Volume 13, Issue 5

Researchers investigating the incidental acquisition of vocabulary through reading have often required participants to read in controlled classroom or lab environments. This method delimits reading to short texts read in one sitting and fashions an anomalous reading context (i. e. not mimicking ecologically valid extensive reading situations). To investigate whether the physical reading context affects incidental vocabulary acquisition, an empirical study was conducted with two groups of participants that read the same 36,711-token novel containing 49 target words – in-class readers ( n  = 48) and out-of-class readers ( n  = 32). Results showed reading context has a large effect on vocabulary recall and a medium effect on vocabulary recognition. Medium correlations were found between incidental acquisition and reading context as well as second language (L2) vocabulary size. Two standard three-explanatory-variable (L2 vocabulary size, reading context, reading time) multiple regressions accounted for 40% of the variance in vocabulary recall and 44.5% of the variance in vocabulary recognition. Nuanced distinctions between in-class and out-of-class readers were uncovered by analyzing responses to open-ended reflective questionnaire items about the study, novel, target vocabulary, and vocabulary learning strategies. A lens of criticality was used to discuss the findings in terms of their pedagogical and methodological implications.

Translanguaging is an emerging research area within applied linguistics that blurs the lines between named languages used by bi- and multilingual language users and considers all languages to be part of the individual’s single semiotic repertoire. In parallel with this emergence, issues surrounding language teacher identities and emotion labor have also become prominent sites of research in applied linguistics. In this paper we adopt a unique two-stage qualitative research approach involving aspects of narrative knowledging and duoethnography in order to investigate the challenges and obstacles faced by teachers of English in implementing translanguaging practices in their personal and professional lives. By using intersectionality as an analytical tool, we found that the challenges to making use of translanguaging practices were intimately and intricately linked with personal identities and social context. The results suggest that decisions surrounding translanguaging practices can be seen as context-dependent, discursively produced constructions, rather than the cut and dried options that they have been presented as in previous literature.

Using the method of conversation analysis, this study has examined the sequential organization of empathic talk in psychotherapy, analyzed its turn design as well as investigated its variations on turn construction. The empathic sequence can be characterized as a four-part structure: (1) the therapist soliciting troubles/feeling telling from the client; (2) the client’s report on the troubles/feelings talk; (3) the therapist’s empathy, and (4) the client’s response. Moreover, in addition to its unmarked turn construction “empathic talk without prefacing”, this study has found empathic talk takes on other three types of turn construction including so-prefaced empathic talk, particle-prefaced empathic talk and particle(s)+so-prefaced empathic talk. The research findings could reveal the interactional details of empathy in psychotherapy and thus contributes to the understanding of the nature and process of psychotherapy and counselling.

The dehumanization of migrants and refugees in the media has been the object of numerous critical discourse analyses and metaphor-based studies which have primarily dealt with English written news articles. This paper, however, addresses the dehumanizing language which is used to refer to refugees in a 1.8-million-word corpus of Spanish news articles collected from the digital libraries of El Mundo and El País , the two most widely read Spanish newspapers. Our research particularly aims to explore how the dehumanization of the lemma refugiado is constructed through the identification of semantic preferences. It is concerned with synchronic and diachronic aspects, offering results on the evolution of refugees’ dehumanization from 2010 to 2016. The dehumanizing collocates are determined via a corpus-based analysis, followed by a detailed manual analysis conducted in order to label the different collocates of refugiado semantically and classify them into more specific semantic subsets. The results show that the lemma refugiado usually collocates with dehumanizing words that express, by frequency order, quantification, out-of-control phenomenon, objectification, and economic burden. The analysis also demonstrates that the collocates corresponding to these four semantic subsets are unusually frequent in the 2015–16 period, giving rise to seasonal collocates strongly related to the Syrian civil war and other Middle-East armed conflicts.

Drawing on two longitudinal case-studies, this study aimed to identify some salient characteristics of the agentic behaviour of two young emergent multilinguals in two different multilingual contexts: Luxembourg and Israel. Despite the fact that the studies were conducted independently, the two cases were analysed together owing to the similarities in the research methods such as video-recorded observations, and semi-structured interviews with teachers and parents. The data were analysed through thematic and conversational analyses. Findings showed that a boy who learned Luxembourgish in Luxembourg and a girl who learned Hebrew in Israel, were outgoing and active learners who influenced their learning environment. We identified 10 types of agentic behaviour, including engaging in repetition after peers and the teacher, creatively producing language, translanguaging, and self-monitoring. Despite differences of the children’s sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds, and the language policies of their educational settings, we found a striking overlap in their language-based agentic behaviours. We suggest that the identified types can encourage further research in this field. Although our study with talkative children allowed us to observe many types of agentic behaviours, we cannot claim that less outgoing children or children who do not show the same behaviours do not have ways of expressing their agency.

Dynamic Assessment (DA), an innovative assessment approach, has begun to attract attention as a conceptualization of assessment that emphasizes the social interactive role of learning. Although DA receives attention in the field of language testing/assessment, its feasibility in engaging larger cohorts of individuals is concerned. This shortcoming of DA leads to the application of Group Dynamic Assessment (G-DA). This study examined the extent to which mediation provided through G-DA frameworks – concurrent and cumulative – supported a group of language learners’ literacy development. It investigates five intermediate L2 Chinese learners’ rhetorical awareness via their performance on Chinese reading and writing tasks. One Chinese rhetorical structures, the ‘ Qi-cheng-zhuan-he’ approach, was selected because it is considered the most difficult learning point for Chinese learners. Findings were reported: 1) the mediation provided to the participants through both concurrent and cumulative G-DA approaches promoted their understanding of the ‘ Qi-cheng-zhuan-he’ approach, 2) the more times a participant engaged as the primary interactant, the better learning outcome he/she would present, 3) individual participant had different developmental level and thus showed various extent of responsiveness to the teacher’s mediation; yet, their active participation, either verbal or nonverbal behaviors, would foster their learning performance. Pedagogical applications are discussed.

A much-debated issue in English is the use of “epicene pronouns”, i.e. third-person singular pronouns of indeterminate gender. Previous studies have shown that singular they is the most common epicene in L1 English, but this pronoun has not received much attention in studies of L2 use. The present study extends previous research by examining variation between L2 groups in the distribution of epicene pronouns, focussing particularly on the use of singular they and how it is affected by three features of the antecedent: definiteness, notional number, and gender expectancy. The data originate in an elicitation experiment, which was completed by 338 university students of English from eight L1 backgrounds. The results show that singular they was most frequently used with notionally plural antecedents, whereas it was least common with gender-stereotyped antecedents. The study also disclosed variation between learners: In some L1 groups, they was used frequently with all types of antecedents, suggesting that these learners perceive singular they as a singular pronoun in its own right. In other groups, singular they appeared to function mostly as a modification of the plural they, as the pronoun was only frequent with notionally plural antecedents. The findings have important implications for language teaching.

Previous research has extensively addressed the relationship between collaborative knowledge construction and communicative language use. For interactive academic talk, a broad range of socio-cultural factors has been investigated to examine group dynamics for the construction of disciplinary or linguistic knowledge. What has been overlooked, however, is a focus on the basic unit of meaning for a cognitive interpretation of knowledge structures. This study is aimed to bridge the research gap by examining the semantic–pragmatic interface involved in collaborative knowledge construction in a Higher Educational setting. Using a specialized corpus of university small group talk, this study conducts an empirical linguistic inquiry into the participants’ discursive practice of drawing particular lexical concepts to invoke and manipulate knowledge structures for meaning negotiation. The research findings contribute to understanding the relationship between linguistically represented knowledge and the way language users conceptualize the academic world.