Foreign Language Research Research Articles

The problems of linguoculturology discussed on the pages of the “Russian Language Studies” journal

The article presents a review of linguocultural materials published in recent years in the scientific journal “Russian Language Studies” (in the past it was called “The Bulletin of Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia. Series: Russian and Foreign Languages Research and Teaching”). The author concentrates on the concept of “linguoculturology”, its origin, development and the main approaches to its study. The analysis of the materials published in the journal makes it possible to focus on the articles dealing with the comparative, cognitive, applied linguoculturology, linguoculturology of ethnos and subethnos. The author underlines the importance of the linguocultural approach to the analysis of the significance of the cultural code, and the specific features of the national verbalization related to the vision of the world around the linguistic personality. A number of publications deal with applied linguoculturology that is somehow connected with the culture-oriented linguistics. The author believes that it is reasonable to use a linguocultural approach in the process of writing textbooks for bilingual students and in the study of linguistic units of different levels. Additionally, this approach can help researchers identify the place and role of the Russian language in linguoculturology. The author argues that the materials presented in the journal cover a wide range of linguocultural studies and enrich linguoculturology from the point of view of theory and practice.

Editorial

The present issue of Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching closes the seventh year of the existence of the journal. It is fully warranted to say that 2017 has been yet another successful year for at least three reasons. First, the number of submissions has increased considerably and so has their quality with the effect that SSLLT has become even more established in the field. Second, and closely related to the previous point, the number of downloads of individual papers has been on the rise as well, which must have translated into in the growing number of citations, a metric that is illustrative of the impact the journal is having in the field. Third, we have finally managed to move SSLLT to an electronic platform, with the entire process of submitting, reviewing, processing, editing and proofing papers being handled by the PRESSto publishing system maintained by Adam Mickiewicz University. The transition could not have come at a better time as dealing with the growing influx of submissions was becoming less and less manageable, which was beginning to constitute a threat to the credibility of the journal. I am hopeful that the move to the new platform, with all of its useful functionalities, will not only result it more speedy and efficient processing of the submissions, but will also make it easier for us to find the most suitable reviewers and even further enhance the visibility of SSLLT and its impact in the domain of research in learning and teaching foreign languages.

Crowd-authorizing: How Knowledge Sharing Economy Reshapes Publishing Industry

This study focuses on publishing industry in the context of knowledge sharing economy. The way of communication via internet makes it possible and effortless to share experience, knowledge and information with others. This phenomenon is changing and reshaping the value chain of traditional publishing industry, in terms of its content producing, marketing and consuming. In this research, how sharing economy affects publishing industry would be addressed. The methods of multi-case study and in-depth interview would be employed. The in-depth interviews are taken within China Children’s Press & Publication Group, Post & Telecom Press, and Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press, which belong to general interest publishing, and educational publishing respectively. How could publishing company or self-publisher adapt to the changing atmosphere would be suggested as well in this research.

Application of Task-based Instruction to College English Reading Teaching for Non-English Majors in Leshan Normal University, Sichuan, China

First raised in 1980s, Task-based Instruction (TBI) is an effective teaching method advocated by many foreign language researchers, focusing on the use of authentic language and on asking students to do various kinds of meaningful tasks through the target language. Based on a study carried out in Leshan Normal University, the writer proves that the application of TBI to college English reading teaching can greatly intrigue non-English majors, help them build their self-confidence in English study, cultivate their sense of cooperation in the process of carrying out classroom activities and tasks with their classmates and thus to improve non-English majors’ reading ability. In addition, some suggestions to TBI are also presented for further studies.

Reducing student teachers' foreign language pronunciation anxiety through psycho-social training

Foreign language anxiety (FLA) is one of the most examined affective variables in the field of foreign language (FL) learning and researchers have verified FLA reducing strategies of various kinds. In this study, psycho-social training as an FLA reducing strategy was applied to a group of TEFL students (experimental group) combined with intensive English pronunciation training (experimental and control groups). Psycho-social training is a non-therapeutic intervention program of active social learning that should help individuals cope with stressful situations. A self-reported Foreign Language Pronunciation Anxiety (FLPA) questionnaire was used to examine the students' English pronunciation anxiety before and after the training and the students' English pronunciation was evaluated before and after the training. Based on the results of the statistical analysis it can be stated that the levels of pronunciation anxiety and pronunciation quality were similar in both groups before the training. After the training, anxiety was significantly lower and pronunciation quality was significantly higher in the experimental group.

Word Skipping in Reading English as a Foreign Language: Evidence from Eye Tracking

Word Skipping in Reading English as a Foreign Language: Evidence from Eye Tracking

Promoting a Teacher Education Research-Oriented Curriculum for Initial Teacher Training in English as a Foreign Language

AbstractResearch-oriented programs related to pre-service teacher education are practically non-existent in many countries. Since in Portugal we now have a stable legal system for initial teacher training, how can we help these countries to respond to their teacher training needs and accomplish these same standards? How can we create an international program at MA level that could serve such an objective? What are the research priorities for teachers in primary and secondary education? I will claim for a new general research policy using small-scale research projects in foreign language teaching (FLT), which illustrated a turning point in advanced research in foreign languages teacher training. Presently, researchers no longer narrow their inquiries into linguistic questions or school and student-centered actions. Instead, they focus on a range of issues such as teacher-centered actions, beliefs and policies, and aspects of FLT such as literacy education, special educational needs or methods for teaching gifted students. Despite a lack of funding at all levels, many research projects in teacher education have been undertaken, and new areas have been explored, such as didactic transposition, literary and information literacies, intercultural learning, corpora in FLT, new information and communication technologies in FLT, interlingual inferencing, national standards for foreign language education, FLT for specific purposes, digital narratives in education, CLIL, assessment, and language learning behaviors. This small sample of the many areas covered proves that advanced research in teacher education can also be very useful to promote the growing interest in further internationalization in other sciences (beyond human and social areas) traditionally linked to politics, business and industry (computing, chemistry, biology, medicine, etc.), something that can only be attained by focusing on multilingualism, multi-literacy and lifelong learning.

Students’ Strategic Reactions to the Role of Native Language as a Medium of Instruction in English Classrooms

Code-switching is the use of two languages simultaneously or interchangeably and is commonly seen with hesitation in foreign language learning classes. Hence, second or foreign language teachers and researchers have been concerned in decreasing the level of code-switching in the EFL classes. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating students’ attitude towards teachers’ code-switching. In order to conduct the study, the quantitative research method was used. The data was collected from a sample of 219 students (male and female, with different age level) who were selected randomly for the purpose of the study. Through a questionnaire, the students’ attitude was investigated. The results revealed that students held a positive attitude towards teacher’s code-switching. More than half of the students believed teachers had better code-switching to enhance students' understanding. In addition, they believed that code-switching was more useful to teach grammar and writing skills as compared with teaching speaking skill.

Research on English language teaching and learning in Argentina (2007–2013)

In this article we review research on English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching and learning published in Argentina between 2007 and 2013. This is the first review of a Latin American country in this series. Argentina has a century-long tradition of training EFL teachers but a comparatively shorter though fruitful history of foreign language (FL) research. The article examines 88 articles that appeared in locally published peer-reviewed conference proceedings, academic journals and one edited collection. The contributions cover a wide spectrum of topics that illustrates prominent research interests in the country, such as the role of imagination, emotion and affect in language comprehension and production, intercultural dimensions, FL teacher education and development, content and language integrated learning (CLIL), computer-assisted language learning (CALL), the teaching of English for academic or specific purposes, testing, assessment and evaluation, and materials design and course development. The review includes work by specialists whose research may not be known outside the boundaries of Argentina but who produce high-quality situated research that accounts for the specificity of the local educational setting.

The Effectiveness of Strategy-based Vocabulary Instruction on Iranian EFL Learners' Recall

This study investigated the preferred vocabulary strategies, used by Iranian intermediate EFL learners and also the effect of strategy-based vocabulary instruction on students’ recall once immediately after the instruction period and once after a time interval (two weeks). In order to determine the learners’ level of proficiency, NET (Nelson English Test) was administered to the intended population. Those students, whose score fell within the range of 28-33 were labeled as intermediate. To identify the learners’ preferred vocabulary learning strategies, a questionnaire known as VOLSI (Vocabulary Learning Strategies Inventory) was given to them. The results indicated that there was not any significant difference between the mean scores of the participants in the control group and the participants in the experimental group (0.46). In simple words, the two groups were homogenous in terms of lexical knowledge at the beginning of the course. With regard to the obtained results for the two post-test phases, it was found that the post-treatment means of the two groups were significantly different in terms of recalling vocabulary. Taken together, the findings of this study support the foreign language research literature on vocabulary strategy training.

(Re)Searching culture in foreign language textbooks, or the politics of hide and seek

ABSTRACTTextbooks are curriculum artefacts that embody particular ideologies and legitimise specific types of knowledge [Apple, M. W. (1982). Education and power. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul; Apple, M. W., & Christian-Smith, L. K. (1991). The politics of the textbook. In M. W. Apple & L. K. Christian-Smith (Eds.), The politics of the textbook (pp. 1–21). London, NY: Routledge]. As the general public tends to associate them with truth rather than opinion [Meyer, C. J., & Rosenblatt, P. C. (1987). Feminist analysis of family textbooks. Journal of Family Issues, 8(2), 247–252. Retrieved from: http://jfi.sagepub.com/], textbooks can contribute to the circulation of particular representations and stereotypes. In the past decades, there has been an increasing interest in analysing the ways in which textbooks (re)produce representations of history, ethnic groups, minorities and gender differences, to name a few. Foreign language research has focused on the representation of foreign and native culture(s), given that this term has been central in debates in the areas of second and foreign language theories [Weninger, C., & Kiss, T. (2013). Culture in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) textbooks: A semiotic approach. TESOL Quarterly, 47(4), 694–716. Retrieved from http://www.tesol.org/read-and-publish/journals/tesol-quarterly]. Using a qualitative synthesis research approach, this paper analyses a pool of studies on the representation of culture in foreign language textbooks to answer a main question: How do language textbooks represent foreign culture? Findings will contribute to understanding how textbook discourse favours some representations of culture and why it does so. In turn, they may also inform teaching and learning practices, such as the actual use of language textbooks in the classroom, in which teachers’ and students’ agency is undeniable.

Chinese EFL Learners’ Public Speaking Skills: An Investigation of Impromptu Speeches at the “FLTRP Cup” English Speaking Contest in the Light of Communication Models

AbstractThe current study applied classic communication models to investigating 34 laureate impromptu speeches at the 2010 and 2011 “FLTRP (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press) Cup” English Speaking Contest, one of the most influential of its kind in China, to identify the features of public speaking skills of Advanced Chinese EFL learners. The speech scripts and video excerpts from the subsequent manuscript collection with the CD-Rom published by FLTRP were studied. Lucas’ framework of speech communication process was borrowed to bridge elements of the communication models and speech delivery process. Three key aspects of the speakers’ encoding endeavors were under close examination: the verbal preferences, the non-verbal preferences, and the topic selection for exemplification. It was found that successful speakers demonstrated a clear and strong audience orientation. They chose more first person pronouns, fewer abstract words, a controlled number of dependent clauses, clear transition words, and limited figures of speech. They used very few verbal fillers, slips of tongue, a moderate speech rate and varied tone inflections. The speakers also showed distinctive features in gestures, eye contact and facial expressions. They employed anecdotes which shared a common field of experience. Pedagogical implications on the teaching of public speaking were discussed.

A Comparative Analysis of the Generic Structure of RA English Abstracts in Chinese-Medium and English-Medium Linguistics Journals

<p>This paper aims to analyze the generic structure of English abstracts in both Chinese-medium and English-medium linguistics journals. A total of 40 abstracts published in the year of 2011-2013 are collected randomly, with 20 written by native English speakers from <em>Applied Linguistics </em>and <em>Language</em> and the other 20 by Chinese scholars from <em>Journal of</em> <em>Foreign Languages</em> and <em>Foreign Language Teaching and Research</em>. The BIMRD/C model is adopted in this study as distinct differences can be found in the two corpora in terms of the Background move. Three major differences are revealed. Firstly, the abstracts written by native English speakers are more complete in structure than those by Chinese writers as they tend to omit the Background move and the Discussion/Conclusion move. Secondly, most Chinese writers prefer to combine the Method move with the Introduction move and put it at the very beginning of the abstract, while native writers tend to use the independent and the integrated Method nearly equally. Thirdly, in the Results move, Chinese scholars tend to objectively report their study results in detail by <em>“Results indicate that…”</em>, sometimes listing them, while native English writers sometimes choose to highlight their research results by patterns of <em>“we find (show, propose) that” </em>and<em> “I propose”</em> although most of them also use such objective patterns to present their research results. This study is especially helpful for those Chinese writers who hope to publish their paper in international journals.</p>

The Impacts of Presenting New Words in Semantically-Related Sets on Vocabulary Learning

This paper mainly explores the impacts of presenting new words in semantically-related (SR) sets on vocabulary learning. 38 students from two classes of Grade 2 in Taiyuan Foreign Language School (Senior High School Section) participate in the whole process. The same vocabulary items unknown to all students are taught to them in 4 lessons. The difference between the experimental group and control group is that words are taught in SR sets in the former and in the latter words belonging to the same SR sets are taught in different lessons. Independent Samples T-test is employed to see if there would be a significant difference between the two groups’ performance in the English-Chinese translation tests of those words. The result shows that there doesn’t exit a significant difference between the two groups in SHT test, but in the LT test two weeks later, SU group performs significantly better than SR group. The research findings may provide some enlightenment for foreign language researchers. Keywords: Semantically-related (SR) sets, Senior high school students, Semantic field theory, Interference theory

A noção de intercultural e o ensino-aprendizagem de línguas estrangeiras no Brasil: representações e realidades do FLE

A despeito da história da humanidade fundir-se com a história das línguas, os estudos relativos ao campo das ciências da linguagem datam de uma época muito recente. Fonte de pertencimento ou exclusão, análise comportamental dentre outros, inúmeros são os elementos que compõem o vasto campo das ciências humanas. Situada nesse contexto, a reflexão epistemológica acerca das Línguas Estrangeiras (LE) repercute assim como signo da contemporaneidade. Esse fato é potencializado por seu caráter interdisciplinar, tornando muito tênue as linhas que delimitam a pesquisa de campo linguístico nas LE. O grau de variantes do objeto – Língua – torna a pesquisa sobre ensino-aprendizagem altamente complexa pela subjetividade que encerra, fazendo com que a metodologia de pesquisa nesse campo do saber implique necessariamente discorrer sobre noções tais como a representação e o intercultural. Tal dimensão permite que sejam delineados alguns contornos para o desenvolvimento da pesquisa linguística, estabelecendo-se interface com o processo de ensino e aprendizagem em LE. Cuq (2010), Puren (2009), Courtillon (2003) e De Carlo (1998) são alguns dos referenciais teóricos sobre os quais se vale a presente reflexão. Perspectivadas pela ótica do letramento, serão desveladas representações a fim de apontar aspectos relativos à realidade do ensino do Francês como Língua Estrangeira (FLE) atualmente no Brasil.

La investigación colaborativa: las creencias de los docentes de lenguas

This article reports the findings related to the beliefs of professors-researchers about collaborative work in research in the area of foreign language teaching at the Autonomous University of Baja California. It was identified and analyzed in a research of greater magnitude, targeted at studying the factors that favor and/or inhibit the development of research in foreign languages in three Mexican universities in order to favor its institutional development. The study is quantitative-descriptive based on a questionnaire, which identified that professors believe that collaborative research furthers the amount and quality of academic production, as well as professional development in an environment that in spite of considering this type of work it fails to offer suitable conditions for this activity to flourish.

A critical appraisal of foreign language research in content and language integrated learning, young language learners, and technology-enhanced language learning published in Spain (2003–2012)

This state-of-the-art review provides a critical overview of research publications in Spain in the last ten years in three areas of teaching and learning foreign languages (especially English): context and language integrated learning (CLIL), young language learners (YLL), and technology-enhanced language learning (TELL). These three domains have been selected for their relevance to current education policies and practices in Spain. This review aims to provide access for international readers to research published in Spain in the local languages or in English, within these innovative fields.El presente artículo ofrece una mirada crítica a las investigaciones en torno a la enseñanza y aprendizaje de lenguas extranjeras en España en los últimos diez años. Este estado de la cuestión presta especial atención al inglés y aborda tres ejes que tienen gran relevancia en las actuales políticas educativas y las prácticas docentes en España: la introducción temprana de una lengua extranjera, el aprendizaje integrado de contenidos y lenguas extranjeras (AICLE) y el aprendizaje de lenguas asistido por ordenador (ALAO). Este artículo pretende divulgar internacionalmente los estudios publicados en el ámbito nacional, en inglés y en las lenguas vernáculas, en estas áreas de innovación.

The impact of dictation practice on Turkish as a foreign language learners writing skills

The purpose of this study is to learn about the impact of dictation practice on B1 level Turkish as a foreign language learners’ writing skills. In this study, a pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design with control group was used. The study was carried out with 24 B1 level students enrolled in Gaziantep University Turkish and Foreign Languages Research and Application Center (TOMER). Both experimental and control groups consisted of 12 students. The data were analyzed by using both content analysis and descriptive statistics (frequency distribution).The results of the study revealed that students in experimental group made statistically significant gains in terms of word count (25%), vowel spelling mistakes (32%) and consonant spelling mistakes (44.5%). The results of the current study indicated that dictation practices have positive impacts on the ratios of students’ perceived word counts and their phonemic perceptions. In the light of these results, some practical recommendations and suggestions to improve TFL learners’ listening and writing skills were presented. Key words: Dictation, Teaching Turkish as a Foreign Language, writing skill.

Through the Eyes of Prospective Teachers of English: Explicit or Implicit Grammar Instruction?

Grammar teaching, which plays a central role in the EFL classroom, has been one of the most controversial issues in the field of foreign language research. Thus, there is an increasing need to investigate how prospective English language teachers perceive and practise grammar teaching. The purpose of the present study is to probe the general perceptions of Turkish prospective teachers of English about grammar and their preferences for the type of grammar instruction (i.e., implicit or explicit). The participants of the study include 86 pre-service EFL teachers studying in the English Language Teaching Department of Balıkesir University. They have enrolled in the course Teaching Practice in the spring semester of 2013-2014 academic year. In this descriptive study which employs a quantitative research design, a four-point Likert-type questionnaire adapted from a previous study is used for data collection. The data obtained from the questionnaires are analyzed descriptively using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16. The findings of the study show that the majority of prospective English teachers regard grammatical knowledge as important and useful especially for fostering students’ English writing and reading abilities. With regard to the type of grammar instruction, they seem to favor the implicit instruction over the explicit one. Hence, it can be suggested that language teaching should center on authentic and real-life oriented tasks rather than superficial practices that are consciously designed with the aim of teaching grammar.

The Application of CMIC in Cultivating Learners’ Cross-Cultural Communication Competence

With the fast development of computer and internet technology, how to apply computer and internet technology into intercultural teaching to improve learners' intercultural competence aroused great interest in foreign language researchers and teachers. This essay tries to analyze the effects of CMIC on the intercultural competence of learners through the CMIC teaching practice between two universities from China and US. Based on the analysis of the questionnaire, students' reflective logs, and interviews, this essay concludes that the application of CMIC in intercultural teaching has positive effects on the improvement of learners' intercultural competence and that CMIC should be more widely applied into intercultural teaching.