Volume 13, Issue 4

This study investigates how L2 (second language) student writers responded to SFL (systemic functional linguistics)-based training that was designed to assist them in harnessing meaning-making knowledge to evaluate their classmates’ essays. Conducted in a Chinese college expository writing course and based on qualitative analyses of three students’ interviews, their written feedback, as well as their reflections over one semester, the study shows that the students’ adjustment to the training occurred in a dynamic and interrelated manner. That is, along with constant teacher support and their increased knowledge gained from SFL-based training, the students transcended the limitations of their prior knowledge, which merely entailed giving feedback at the level of structural accuracy in L2 writing. They were able to gradually embrace meaning-making knowledge, although not yet fully developed. With this knowledge, they evaluated their classmates’ essays to determine if the writing content fitted the demands of valued academic compositions, such as whether and how the grammar and vocabulary were used correctly in context.

The use of translation for language teaching and assessment, by and large, has been abandoned with the adoption of audio-lingual and communicative approaches in language teaching. As a result, nowadays translation items are not commonly used for measuring language proficiency in international language proficiency tests (e. g. TOEFL, IELTS). However, there are several countries that still use translation items in their national language proficiency tests (e. g. Turkey, Japan, China, Romania among others). The present study aims to examine whether or not multiple-choice translation items are an appropriate tool for measuring proficiency in English. To this end, the perceived level of difficulty and validity of multiple-choice translation items in the National English Proficiency Test (YDS) in Turkey were examined. The findings revealed that the participants did significantly better on the translation items than on the rest of the test items. They also perceived the translation items as the easiest among all the rest items in YDS. Moreover, while YDS as a whole indicated a strong validity based on correlation with TOEFL PBT Reading Sample Test, the translation items indicated moderate validity. Importantly, there was a significant difference between the two correlations. These findings suggest that multiple-choice translation items are likely to lower the overall validity of YDS tests, inflate the scores of test-takers and, thus, might be considered as problematic for the quality of the tests.

This study explores how interlocutors from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds employ the five translingual negotiation strategies of envoicing, recontextualization, interactional activity, entextualization and transmodality to communicate in online marketplaces. Informed by conversation analysis and translingualism, three computer-mediated communication (CMC) data sets were analyzed. Findings are as follows: 1) Korean speaker’s envoicing strategy was used to reveal his non-native English speaker status, which softened the impression of discourtesy. It set the co-constructed conversation stage where English speaking counterparts would be implicitly requested to speak more intelligibly; 2) recontextualization strategy was presented through emojis, emoticons, transliteration and translation to turn a business transaction into a friendly conversation between translingual speakers from different cultures where non-verbal cues of hospitality can be delivered in written forms in online one-on-one chats; 3) interactional strategy was observed when speakers did not share a culturally-bounded speech act of “conversation closers.” Misalignment was partially solved by mutual efforts to close their online conversation; 4) entextualization strategy was shown from Korean speakers’ asynchronous communication to confer on appropriate English expression by seeking help from other online community members; and, 5) transmodal strategy refers to the practice of shuttling among different on/offline modes and platforms to encode and decode languages, emotions, and cultural perspectives by depending on a wide range of resources and multiple strategies to accomplish meaningful interaction in online marketplaces. This study shows the translingual characteristics of English-medium online communication, suggesting an extended model of translingual meaning negotiation strategies in CMC contexts.

This article aims to probe into whether low-intermediate EFL learners align their writing with an original text in a continuation task (using stories with the middle part missing). The study examined the effect of alignment on words, phrases, sentences, error rates and writing quality. Sixty low-intermediate EFL learners were divided into two groups. In the first week, group A (n=30) read the Chinese version of a story and group B (n=30) read the corresponding English version. They were then asked to finish the stories in written English using their imaginations. The two groups performed the same task in reverse conditions in the second week. Quantitative results were supplemented by two questionnaires and an interview, which were used to consolidate the quantitative data. The results revealed that: (1) low-intermediate Chinese EFL learners can align their writing with the original text in a story continuation task (with the middle part missing), (2) alignment can foster learners’ writing in terms of linguistic features, error rates and overall quality of writing, and (3) the participants who performed the English-based continuation task exhibited stronger alignment effects than those who performed the Chinese-based continuation task.

Given the desire to attract skilled immigrants to English-speaking countries in the Global North, business environments in these nations may see the increased presence of workers who speak English with a foreign accent. While organizations may tout this linguistic diversity, there is a concern that a foreign accent interferes with successful business communication. This apparent issue can result in a lack of employment opportunities for foreign-accented professionals and has also created a rise in private accent reduction programs that seek to improve the employability of these professionals. What is understated or even omitted in the discussion of these trends is the impact of racialization. First, the (lack of) employability of foreign-accented workers may be determined by a set of racial hierarchies in which some bodies are perceived as better for work than others. Furthermore, the notion that simply reducing an accent increases one’s employability ignores racialized power structures that truly prevent the employment of certain immigrants. Through the lens of raciolinguistic ideologies, which look at the intermingling of language and race, this article explores the above issues by arguing that foreign accent discrimination and accent reduction are indeed racialized and thus perpetuate the inequality experienced by immigrant professionals in business.

In the media, migrant mothers are often portrayed as uneducated, having trouble learning a new language, and preferring to stay at home rather than entering paid employment. This article offers a contrasting point of view as a result of examining how two migrant women narrativize their experiences of language learning and working-life-related integration during a three-year period. Specific attention is paid to how the women make sense of their language use over time, and how this may have contributed to their integration into working life and the wellbeing of their families. Interview data was analyzed using the short story analytical approach, focusing on both the content and the various scales of context portrayed in the stories. The analysis is informed theoretically by the concept of investment. The findings indicate that, first, English was used when interacting with members and institutions of the Finnish society, but gradually the use of English was replaced by an emerging Finnish proficiency. At first with the help of English and later, by deciding to invest in learning Finnish, both key participants managed to build new careers and meaningful lives for themselves and their families in a new environment.

Foreign language curricula worldwide have seen a revival of the inclusion of literary texts, promoting so-called language-literature instruction. Responding to the plea for more empirical research in this area, specifically in secondary education, this study investigates the student’s perspective by looking at the relationship between their level of engagement in literature lessons in English as a foreign language (EFL) and how they value these lessons. A total of 365 Dutch students from six secondary schools participated in the study. Data was collected via a four-point Likert-type questionnaire. The findings revealed that students primarily value EFL literature lessons for improving their language proficiency but no significant correlations were found between engagement and language aspects. Implications for curriculum development include a tripartite focus on language learning, literary study, as well as personal development.

Given the increasing awareness of oral communication in this era of globalized collaborative learning trends, there is an imminent need to inform language educators of ways in which the under-researched oral interactional strategies are related to first language (L1) teaching. However, no consensus has yet been reached on the relationship between interactional strategy use and oral language proficiency. This study investigates the effect of oral interactional strategy use on group discussion performance in L1 Chinese for Primary 5 students (N = 140) in Hong Kong. Based on ANOVA and regression analyses of the data on group discussion performance, five strategies have been identified: expressing actively , asking for opinion , expressing attitude , giving clarification and non-verbal language . They all significantly predicted students’ group discussion performance, with overall strategies explaining 55.5% of total variation of the performance, where higher-proficiency students tended to use more strategies that enable comprehension and elaboration in the group discussions. The patterns of strategy use among students with different levels of discussion performance have also been identified. Implications of the findings are discussed with reference to the roles individuals play in the overall performance of group discussion.

Many study abroad researchers recruit genres, such as diary, interview, and questionnaire, to study memories of study abroad experience and their relationship with language learning. Whether quantitative or qualitative, much emphasis is on individual representations and circulation of past experience, not the here-and-now, nor the impact a person’s study abroad memories has on their subsequent life practices. In this study, I draw on sociocultural theory to analyze study abroad experiences recounted in various types of language classroom activity. I show that memory is constantly (re)shaped by intermental, interactional, and institutional forces, as when students are mediated at lexical, grammatical, and discursive levels to reconstruct their experienced past vis-à-vis goal-directed activity in class. I highlight discursive practices rememberers adopt to render their version of the past credible and authentic, and explain how such practices create opportunities for mediation in the classroom. The findings demonstrate that contextualized remembering is a mediated process of objectifying personal experience, and that memory discourse is a mediating tool for transforming mental and social activity. Thus, remembering is not simply the retrieval or circulation of individual subjectivities, but also an active social practice.

Academic vocabulary knowledge predicts students’ academic achievement across educational levels. English academic vocabulary knowledge is especially valuable because English is used in academia worldwide. Therefore, examining the factors that can predict English academic vocabulary knowledge can inform pedagogy, thus indirectly boosting students’ chances of academic success around the world. This study examines the extent to which cognateness, word frequency and length predict the ability of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners who have Spanish as their first language (L1) to recognise written English academic words. 38 Spanish L1 university students’ recognition knowledge of English cognates was measured via a Yes/No test containing words sampled from the most frequent 1,000 lemmas of the Academic Vocabulary List (Gardner and Davies 2014). 34 participants’ data were retained in the final analysis, a multiple regression with item facility (IF) as the outcome variable and word frequency, cognateness and word length as predictors. Most of the IF variance is explained by word frequency, followed by cognateness and finally a frequency by cognateness interaction whereby word frequency is more predictive of IF for non-cognates than cognates. These findings indicate that academic cognate-word awareness raising activities can be worthwhile. Implications for research and pedagogy are discussed.