Volume 13, Issue 2

Although extensive research in SLA has focused on the facilitative effects of L2 recasts, few studies have investigated the moderating effect of a priori perceptual salience of the linguistic target. The present study addresses this issue, along with the role that language aptitude plays. Forty-eight native speakers of English carried out oral tasks during which they received recasts of two Korean morphemes differing in their degree of perceptual salience. Results of the study revealed a significant interaction between salience and language aptitude in terms of the ability to infer grammar rules of an artificial language. In conclusion, this study sheds new light on factors that moderate the effectiveness of recasts in the learning of L2 grammatical morphemes.

The question of whether grammar learning and correction is effective for second language writing development depends on students’ needs and tendency to study grammar. While the extent of the influence of grammar learning, grammar correction, and learner beliefs on second language writing for English as a second language settings and learners has been heavily debated, little of the research has considered the backgrounds and beliefs of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. To explore factors that have influenced EFL students’ writing, the current study investigated beliefs regarding grammar learning and correction of 306 EFL students studying at universities of science and technology. An exploratory factor analysis was performed on questionnaire data gathered from the Taiwanese EFL student writers. The analysis uncovered four significant factors including (1) emphasis on the connection between grammar learning and writing, (2) positive attitude towards analyses of grammar rules, (3) positive attitude towards written correction, and (4) negative attitude towards oral correction. Qualitative data gathered through ten open-ended questions further indicated that EFL student writers welcomed teachers’ written correction of grammar errors especially when grammar correction was received for writing produced during writing tasks tailored to students’ future work-related needs. Pedagogical implications and future materials development for university of science and technology EFL student writers were discussed.

Scholarship on translanguaging and related concepts has challenged traditional assumptions about how people use their multiple languages, urging us to move beyond the boundaries of named linguistic codes and toward conceptualizations of multilingual language use as flexible use of a speaker’s whole linguistic repertoire. Critiques of this theoretical shift have included assertions of translanguaging’s conceptual and practical limits—limits to its transformative potential as well as limits to its practical use. This paper takes up, in particular, the question of why we academics may assert the value of translanguaging in schools and communities while still largely failing to move beyond monoglossic English norms in our own academic spaces of professional practice (Jaspers, 2018), especially in the dissemination of research. Acknowledging this hegemony as well as its potential disruption, we present a counterexample of an academic research conference that developed as a trilingual, translingual space unlike most other spaces of research dissemination. In this polyvocal, translingual reflection, we describe and analyze the event from the perspectives of conference organizers, keynote speakers, and attendees. We explore the factors that constituted the transformative nature of the conference’s translanguaging space and offer some preliminary principles of language planning for translingual academic spaces.

The present study focuses on foreign language enjoyment (FLE) and foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) of 592 learners of Turkish as a foreign language (FL) in Kazakhstan. Mean levels of FLE and FLCA were found to be similar to previous studies in different settings with different target languages. In contrast with previous literature, a weak positive correlation was found between FLE and FLCA and the gender effect went in the opposite direction, with male participants reporting more FLCA than female participants. Multiple regression analyses revealed that FLE and FLCA were more strongly predicted by learners’ attitude toward Turkish and teacher-related variables than by learner-internal variables, confirming previous research outside Kazakhstan. Attitude toward the FL, teacher’s friendliness, strictness and frequency of use of the FL, attitude toward the teacher, participant’s age and FL exam result explained a total of 25% of variance in FLE. Differing slightly from previous studies, FLCA was found to be only weakly predicted (6% of variance) by some learner-internal variables (FL exam result, attitude toward the FL) as well as teacher-centred variables (friendliness, strictness). The findings suggest that variation in FLE and FLCA among Kazakh learners of Turkish is quite similar to that established in other contexts.

The sociolinguistics of globalisation, as an emerging paradigm, focuses on the impact of mobility on the linguistic capital of mobile individuals. To understand this, Blommaert advocates a scalar approach to language arguing that some people’s repertoires “will allow mobility while others will not” (2010. The sociolinguistics of globalization . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 23) and proposing high scale , low scale orderings. In this paper we introduce an ecological orientation to sociolinguistic scale that challenges the fixity of a high/low scale distinction by conceptually drawing on the notions of flat ontology (Marston et al. 2005. Human geography without scale. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30(4). 416–432) and exchange value (Heller. 2010. The commodification of language. Annual Review of Anthropology 39. 101–114). We do this in relation to Study Abroad (SA) contexts, which offer spaces for investigating how mobility influences the exchange value of individuals’ linguistic repertoires. The study speaks to a broader project in social research which emphasises the agency, subjectivity and criticality of the individual and stresses the complex and rhizomatic nature of social interaction. Drawing on moment analysis (Li. 2011. Moment Analysis and translanguaging space: Discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics 43. 1222–1235), we examine the experiences of two study abroad students in the UK. These include tellings of critical and reflective moments through which we interpret their experience of how the interplay of language, place and ecology of interaction results in constant, dynamic changes in the exchange value of their English repertoires. Our contribution is to show how an ecological orientation and a flat, rather than stratified, ontology enables insights into language use and globalisation in a way that empowers multilingual, mobile individuals.

This study investigated L2 English listeners’ processing of formulas, in terms of the impact of two different factors inherent in these formulas. One was the formulas’ level of coherence and the other was the formulas’ level of frequency. High-coherence formulas are considered to have specialized meanings, while high-frequency formulas are considered to be less specialized in meaning, commonly being composed of relatively simple words that often co-occur in speech. In previous research, in an academic context, Ellis, Simpson-Vlach and Maynard (2008. Formulaic language in native and second-language speakers: Psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics, and TESOL. TESOL Quarterly 41. 375–396. doi:10.1002/j.1545-7249.2008.tb00137.x) had found that a high level of coherence was the main factor facilitating L1 users’ receptive processing of formulas, while a high level of frequency was the main factor facilitating advanced L2 users’ receptive processing of formulas. Ellis, Simpson-Vlach and Maynard (2008. Formulaic language in native and second-language speakers: Psycholinguistics, corpus linguistics, and TESOL. TESOL Quarterly 41. 375–396. doi:10.1002/j.1545-7249.2008.tb00137.x), from a usage-based perspective, attributed these differences mainly to the greater length of time the L1 users had spent in learning formulas. Consequently, the current study investigated whether these processing differences between the two user groups in an academic context (seen as a possible developmental trend) would be apparent between proficient and less-proficient L2 listeners in a relatively less-challenging, general English environment. The study was considered important for possibly signaling the types of aural receptive formulas to foreground by L2 general English instructors and materials designers. The research examined two groups of L2 learners, one advanced and the other intermediate level, while they listened to four texts. A paused transcription technique elicited the listeners’ identification of targeted segments from the texts, many of which were classified through corpus analysis as containing more/less-coherent formulas or more/less-frequent formulas. Examination of how these formula types were processed by both proficiency groups, however, did not find major differences between the groups in their processing of the different formula types, and thus little evidence of a possible formula developmental trend.