Volume 14, Issue 3

Using collocation is a key part of second language ability (Granger, Sylviane. 2018. Formulaic sequences in learner corpora: Collocations and lexical bundles. In Anna Siyanova-Chanturia & Ana Pellicer-Sanchez (eds.), Understanding formulaic language: A second language acquisition perspective , 228–247. New York: Routledge; Nattinger, James R. & Jeamette S. DeCarrico. 1992. Lexical phrases and language teaching . Oxford: Oxford University Press; Nesselhauf, Nadja. 2004. Collocations in a learner corpus . Amsterdam; Philadelphia: J. Benjamins Pub. Co.; Pawley, Andrew & Frances H. Syder. 1983. Two puzzles for linguistics: Nativelike selection and nativelike fluency. In Jack Richards & Richard W. Schmidt (eds.), Language and communication , 191–228. London: Longman). Researchers often hypothesize that the influence of the first language is an important factor in the production and understanding of unconventional collocations (Huang, Li-Shi. 2001. Knowledge of English collocations: An analysis of Taiwanese EFL learners. Paper presented at the Texas Foreign Languguage Education Conference, Texas ; Laufer, Bhatia & Tina Waldman. 2011. Verb-noun collocations in second language writing: A corpus analysis of learners’ English. Language Learning 61(2). 647–672. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00621.x; Phoocharoensil, Supakorn. 2013. Cross-linguistic influence: Its impact on L2 English collocation production. English Language Teaching 6(1). 1–10) but we are only now starting to understand this. The present study provides a robust investigation of cross-linguistic influences by exploring how Vietnamese influenced Vietnamese learners’ use of English language verb-noun and adjective noun collocations in 104 350-word argumentative essays, using a framework derived from Jarvis, Scott. 2012. The detection-based approach: An overview. In S. Jarvis & S. A. Crossley (eds.), Approaching language transfer through text classification: Explorations in the detection-based approach , 1st ed., Vol. 64, 1–33. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, drawing on homogeneity among speakers of Vietnamese; heterogeneity between users of Vietnamese and other language; and formal and conceptual congruity between collocations learners produce in English and equivalent terms in Vietnamese. The study found that less than 10% of the collocations learners produced were unconventional and of these, 40% of collocations were influenced by the first language (L1); errors associated with incorrect use of prepositions in verb-noun collocations (e.g. the addition, omission or misuse of prepositions) are strongly L1-motivated. Learners make errors with not only incongruent collocations (collocations with no direct L1 equivalents) but also with congruent collocations (collocations with direct L1 translation).

Current linguistic landscape studies of tourism are primarily concerned with the commodification of languages, and less attention is focused on ownership discourses that are constructed in tourist spaces through varied semiotic resources. This study employs a spatial perspective to analyse commodification and ownership in the linguistic landscape of Bendigo, Victoria, Australia, focusing on how these discourses materialise in the conceived, perceived, and lived spaces through the semiotic resources of Chinese communities. Built on a comprehensive dataset of photographs, field notes, interviews, and archived materials, this study reveals the agency of Bendigo’s Chinese community members, who claim ownership of semiotic resources despite the institutional forces seeking to commodify Chinese cultural heritage for tourist consumption. Examination of Chinese heritage sites demonstrates the possibility of shared ownership of Chinese semiotic resources among Chinese and non-Chinese residents in an Australian cultural tourism context. This balancing act of commodification and ownership constitutes a critical part of the lived experiences of Chinese communities in today’s era of mobility and globalisation.

Due to the spread of Covid-19, universities had to move their courses online abruptly. This paper explores its impact on 510 European tertiary-level English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ classroom emotions and analyses possible links to their trait emotional intelligence (TEI) and learner autonomy. Statistical analyses of data gathered with a web survey revealed that students rated their ‘in-person’ classes as significantly more enjoyable and also more anxiety-provoking. Overall, levels of foreign language enjoyment (FLE) and foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) were positively correlated between both contexts. The moderate negative correlation between FLE and FLCA in ‘in-person’ classes disappeared in emergency remotely taught classes. TEI and learner autonomy were positively correlated, and both were positively linked to FLE and negatively to FLCA in both contexts. This means that more autonomous, emotionally intelligent students tend to be able to enjoy the FL class more – even more so under particularly challenging circumstances. Overall, it seems that learners not being physically present in classrooms weakens all emotions, and breaks the relationship between them. One possible explanation is that disembodied classes have less emotional resonance.

Across languages, a passive construction is known to manifest a misalignment between the typical order of event composition (agent-before-theme) and the actual order of arguments in the constructions (theme-before-agent), dubbed non-isomorphic mapping. This study investigates comprehension of a suffixal passive construction in Korean by Mandarin-speaking learners of Korean, focusing on isomorphism and language-specific devices in the passive. We measured learners’ judgment of the acceptability of canonical and scrambled suffixal passives as well as their reaction times (relative to a canonical active transitive). Our analysis generated three major findings. First, learners uniformly preferred the canonical passive to the scrambled passive. Second, as proficiency increased, the judgment gap between the canonical active transitive and the canonical suffixal passive narrowed, but the gap between the canonical active transitive and the scrambled suffixal passive did not. Third, learners (and even native speakers) spent more time in judging the acceptability of the canonical suffixal passive than they did in the other two construction types. Implications of these findings are discussed with respect to the mapping nature involving a passive voice, indicated by language-specific devices (i.e., case-marking and verbal morphology dedicated to Korean passives), in L2 acquisition.

This article reports a quantitative empirical study that investigated whether English language proficiency increases over time when studying academic content through English Medium Instruction (EMI). It was also investigated whether an increase in proficiency predicts EMI academic achievement. Student English language test score data and Grade Point Average (GPA) data were collected from a public university in Turkey. Two academic subjects were compared: Business Administration (a Social Science subject, n  = 81) and Mechatronics Engineering (a Mathematics, Physical and Life Sciences subject, n  = 84). Results showed that in both subjects, English language proficiency statistically significantly improved over a four-year period of studying through English. Furthermore, this improvement predicted EMI academic achievement; meaning that the more proficient students became in English, the higher they achieved in their EMI academic studies. This provides evidence for policymakers, EMI practitioners, and language professionals around the world that English does improve when studying academic content through English, and that this improvement has a positive effect on content learning outcomes. Implications of these findings, and suggestions for further research are discussed.

Although there is no lack of studies on L2 motivation in applied linguistics, research on L2 writing motivation remains scanty. Drawing upon Dornyei’s L2-motivational-self-system and the notions of identity, this study analyzed 27 Chinese university-based students’ English writing learning experiences. Data were gathered through individual interviews and written reflections. The findings showed that the students’ experience of learning to write was not conducive to their formation of identity as a multilingual writer because their ideal L2 selves in EFL writing were influenced by the overall learning and testing cultures. The findings also reveal that the teachers, parents, and schools played little role in shaping the students’ ought-to selves due to the marginal status of EFL writing in both the nation-wide exams and the institutional curricula. Overall, the students’ investment in learning to write yielded mostly a “passive and mediocre test-oriented” writer identity, with the capital to construct customized writings for individual and professional communication remained unattainable. The findings call for attention to the prevalent native speaker ideology and the ideology that considers students’ L1 as problem.

The site of this study is English as a second language speaking center at a university in Hong Kong. One of the center’s services is presentation consultation, in which students can practice giving a presentation in English and receive a tutor’s feedback. This study focuses on how the tutors and students coordinate understanding using the students’ PowerPoint (PPT) slides as situated objects. Detailed analyses of their interactions reveal that the participants make use of PPT slides as a referential resource in identifying problems in the student’s production and initiating repair, and as an essential object in solving problems of understanding. The paper shows the precise nature of the troubles in understanding that arise in these consultations, and how the participants make use of the slides as an interactional resource in coordinating their understanding. The paper discusses implications for L2 consultation sessions, particularly in regard to multimodal practices in solving understanding troubles.

Contemporary professional social work can be characterised by increased textualisation (after Iedema and Scheeres 2003) with written texts mediating most action. At the same time, writing, as a key dimension to social workers’ practice and labour, is often institutionally unacknowledged, becoming visible primarily when identified as a “problem.” This paper draws on a three year nationally funded UK-based research project to offer a situated account of contemporary professional social work writing, challenging dominant institutional orientations to writing in professional practice. The paper outlines the specific ways in which social work practices, including writing, can be characterised as being ‘in flux’. Drawing on ethnographic data and adopting a  Bakhtinian (1981, 1986) oriented approach to voice , the paper explores the entextualisation of three specific social work texts, focusing in particular on critical moments (after Candlin 1987, 1997). These critical moments offer insights into key problematics of social work writing, in particular the tensions around professional voice and discourse. The paper concludes by arguing for an articulation of professional social work writing which takes account of the dialogic nature of language and the discoursal challenges experienced in everyday practice.

This mixed-methods study investigated the English medical vocabulary strategies, needs, and difficulties of Taiwanese medical school students via an open- and closed-ended questionnaire ( n  = 17), a test measuring vocabulary size ( n  = 17), student interviews ( n  = 5), and teacher interviews ( n  = 3). Students reported using some vocabulary strategies more than others. A statistically significant negative relationship between students’ English vocabulary size and their use of word cards for vocabulary learning was also revealed. Through analysis of the interview data gathered from the medical students and their English teachers, five vocabulary learning difficulties faced by the medical students were uncovered: (1) nonexistent intentional English vocabulary learning, (2) stagnant specialized medical English vocabulary acquisition, (3) lack of sufficient contextualized academic English writing practice with newly encountered specialized medical vocabulary; (4) lack of teacher feedback on the students’ vocabulary use; and (5) lack of pedagogical communication among faculty. The pedagogical implications of these results were discussed with a focus on improving students’ vocabulary learning efficiency in light of their specialized English medical vocabulary needs.