Language learning and teaching – theory and practice: Language learning
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Abstract
This paper reports a study which tested the assump-tion that speakers of one or more Romance languages are at an advantage when attempting to read and understand material written in another, unknown Romance language. A group of nine French speakers (four knowing only French and five with another Romance language in addition) were asked to read a newspaper story in Portuguese, a language new to them, and to summarise the main events while 'thinking aloud', in order to reveal the approach and strategies they were using to try and understand the text. Results showed that the two groups used different interpretive strategies. Further experiment into ways of assisting comprehension is called for so that effective materials for teaching reading of an unknown neighbour language can be produced. [An appendix includes the text of the newspaper article used in the experiment together with a chronology of the events contained in it.] study whether exposure to discourse elements affects idea production novice writers. an ethnographic exploration of the processes that underlie second (L2) production counterproductive the target on pragmatic Five of code-switch are distinguished, each with a different organisational function. The concludes that the primary role should be the development of collaborative strategies in the target language. examines the acquisition of academic writing skills by adult students studying by distance learning. A pilot study was carried out with students starting study in social sciences or arts and humani-ties with the Open University (UK). The study focused on student perceptions of learning academic writing skills measured through interviews and ques-tionnaires. These were compared with tutor feedback comments on the students' essays. Analysis of the data indicated that, while the experience of Open University students is in many ways similar to that of all university students, the text-based nature of distance learning is an important variable. This affects both the way in which students acquire writing skills and the development of their identity as academic writers. Variations in the discourse of the academic subjects studied in multi-disciplinary courses also affected the learning process, with differences being found between the arts and humani-ties students and social science students. of L2 processing. The paper fint describes connec-tions between word recognition and reading and the specific ways in which efficient word recognition contributes to comprehension performance. It then provides a brief overview of the connectionist construct and an expanded consideration of word recognition skills development from this vantage point. in Further, it illustrates cross-linguistic variations word recognition processes by comparing and contrasting response patterns among readers in different orthographic systems. Finally, the paper explores conceptual frameworks for L2 word recognition, through which ongoing L2 empirical studies are subsequently examined. This article reports a study of the relationship between students' attitudes towards the subject of German, the course material, and the teacher, and students' achievements in German as a foreign language. Attitudes and achievements were measured at the beginning and end of the first year of German (i.e., the second year of Dutch secondary school). As expected, students who had a positive attitude rated higher in achievement than those having negative attitudes, both at the beginning and at the end of the school year. Direct (causal) effects of students' attitudes on achievement (and vice versa) could not be established. Students enrolled in a communicative course had a more positive attitude toward their course material than those studying in a grammati-cally oriented course. whether writing apprehension in English for Academic Purposes (EAP). Subjects were 145 first-year student writers, all of whom were Dutch native-speakers in their fint year of EAP at four Dutch universities. Information on levels of writing apprehension and associated factors was obtained by means of a questionnaire based on the Horwitz Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale. Multiple linear regression analyses were used to identify differences in levels of apprehension and in contributory factors. Results suggested that social context has a relatively weak effect on levels of EAP writing apprehension and factors affecting such apprehension. No significant differences in levels of writing apprehension were observed across the sam-ples. Worries about proficiency appeared to be the most important factor affecting writing apprehension. Possible explanations for these results are dis-cussed, and it is suggested that type of instruction may have some effect on writing apprehension. This paper adds to the growing literature on second language reading of specialised academic material. It reports on a qualitative investigation designed to provide a concrete picture of the metacognitive strategies used by English as a second language (ESL) students in their academic reading. Two Chinese graduate students participated in the study for over two months each. Analyses of the data, which were gathered by in-depth interviews, think-aloud ses-sions, and journals, revealed ESL academic reading to be a very deliberate, demanding and complex process in which the students actively invoked a repertoire of metacognitive strategies drawn from various sources. They shared the profiles of compe-tent readers in both first and second language. The data also suggested that the participants were quite aware of their cognitive process in reading, and were able to verbalise the strategies they used. The implications for ESL teaching and research are discussed. winter terms. Results suggest that the 'ambient English' in this school permits students to achieve higher levels of English than comparable students in intensive ESL courses in schools where English is spoken only in the ESL classroom. these two very different kinds of language learning. fourth how the theory is currently being the theory of learner autonomy elaborated. This article presents a study of corrective feedback and learner uptake (i.e. responses to feedback) in four immersion classrooms at the primary level. Transcripts totalling 18.3 hours of classroom interaction taken from 14 subject-matter lessons and 13 French language arts lessons were analysed using a model developed for the study and comprising the various moves in an error treatment sequence. Results include the frequency and distribution of the six different feedback types used by the four teachers, in addition to the frequency and distribution of different types of learner uptake following each feedback type. The findings indicate an overwhelm-ing tendency for teachers to use recasts in spite of the latter's ineffectiveness at eliciting student-generated repair. Four other feedback types - elicitation, metalinguistic feedback, clarification requests, and repetition - lead to student-generated repair more successfully and are thus able to initiate what the authors characterise as the negotiation of form. This paper is a review of current practice in the study of phonological interlanguage as reported in Ioup & Weinberger: Interlanguage Phonology (1987), but supplemented by studies from Argentina and the UK. The methodology of some 22 pieces of research is surveyed in terms of subjects, range of phonological features, 'synchronic' and 'dia-chronic' approaches, techniques and materials, audio-recording and transcription. Assessment of data by trained phoneticians is queried in a discussion on pure vs. applied aims in interlanguage research. If intelligiblity of the learners' pronuncia-tion is to be assessed, it is considered that untrained judges are more appropriate. The advantages and disadvantages of formal techniques are discussed. Ten stages of a full-scale study of interlanguage phonology are presented. This article reviews the usefulness of several models of proficiency that have influenced second language testing in the last two decades. The review indicates that several factors contribute to the lack of congru-ence between models and test construction, and makes a case for distinguishing between theoretical models, which attempt to represent the proficiency construct in various contexts, and operational assessment frameworks, which depict the construct in particular contexts. Additionally, the article under-scores the significance of an empirical, contextu-alised and structured approach to the development of assessment frameworks.