Volume 59, Issue 4

The present study aimed to examine the speech act of correction produced by Chinese, Americans, and Chinese EFL learners. A total of 120 participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire with two major parts: a Scaled Response Questionnaire (SRQ) and a Discourse Completion Task (DCT). Elicited data were analyzed in terms of three perspectives: perception of face-threat, overall correction strategy use, and the use of external modifications. The results showed some similarities and differences between Chinese and Americans’ corrections. As for the EFL learners, they exhibited their interlanguage development in the perception and overall strategy use. In addition, instances of L1 pragmatic transfer were found in the learners’ use of some individual strategies and external modifications. Learners’ interlanguage development and L1 socio-cultural transfer demonstrated the multi-competence of the learners. The present study suggests that further instruction should be implemented to enrich L2 learners’ pragmatic repertoire for successful ELF communication.

Peer interaction and corrective feedback are beneficial in promoting second language development (e. g. Lyster et al. 2013; Philp et al. 2014; Sato 2017; Sato and Lyster 2012). A prerequisite of providing feedback is that learners first be able to notice elements of their peers’ language. This study seeks to analyze the latter, examining what L2 Spanish learners report hearing in peer-produced language. Data came from notes taken during the task and a subsequent stimulated recall. Content was reported more than form, the verb phrase was noticed more than any other linguistic feature, and a portion of the learners’ comments consisted of mostly-accurate unsolicited feedback. The results may have been constrained by task specifics, assumed relative proficiency, and classroom experience. The formal study of a third language may have facilitated the learners’ ability to notice, even in the absence of attention-directing strategies. These results correspond with previous work in feedback and negotiation, but separating learner perceptions from interaction permitted a closer look at the first step involved in peer communication.

This study examines learner interaction with mediating resources designed to promote their intercultural competence (Byram, 2009; Deardorff, 2009) during study abroad that were made available to them through an online instructional space. In this way, the project offers a response to the challenges of students attempting to navigate a new cultural context without affordances characteristic of formal learning environments (i. e. an instructor, assigned readings, organized discussions). Undergraduate learners from a U. S. university foreign language program were enrolled in an online course organized according to principles of Vygotskian theory (2012), specifically the importance of abstract concepts and models for mediating thinking. Selected readings introduced learners to an intercultural communicative framework and discussions guided learners to reflect upon and interpret their experiences in light of ideas presented in the readings. Analysis of participant reflections and discussions reveal participant intercultural competence and ways in which it was mediated through the online course.

Although differentiating between fluency, accuracy and complexity, while assessing L2 task performance, is becoming a standard practice, lexical complexity as a distinctive area has received less attention in the task-based language teaching (TBLT) literature. This study re-examines previous frameworks of lexical complexity and investigates three lexical dimensions, lexical diversity, lexical sophistication and lexical density , using a structured 2 × 2 × 2 split-plot experimental design. The participants were divided into a non-planning group and a planning group and each group was further dichotomised into two proficiency levels. Each participant was assigned one familiar and one unfamiliar oral narrative task. The results show that one’s prior knowledge about a subject is associated with higher lexical diversity and sophistication, while pre-task planning promotes lexical density. The effects of proficiency seem to be largely overridden by the effects of prior knowledge and pre-task planning and show little impact on overall lexical performance. Interestingly, lexical diversity and lexical sophistication are independent of each other, and lexical density is moderately correlated with both lexical diversity and lexical sophistication. The results are discussed with reference to the Levelt model of speech production with some pedagogical implications on content-based language instruction. The exploration of the relationships between the lexical measures reveals a need for deeper and subtler characterisation of L2 lexical complexity.

Learner corpora provide researchers with a rich pool of resources that can complement experimental studies. The purpose of the present paper is to provide task complexity researchers, for the first time, with further insight regarding interactive effects of task complexity, task type, task modality, and L1 background on linguistic and propositional complexity. Analyzing 720 intermediate-level (B1) written texts that were extracted from open access online language learning platform, the EF-Cambridge Open Language Database (EFCAMDAT) revealed that there was a significant interaction effect among task design features (task complexity, task type, and L1 background) that influenced linguistic and propositional complexity of written texts. This suggests that task complexity does not function in isolation of other task design features such as task type and L1 background.

This study attempts to widen our understanding of how manipulating pressured online task planning affects L2 oral fluency. The principal aim of this study is to investigate the effect of reducing time pressure on L2 learners’ oral speech production while performing video-based narrative tasks in terms of fluency. The study adopted a video-based narrative task to elicit spoken data from forty secondary school students. Online planning was operationalised through slowing down the video clip in the + online planning condition. Measures of breakdown and repair fluency were adopted to capture learners’ oral fluency. The findings revealed that online planning had a positive effect on L2 oral fluency regarding the number of filled pauses. Whereas it had a negative impact on fluency regarding mean length of silent pauses. No effect was found regarding number of silent pauses and disfluencies. The results will be discussed and pedagogic implications will be proposed.