Volume 39, Issue 4

This is a qualitative study of the types of segmental repair that maintain mutual intelligibility in English-as-a-Lingua-Franca interactions among Chinese and Japanese speakers of English (Jenkins, 2000; Matsumoto 2011; O’Neal 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2015d, 2016, in press). Repair refers to a set of practices through which conversation participants stop the ongoing action to attend to actual or potential problems to the maintenance of mutual intelligibility (Schegloff, 2007; Németh, 2012). Although anything can potentially be a problem to the maintenance of mutual intelligibility, this study focuses only on instances of the repair of segmental phonemes so that the pronunciation remains mutually intelligible. Using conversation analytic methodology to examine a corpus of repair sequences concerning pronunciation among Chinese and Japanese students at a Japanese university, this study claims that three segmental repair strategies are used in the interactions to maintain mutually intelligible pronunciation: segmental phoneme modification, segmental phoneme insertion, and segmental phoneme deletion.

The global spread of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) has implications for practice in English Language Teaching (ELT) classrooms. This paper presents a study on attitudes toward ELF which is crucial to its incorporation because attitudes influence the learning output in ELT. It uses a mixed method approach through a questionnaire survey on attitudes toward ELF, which contains a modified Verbal Guise Technique (VGT), complemented with semi-structured interviews. Seventy university students and 4 lecturers from three English departments in Japan (Waseda University and Sophia University) and Indonesia (Universitas Negeri Jakarta) were involved in filling out the questionnaire and semi structured interview sessions. The results highlight positive attitudes towards ELF and its incorporation into ELT (Japan: 3.71, and Indonesia: 3.51). In addition, factors which influence these attitudes (aspects related to language learning experience) were proven significant. The interview sessions also suggest ways to incorporate an ELF perspective into the ELT classrooms. Further, it addresses the issue of the gap between theory and practice in research on Global Englishes in Language Teaching (GELT) where a “conceptual gap” is often found. The study is of value to those interested in ELT curriculum evaluation and design to meet the needs of both ELT and ELF community in countries like Japan and Indonesia.

The current study applied classic communication models to investigating 34 laureate impromptu speeches at the 2010 and 2011 “FLTRP (Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press) Cup” English Speaking Contest, one of the most influential of its kind in China, to identify the features of public speaking skills of Advanced Chinese EFL learners. The speech scripts and video excerpts from the subsequent manuscript collection with the CD-Rom published by FLTRP were studied. Lucas’ framework of speech communication process was borrowed to bridge elements of the communication models and speech delivery process. Three key aspects of the speakers’ encoding endeavors were under close examination: the verbal preferences, the non-verbal preferences, and the topic selection for exemplification. It was found that successful speakers demonstrated a clear and strong audience orientation. They chose more first person pronouns, fewer abstract words, a controlled number of dependent clauses, clear transition words, and limited figures of speech. They used very few verbal fillers, slips of tongue, a moderate speech rate and varied tone inflections. The speakers also showed distinctive features in gestures, eye contact and facial expressions. They employed anecdotes which shared a common field of experience. Pedagogical implications on the teaching of public speaking were discussed.

This study explores word class influence upon L1 and L2 word association. The participants included 26 L1 English speakers and 28 advanced EFL learners who finished an English word association test that involved three types of stimuli: nouns, verbs and adjectives. Response words to the stimuli were classified into paradigmatic, syntagmatic, encyclopedic and form-based categories. Results show that: 1) L2 mental lexicon largely resembled that of L1 English speakers in that both were dominated by paradigmatic association, but L2 syntagmatic association was obviously weaker than that of L1 across the three word classes; 2) Verbs and adjectives demonstrated a greater potential to elicit syntagmatic responses than nouns in both L1 and L2 association; 3) Compared with verbs and adjectives, nouns were more paradigmatically challenging to L2 learners.

This study investigated the resetting process of the articles’ parameters by Chinese English learners with a Forced Choice Elicitation Task on the basis of the Article Choice Parameter and Fluctuation Hypothesis proposed by Ionin, Ko and Wexler (2004). It was found that Chinese English learners fluctuate between definiteness and specificity, the two parameter-settings of articles. Our findings are consistent with the Fluctuation Hypothesis. Their performance can be accounted for under the theoretical framework of Distributed Morphology. The difficulty in article acquisition lies in the fact that Chinese English learners can not easily identify the correct features in the specification of syntactic terminal nodes as well as the vocabulary items, but they possess the syntactic knowledge and they can access the definiteness parameter setting with enough L2 input. Chinese English learners’ interlanguage syntax is not impaired and UG full access is supported.

Conceptual Metaphor Theory believes that sensorimotor information should be an integral element in representing abstract concepts and can be activated as the way of abstract conceptual processing. Metaphor can be a bridge between the abstract concept of power and the body perception experience since embodiment serves as a basis for metaphorical thinking. Using E-PRIME experimentation, the present study investigated the features in vertical space representation of English power words of second language learners with different levels of proficiency. The statistics indicated that: 1) For such learners, the representation of power words would trigger the vertically spatial metaphor, which brings about “word-space” interaction effect, 2) Chinese English learners with different levels in L2 demonstrate stronger representation abilities in L1 than that of L2, regardless of their L2 proficiency level. 3) Learners’ second language proficiency exerts influence upon the representation of the English power words.