Volume 59, Issue 3

To meet the challenges of internationalization, universities around the globe have implemented a variety of strategies, including study abroad, academic exchange, and cross-border collaboration. For any of these strategies, it was perhaps inevitable that English would become a crucial means of communication for both native and non-native speakers. The current study investigates the relationship between domestic college students’ perceptions of English varieties (PEV), L2 motivation, and willingness to communicate (WTC) in the internationalization at home (IaH) context. A model linking PEV, L2 motivation, and WTC was proposed. A total of 273 college students at a university in Taiwan responded to a questionnaire consisting of 16 items in four major categories. The results indicate that in the IaH context college students’ PEV significantly affects L2 motivation and only when learners are intrinsically motivated are they willing to communicate interculturally using English. The results suggest that promoting an appreciation for English varieties in the college context strengthens students’ intrinsic motivation to learn English, which may promote the students’ willingness to use English for communication.

The study investigated the potential impact of task goal orientation on cognitive, social and emotional aspects of task performance through the lens of learner engagement. Sixteen EFL learner dyads completed a convergent decision-making task and a divergent opinion-exchange task. Their audio-recorded interactions were transcribed and coded for evidence of engagement, including idea units and language-related-episodes (cognitive engagement), instances of explicit task enjoyment, reported emotions (emotional engagement), and responsiveness (social engagement). To determine the effects of task goal orientation on learner engagement, scores for engagement types were compared between two tasks. To understand learners’ perception about their engagement, posttask exit questionnaire responses were analyzed using content-analysis approach. Findings showed that learners showed greater cognitive and social engagement in the convergent than divergent tasks. No differences were observed in learners’ emotional engagement. Results are discussed in terms of the role of task goal orientation in promoting learners’ cognitive and social engagement.

Studies investigating the relationship between phonological short term memory, phonological awareness and vocabulary in L2 child learners yield mixed results. Those differences may be caused by the vocabulary assessment tools used in research. Tailor-made vocabulary tests based on the input the L2 learners receive may deliver different results than standardized tests based on L1 norms. To investigate this assumption, we examined the effect of phonological short-term memory and phonological awareness on L2 vocabulary size in child learners using a standardized and a tailor-made test based on L2 participants’ textbooks. The results of both tests were correlated, indicating that they measured the same construct. Results of both tests were influenced by children’s English phonological awareness scores, but while the Standardized Test was related to phonological short-term memory scores, the Textbook Test was related to nonverbal IQ. We suggest that standardised and tailor-made tests tap into two different modes of vocabulary acquisition.

Implicit and explicit knowledge use in second language acquisition has been rigorously researched in areas such as syntax, however our understanding of how these knowledge constructs affect learner pragmatics is not well understood. Through an interlanguage pragmatic perspective we aim to understand how implicit and explicit knowledge intertwines with pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic competence. This is investigated by testing for L1 politeness transfer in Korean learners of French regarding their acquisition of tu and vous, which provides a new perspective as past research focuses on Anglophone learners. By triangulating data from two test types, results show that the learners have difficulty with vous but not tu, attributed to negative language transfer of L1 politeness values. Moreover, learner variation of tu/vous use can be linked to the explicit/implicit status of their pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic knowledge, showing that the implicitization of their sociopragmatic knowledge is a challenging hurdle towards native-like tu/vous use.

The benefits of task-supported interaction are especially noticeable when negotiation of meaning (NoM) occurs. Despite the large amount of research on interaction, children’s ability to collaborate and to understand their partners’ needs remains under-researched. This capacity has been questioned, and has been claimed to develop with age. From an interactionist perspective, we have analysed the oral interactions of 80 Spanish young learners (YLs) of English as a foreign language (EFL) from two age groups (8–9 and 10–11), when performing a collaborative task. Specifically, we have examined the nature of NoM and the strategies YLs use. Significant differences between the groups were identified: whereas younger children negotiate mostly to repair communication breakdowns, older YLs show a greater concern about their interlocutor’s needs. As in previous research addressing this population, focus on form strategies are rare. This study sheds light on our understanding of how young EFL learners negotiate in task-supported interactions.

German light verb constructions are especially challenging for advanced L2 learners because of the abstract meaning of the different verbs and the high degree of lexico-grammatical variety. Acknowledging that language is a symbolic system representing humans’ perception of the world and is thus strongly linked to embodied experiences, this study explores the potential of bodily engagement in the form of multimedia animations for leveraging the learning of embodied concepts related to light verb constructions. To this end, thirty-nine French-speaking learners of German were divided into two groups: The first group worked with animations illustrating the embodied nature of light verb constructions and performed specific tasks that set out to trigger mental simulation of relevant embodied concepts; the second group was presented with form-based explanations and completed tasks focusing on the different categories of light verb constructions. The results show that the use of bodily engagement in the form of multimedia animations led to significantly better performance and contributed to some extent to changing students’ attitudes about how grammar can best be learned.