching and learning in it somewhat challenging; and it is still incapable of performing modern functions typical of a metropolitan variety. It is on this light that this research is quick to state, and also by way of recommendation, that if something is not done soon and fast particularly in the area of instruction, documentation and standardization, the shift though gradual for now, may become irreversible and language death may therefore become inevitable.

Interlanguage Theory Revisited: Implications for the Classroom

The study aimed to investigate the development of learners’ interlanguage. It also tried to track the sources of the errors that they committed. To discover these errors, the researchers adopted a mixed methods approach. The findings revealed that the participants involved actively in learning the target language and their endeavors manifested all types of errors which may indicate that some of these errors are systematic and universal. The errors were classified according to their sources and their impact on students learning. The findings also revealed that the shortcomings of grammatical knowledge and the lack of exposure to the target language might have a negative impact on students’ interlanguage and the production of native-like competence. Some of the errors indicated that the mother tongue interferes, while other errors indicated interlingual and intralingual strategies effect and attempts of simplification and miss-use of grammatical rules. Some suggestions for further research and pedagogical implications were provided.

Agents Strongly Preferred: ERP Evidence from Natives and Non-Natives Processing Intransitive Sentences in Spanish.

Are non-native speakers able to process their second language in a native-like way? The present study used the Event-Related Potentials’ (ERPs) method to address this issue by focusing (1) on agent vs. agentless intransitive sentences and (2) on person vs. number agreement morphology. For that purpose, native and high proficiency and early non-native speakers of Spanish were tested while processing intransitive sentences containing grammatical and ungrammatical subject–verb agreement. Results reveal greater accuracy in the agent (unergative) condition as compared with the agentless (unaccusative) condition and different ERP patterns for both types of verbs in all participants, suggesting a larger processing cost for the agentless sentences than for the agentive ones. These effects were more pronounced in the native group as compared with the non-native one in the early time window (300–500 ms). Differences between person and number agreement processing were also found at both behavioral and electrophysiological levels, indicating that those morphological features are distinctively processed. Importantly, this pattern of results held for both native and non-native speakers, thus suggesting that native-like competence is attainable given early Age of Acquisition (AoA), frequent use and high proficiency.

The acquisition of adverbs in child L3 French in Canada

This paper1 focuses on the acquisition of adverbs in French L3 and aims to identify the possible role of transfer in this particular linguistic context. The data come from children born in Canada who speak Romanian as a heritage language and are exposed to English as the societal language as well as to French (L3) in school. The variable under scrutiny is the position of adverbs in light of Cinque’s (1999) universal hierarchy. The results indicate that children have nativelike competence for adverb placement in the three languages; however, some non-convergent uses arise in French signaling possible transfer of other parametric settings from Romanian. We suggest that this is a case of non-facilitative transfer due to structural similarity between Romanian and French.

Language Variation in Mandarin as a Heritage Language: Subject Personal Pronouns

Abstract Because of limited language input, different dominant languages, and learners’ differing backgrounds, the acquisition of heritage languages is distinguished from the acquisition of L1 and L2. Few studies of Chinese as a Heritage Language (CHL) have explored whether students can acquire native-like sociolinguistic competence and language-specific variables with educational input. Based on a sociolinguistic variationist perspective, this study investigates the acquisition of variation between null and overt subject personal pronouns (SPP s) by heritage learners in an undergraduate-level Mandarin program. A total of 11,970 tokens were collected through classroom observation, sociolinguistic interviews, and narratives. Measuring mixed-effects logistic regression with Rbrul (Johnson, 2009), results show that the overall usage pattern of SPP s by CHL students largely resembled that in the input provided by the language program. Results also demonstrate that linguistic constraints including coreference, person and number, and verb type, and social factors such as discourse context, first languages, course level, and age of arrival had a significant effect on SPP expression by CHL learners. Implications for CHL development and variationist studies in heritage languages are discussed.

Am I bilingual? Reporting on the self-reflections of Japanese EFL learners

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: Through use of a written questionnaire, this article examines the personal opinions of tertiary-level Japanese intermediate EFL students regarding the definition and process of becoming bilingual. Design/methodology/approach: This article takes a critical applied linguistic approach to examining the perspectives of emergent bilingual Japanese EFL learners regarding their own status as bilingual speakers in Japan. Data and analysis: This study employed a questionnaire involving both Likert and open perspective questions. The subsequent data analysis involved quantitative analysis of the Likert questions and qualitative analysis of the open-ended questions, according to emerging themes. Findings/conclusions: The results suggest that most of the Japanese emergent bilingual participants did not view themselves as being bilingual, and instead considered the notion of bilingualism to be an out-of-reach goal at their current level. This article suggests the need to educate foreign language (FL) learners of their emergent bilingual status so they may dismiss the idea of attaining native-like competence and embrace their status as competent emergent bilinguals. Originality: Whereas many studies examine (emergent) bilingualism from the perspective of minorities learning a majority language, this article has expanded upon the current body of bilingualism literature by investigating the perspectives of bilingualism from speakers of a majority language learning a minority language, as is the case in all FL education environments. Significance/implications: This article provides an insight into the issue of FL learners’ lack of recognition of their own emergent bilingualism. It brings attention to the need for FL teachers to inform students of their emergent bilingual status to leverage their bilingual languaging strategies so that they can make meaning, express themselves, and learn in their ever-increasing bilingual worlds.

Is Adult Second Language Acquisition Defective?

There is a large literature showing that adult L2 learners, in contrast to children, often fail to acquire native-like competence in the second language. Because of such age effects, adult L2 learning is often viewed as “fundamentally different” from child acquisition and defective in some way. However, adult L2 learners do not always do worse than child learners. Several studies (e.g., Sasaki, 1997; Dąbrowska and Street, 2006; Street, 2017; Dąbrowska, 2019) found considerable overlap between L1 and L2 speakers’ performance on tasks tapping morphosyntactic knowledge. Crucially, these studies used grammatical comprehension tasks (e.g., picture selection) to test mastery of “functional” grammar (i.e., grammatical contrasts which correspond to a clear difference in meaning, such as the assignment of agent and patient roles in sentences with noncanonical word order and quantifier scope). In contrast, most ultimate attainment studies (e.g., Johnson and Newport, 1989; Flege et al., 1999; DeKeyser, 2000; DeKeyser et al., 2010) used a grammaticality judgment task (GST) which assessed mastery of “decorative” grammar, i.e., grammatical morphemes such as tense and agreement markers which make relatively little contribution to the meaning conveyed by a sentence. In this study, we directly compared native speakers, late immersion learners, and classroom foreign language learners on tasks assessing both aspects of grammar. As in earlier studies, we found significant differences between native speakers and both non-native groups in performance on “decorative” grammar, particularly when performance was assessed using spoken rather than written stimuli. However, the differences in performance on the “functional” grammar task were much smaller and statistically non-significant. Furthermore, even in the “decorative” grammar task, there was more overlap between native speakers and late L2 learners than reported in earlier research. We argue that this is because earlier studies underestimated the amount of variation found in native speakers.

Voices of learners in Thai ELT classrooms: a wake up call towards teaching English as a lingua franca

ABSTRACT This study aims to identify students’ attitudes towards teaching English in a lingua franca context. The data were collected using a semi-structured interview with 25 undergraduate students studying English across five universities in Southern Thailand. Based on the qualitative content analysis approach, the findings revealed that most of the participants congruently agreed that the prime target of ELT is to prepare language learners for communication that involve interlocutors of multicultural backgrounds, and not to force them to adopt native-like English competence. Hence, the call for ELT curriculums to be revised. New targets should not be monocentric with excessive Inner Circle contents and cultures. More local content should be used as they help learners associate inputs with familiar cultures. Furthermore, teachers should raise learners’ awareness of existing English varieties and accents, and promote a flexible mindset to accommodate differences in communication.

(Mis) understanding your native language: Regional accent impedes processing of information status.

Native-speaker listeners constantly predict upcoming units of speech as part of language processing, using various cues. However, this process is impeded in second-language listeners, as well as when the speaker has an unfamiliar accent. Whereas previous research has largely concentrated on the pronunciation of individual segments in foreign-accented speech, we show that regional accent impedes higher levels of language processing, making native listeners' processing resemble that of second-language listeners.In Experiment 1, 42 native speakers of Canadian English followed instructions spoken in British English to move objects on a screen while their eye movements were tracked. Native listeners use prosodic cues to information status to disambiguate between two possible referents, a new and a previously mentioned one, before they have heard the complete word. By contrast, the Canadian participants, similarly to second-language speakers, were not able to make full use of prosodic cues in the way native British listeners do.In Experiment 2, 19 native speakers of Canadian English rated the British English instructions used in Experiment 1, as well as the same instructions spoken by a Canadian imitating the British English prosody. While information status had no effect for the Canadian imitations, the original stimuli received higher ratings when prosodic realization and information status of the referent matched than for mismatches, suggesting a native-like competence in these offline ratings.These findings underline the importance of expanding psycholinguistic models of second language/dialect processing and representation to include both prosody and regional variation.

Implications of English as an International Language for Language Pedagogy

The position of the English language in the world has recently underwent an enormous shift. The global spread of English has altered its status from being a homogeneous and standard language spoken by a few powerful countries into an international language or lingua franca spoken by a wide variety of speakers around the world (Llurda, 2014). The unprecedented global demand, use, and appropriation of English as an international language (EIL) necessitates a profession-wide response to English language learning, teaching, teacher education, assessment, and policy. The international status of English and increase in the number of EIL learners require a teaching agenda that incorporates pedagogical approaches that teach English based on EIL principles (Matsuda, 2017). The current study attempts to discuss the implications of EIL on issues related to language pedagogy, such as culture and intercultural competence in EIL, native-like competence, English teachers in the EIL pedagogy, language assessment in EIL and EIL teacher education. The studies show that EIL as a means of intercultural communication in a wide range of contexts calls for a reconceptualisation of language pedagogy It is concluded that despite the extensive discussions on the role of students’ first language culture for EIL learners, English textbooks and classrooms continue to rely on the target culture and ignore the students’ own culture. Therefore, EIL has yet to be fully incorporated language education despite extensive studies that have been conducted on its role.

Syntax-Pragmatik-Schnittstelle am Beispiel der Fokussierung im Spanisch-Erwerb deutschsprachiger Lerner

Abstract As a phenomenon at the syntax-pragmatics interface, focus marking can cause particular difficulties in adult L2 acquisition and may never be fully acquired, whereas native-like competence can be achieved with formal syntactic properties. The present study examines this so-called Interface Hypothesis by analysing the strategies that monolingual German-speaking learners use to mark information focus in Spanish. Analyses of the test results show that around 97 % of the test subjects prefer to maintain the unmarked constituent order and mark focus in situ, irrespective of their proficiency level. In comparison with Spanish natives (Gabriel 2010, Heidinger 2014), the results show a divergence from the behaviour of native speakers, as the latter use various strategies. This indicates that the German-speaking learners do not make use of the variation of focus marking strategies the Spanish language provides, but rather adhere to in situ focalization, which is also the dominant focus-marking strategy in German. Furthermore, the results of the present study highlight that strategies for marking focus are scarcely taken into account in language teaching classes.

Learning Kiswahili as a Second Language for Iraqw-Speaking People: Explaining the Reasons for Error

Learning Kiswahili as a second language among the Iraqw community has been influenced by various errors committed by the learners. This situation causes various learners of Kiswahili in this community not to achieve native-like competence in the target language. However, the sources of these errors are not explicitly identified. Many studies draw on different perspectives to describe the sources of errors for L2 learners. For instance, Lado (1957) explains that many errors for L2 learners are due to the interference of L1 while Corder (1967) explains that many errors for L2 learners are caused by the learners themselves since they wrongly use rules of their L2. The findings revealed that the Kiswahili learners among the Iraqw community commit different errors in various contexts, namely concordial agreement marking, insertion and deletion of affixes. It has also been revealed that the causes of those errors include the environments that the learners encounter, the structural difference between L1 and L2, the effects of L1 on L2, lack of enough learning and teaching facilities for Kiswahili as L2, and teachers are not well equipped with Kiswahili content and methodologies for teaching and learning Kiswahili as L2.

Adverbial Markers of Modality in Norwegian L1 and L2 Conversations

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to investigate how second language speakers of Norwegian (henceforth Norwegian L2 speakers) differ in their use of modality expressions from native speakers (L1 speakers). As modality is a very broad subject, the main focus of the study is limited to one-word modal adverbs, such askanskje‘maybe’, and modal particles such asjo. The study compares the frequency of using different types of modal adverbials by L1 and L2 speakers, and their syntactic position. The implications of the study are two-fold. First of all, it is to contribute to the studies of the field of modality in Norwegian. The second implication is didactic, as describing the use of modal adverbials in Norwegian conversation can help devise right teaching materials to allow second language users achieve a more native-like competence in this respect.