Volume 58, Issue 1 -

Research on the use of the first language (L1) in interactional strategies by young Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is still in its infancy. Here we compare CLIL and NON-CLIL primary school children in terms of L1 use in interactional strategies. The oral production of 44 age- and proficiency-matched dyads (21 CLIL, 22 NON-CLIL) is analyzed in terms of use of the L1 in appeals, clarification requests and metacomments. The results indicate that NON-CLIL learners produce more instances of L1 use in interactional strategies and that greater differences emerge as grade increases. This is consistent with previous research in CLIL contexts as well as investigations that have compared CLIL and NON-CLIL contexts. A qualitative inspection of the results has also revealed that there are differences between groups in their preference for either the L1 or the target language (TL) in the case of appeals and clarification requests. However, metacomments are always produced in the L1 in both groups, which appears to support previous classroom observation data.

Research on age and second language acquisition (L2A) is vast, but inconclusive. Such research has mainly been motivated by the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH), which postulates that language acquisition becomes extremely difficult after the onset of puberty. Also, there is a lack of research on age and third/additional language (L3/Ln) learning. To fill this gap, this article examines differences in morphosyntactic knowledge between early and late learners of English as a L3/Ln. In this study, ‘early’ and ‘late’ learners are those participants first exposed to English as a medium of instruction (MOI) in 1st and 11th grades, respectively. Participants’ morphosyntactic knowledge was assessed based on two tasks: (a) a Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) and (b) an editing task. Three hundred and thirty five undergraduate and graduate students from two universities in Pakistan voluntarily participated in the research. Results of the group comparisons showed no statistically significant differences between early and late learners on the GJT; however, on the editing task, a modest but significant difference was observed between the two groups, with late learners scoring higher. This finding contradicts the predictions of the CPH.

Acommon approach to analyzing phraseological knowledge in first language (L1) and second language (L2) learners is to employ raw frequency data. Several studies have also analyzed n-gram use on the basis of statistical association scores. Results from n-gram studies have found significant differences between L1 and L2 writers and between intermediate and advanced L2 writers in terms of their bigram use. The current study expands on this research by investigating the connection between bigram and trigram association measures and human judgments of L2 writing quality. Using multiple statistical association indices, it examines bigram and trigram use by beginner and intermediate L1 Korean learners of English in English placement test essays. Results of a logistic regression indicated that intermediate writers employed a greater number of strongly associated academic bigrams and spoken trigrams. These findings have important implications for understanding lexical development in L2 writers and notions of writing proficiency.

Researchers investigating the incidental acquisition of vocabulary through reading must select either real or nonce words as targets. To determine whether this decision affects acquisition, English as a foreign language classes (English experimental n=80; nonce experimental n=89) were given a 2,381-token short story containing either 26 target English or nonce words. Analysis of the gain scores on an unexpected meaning recognition assessment for the two experimental and two control groups (English control n=73; nonce control n=114) found a statistically significant difference in acquisition. The large effect size found indicates the choice to use nonce targets has a clear effect on acquisition outcomes. Additional analysis also indicated the contextual richness of the words surrounding targets was subordinate to frequency of exposure in terms of encouraging incidental acquisition. Furthermore, learners’ L2 vocabulary size had only a negligible effect on acquisition outcomes. Further analyses, implications, and consequences in regard to research practices are discussed.

Research literature suggests the positive role of lexical chunks and translation in teaching and learning pragmatics (Ketko, H. 2000. Importance of multi-word chunks in facilitating communicative competence and its pedagogic implications. The Language Teacher 24 (12). 5–11; Rose, K. R. 1999. Teachers and students learning about requests in Hong Kong. In E. Hinkel (Ed.), Culture in second language teaching and learning , 167–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.). Accordingly, the present study aimed at investigating the influence of contrastive lexical approach (CLA), in comparison with explicit and implicit approaches, on Iranian EFL learners’ pragmatic competence. Sixty-three participants were randomly assigned to three treatment groups and received dissimilar instructional treatments for ten 30-minute sessions. A pretest-posttest equivalent-groups research design was carried out and pretest scores were used as the covariate in a one-way ANCOVA data analysis. CLA showed no significant advantage over the other two methods. Previous studies have often combined a contrastive method with explicit teaching. Confounding variables in this way may have made interpretation of results problematic. In the present research explicit and contrastive instructions were kept separate and no significant difference was found between the three treatments, although all instruction types enhanced the language learners’ pragmatic competence. As a result, a pragmatic teaching course is recommended which incorporates the useful teaching techniques and practices of these three approaches to teaching pragmatic competence.