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March 19, 2024
Abstract
In this rather unorthodox dialogic autoethnography, our discussions revolve mainly around two main questions: Does autoethnography offer qualitative researchers (us) any affordances to respond to epistemic violence in the field of applied linguistics? If so, what are possible ways to generate de/colonizing knowledge through autoethnography without falling into the trap of epistemic violence ourselves? Throughout the manuscript, we take the liberty to express our beliefs/thoughts/emotions in the most personal ways possible. Talking to each other as well as our readers/listeners/companions, we problematize the global north/south, East/West, center/periphery, conformist/critical knowledging binaries and corresponding hierarchies precipitating theft and appropriation. To us, retro/intro/pro-spective reflection and dialogic communication are two possible ways to address epistemic violence with a particular focus on theft and appropriation. Later, drawing on our lived experiences, we discuss the ramifications of making pragmatic choices to further de/colonize research practices through autoethnography.
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March 11, 2024
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Research on loanword semantics seldom investigates systematic patterns of change because semantic change is not nearly as constrained and predictable as phonological change. Hong Kong is a bilingual city of English and Chinese/Cantonese, where people frequently use English loanwords in Hong Kong Cantonese (ELCs). Drawing upon the notion of cognates, this questionnaire-based study examines the extent to which Hong Kong Cantonese speakers are aware of the contrasts in meaning between ELCs and the English words from which they have been borrowed. Three ELCs that are false friend cognates with their English source words were selected to be included in the study. Respondents who completed the questionnaire included a group of native English speakers ( N = 19) and a group of native Cantonese speakers ( N = 107). Their responses were compared and contrasted through both qualitative and quantitative methods. The results show that the ELCs affect the Cantonese speakers’ understanding of the English source words. The English proficiency of native Cantonese speakers has been identified as a contributing factor that correlates with the accuracy of understanding word meanings. This study delineates the relationship between false friend cognates, ELCs and English vocabulary acquisition. It offers pedagogical implications for vocabulary learning and teaching in bilingual contexts.
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March 7, 2024
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In recent years, there have been multiple endeavours at unsettling the dominance of western voices in knowledge production, consumption and dissemination in language and intercultural communication education and research. Including, mediating and creating ‘new’ knowledges about interculturality are epistemic acts that may sustain and exercise decoloniality and decentering through (potential) dialogues with e.g., the Global South. However, these acts might unknowingly precipitate epistemological appropriation through their complicity or due to the pressures to comply with the skewed geopolitics of knowledge production, consumption and dissemination. This paper unpacks the complex deployment of languaging and knowledging in contesting, blurring and problematising both the dominant epistemological tenets and/or decentring attempts. For example, it presents the notion of ‘epistemological chameleon’ which captures how our knowledgings and languagings are (in)deliberately revamped and reshaped to fit ‘trendy’ narratives without destabilizing one’s assumptions and perspectives; an act that may often be driven by the necessity to survive within the skewed geopolitics of knowledge. The concepts and methods of devenir-langue and transknowledging as proposed by the authors, are used to examine how six recently published research papers in English by prominent Northern and Southern scholars may exhibit potential lingua-epistemological inaccuracies to include and showcase the voice of the Global South(s) while claiming in-/directly to push for decoloniality and epistemological diversity in language and intercultural communication education and research. These articles were selected as example cases based on their indicated rationales and intentions for decoloniality, criticality and inter-epistemological collaborations and are not meant to generalise the current state of this complex field. Implications from these analyses are the development of six ideal-types of inclusion, mediation and creations versus epistemological appropriation based on the papers. Further insights are made into the factors precipitating appropriation that may often be implicit, unheeded and unintentional.
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March 1, 2024
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Although there has been a great deal of research on L2 writing in higher education over the past few decades, limited attention has been given to secondary students’ writing motivation and engagement in L2 writing contexts. The present study aims to examine the association between writing instructional approaches and student writing motivation and engagement in the Chinese EFL context, and investigate the mediating role of writing feedback in this relationship. 2,169 students from 35 secondary schools in mainland China participated in this study. Results showed that product-oriented teaching approach related positively to the three indicators of maladaptive motivation (i.e., anxiety, failure avoidance, and uncertain control) and process-oriented teaching approach related positively to the two indicators of adaptive engagement (i.e., task management, persistence). While genre-oriented teaching approach related positively to adaptive motivation and engagement, and related negatively to maladaptive motivation and engagement, cooperative multimedia writing teaching approach related negatively to adaptive motivation and one factor of adaptive engagement (i.e., task management), and related positively to two factors of maladaptive motivation (i.e., anxiety, failure avoidance) and maladaptive engagement. This study also identified the mediating role of four feedback practices (i.e., learning-oriented feedback, expressive feedback, computer-mediated feedback, and peer and self feedback) in the associations between writing instructional approaches and student writing motivation and engagement. This study provides insights into our understanding of the complex relationship among teachers’ instruction, classroom feedback practices, and student writing motivation and engagement in L2 school contexts.
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Open Access
February 27, 2024
Abstract
Team supervision has become prevalent in worldwide doctoral education programs in the past few decades. Research indicates that one area of challenges involves collaboration between supervisors. However, little is known about how supervisors collaborate in supervision meetings involving multiple supervisors as existing studies mostly draw on participant self-reports. Adopting conversation analysis, this study examines how supervisors can collaborate through storytelling drawing on the corpus of 34 storytelling sequences in 15 triadic supervision meetings. A major finding is that storytelling can be used as a resource for collaboratively pursuing student uptake of feedback. Specifically when a supervisor is providing feedback, and the other supervisor can tell stories in pursuit of student uptake. Another finding involves the production of second storytelling: when students do not show uptake at the completion of the first storytelling produced by one supervisor, the other supervisor may launch a second storytelling to pursue student uptake. In addition, supervisors can collaborate through co-production of storytelling: near the end of a story produced by one supervisor, the other supervisor can add increments, which shape student uptake of the feedback under delivery. These findings are potentially useful for the professional development of supervisors.
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Open Access
February 23, 2024
Abstract
In this study, we provide a replicable language-anchored framework for capturing expressions of sympathy in interaction, by contrasting Chinese and English sympathising behaviour. Our framework combines interaction ritual and speech acts, and it captures sympathising without associating it with one particular speech act from the outset. Methodologically, we follow a tripartite design: First we identify puzzlements which ritual sympathising can trigger for Chinese expatriates living in the US and American expatriates in China. We then conduct Discourse Completion Tests (DCTs) to identify conventions of sympathising in the two linguacultures. Finally, we interpret our expatriates’ puzzlement through the outcomes of the DCT analysis.
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Open Access
February 23, 2024
Abstract
Writing the literature review is not a neutral act. In fact, the key central aim of consolidating work in a particular research area is to demonstrate one’s knowledge of this area; that is, one must know the ‘conversations’ concerning the research topic. Literature review becomes violent in the Bourdieusian sense because it imposes particular configurations of privileged knowledge on researchers. Thus, in this paper, we argue that literature review is an enactment of symbolic violence and, in the process, epistemic theft, and central to this practice is the construction of research questions. Literature review, as a site of scholarly conversations, dictates the kinds of questions we ask, thus unwittingly framing our research according to the epistemic demands of past and recent studies. By asking a different set of questions, ‘new’ or different understandings about certain social phenomena may emerge.
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February 23, 2024
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Within the current turn of decolonization in the field of applied linguistics, the dominant discourses may have little to say about exposing and disrupting the act of epistemological theft and appropriation in qualitative research methodologies, even implicitly. Epistemological theft and appropriation refer to the (in)deliberate intricate acts of dispossessing the original knowers of their epistemological ownership over certain knowledges in their research practices. This paper introduces and operationalizes Halaqa as an alternative way of theorizing and doing qualitative research that is not only anchored in non-western epistemologies but can also be employed as a means for disrupting theft and appropriation in literature review and drawing on participants’ narratives within qualitative inquiry. Through a four-month journey of dialogue with three in-service Saudi western-trained language teachers-educators-researchers in our Halaqa, we co-explored possible mechanisms that foster legitimate ownership of epistemologies and emphasize appreciating other ways of knowing that may not be necessarily aligned with our perspectives about ELT in applied linguistics research. This paper concludes with a call for a nuanced and continuous process of self-critique and reappraisal that centers ethical, moral and epistemic imperatives while doing a literature review and drawing on participants’ narratives.
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February 23, 2024
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The absence of language admission thresholds in many English medium instruction (EMI) university programmes has led to marked heterogeneity in students’ English proficiency upon entry. These students may face diverse challenges when listening to academic lectures, adopt different strategies to cope, and undergo varying trajectories in listening over time. To unpack such complexities, this study adopts a longitudinal mixed-methods design, comprising questionnaire responses from 412 freshmen and semi-structured interviews with 34 students at the beginning, halfway, and end of their first semester studying at an EMI university in China. Students were divided into high, medium, and low proficiency cohorts based on their listening placement test scores. Multilevel modelling analyses highlight that students entering with lower proficiency reported sharper reductions in listening challenges over time. Interview findings also reveal that these students engaged in more industrious self-regulated listening practice outside of the classroom than their highly proficient peers. Regardless of disparities in students’ proficiency, all students developed a higher tolerance towards ‘non-native’ teacher accents and shifted attitudes towards handling disciplinary terminology. The findings offer pedagogical implications for supporting different groups of students’ needs for successful transitions into English-medium tertiary education.
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February 19, 2024
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This study explores the translanguaging strategies used in internet slang on Douyin, a popular social media platform in China. By analyzing 331 examples (encompassing 313 translanguaging strategies), we investigate how individuals utilize various translanguaging resources, including multimodal, multilingual, multisemiotic, and multisensory resources, to manage their online self-presentation. Our findings suggest that multilingual resources, such as new Chinglish, Pinyin initialism, and hybrid words (combining Chinese, English, and Arabic numerals), were the most frequently used strategies. Additionally, we found that multisensory resources, including homophonic puns and modal particles, were also commonly utilized. In contrast, multimodal resources, such as emojis, and multisemiotic resources, such as keyboard-generated emoticon, hashtag, and punctuation mark, were less frequently employed. These findings reveal that Chinese internet users display a high degree of creativity and adaptability in their online communication, drawing on a wide range of linguistic and semiotic resources to express their identities and project their desired image. Overall, this study highlights the importance of translanguaging in online communication and its role in shaping self-presentation in the digital age.
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February 16, 2024
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Analysis of German-based studies reveals a common interpretation of Chinese students’ adaptation to German academia, depicting them as learners with limited participation and critical thinking capacities. This perception stems from the perceived contrast between Confucian values, which emphasize social power distance and collectivism, and German academic expectations that prioritize values such as critical thinking and direct communication of personal perspectives. To challenge these assumptions, this study employs a transcultural analysis that explores quantitatively and qualitatively the oral discourse socialization of Chinese students in German universities. By applying Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, the research reinforces the presence of cross-cultural disparities in Oral Academic Presentation (OAP)-related expectations between China and Germany. Furthermore, by centering the voices of this student cohort and their transcultural perspective, the study presents a novel insight into their silent participatory approach and critical thinking mode, thereby challenging the prevailing generalized assumptions within German academia. This study underscores the necessity of moving beyond binary dichotomies that may inadvertently overlook the diversity of interpretations. Furthermore, the research underscores the importance of academic staff recognizing and legitimizing the diversity of students from the same culture and adjusting their teaching practices to address their evolving needs and interests in multicultural classroom settings.
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February 15, 2024
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The recent surge in acknowledging and critically engaging with identity, advocacy, social justice, criticality, anti-racism, and decolonization in applied linguistics has initiated a process aimed at destabilizing, disrupting, and eventually transforming the geopolitics of knowledge, epistemological orientations, ideological commitments, and methodological practices in research. The current study investigates the evolutionary trajectory of decoloniality in applied linguistics, specifically focusing on citation practices as a point of entry in knowledge building, theorization, and dissemination in major journals over the past 5 years. The findings uncover the consistent invisibility of scholars from the Global South as authors (who use their voices [in]form the knowledge building and dissemination), cited authors (whose voices are used to [in]form the knowledge building and dissemination), and editors/editorial board members (whose vision and practices that ultimately [in]form disciplinary norms, expectations, and directions about knowledge building and dissemination). These (in)advertent (self-) exclusionary trends relegate Southern voices, subjectivities, and epistemological perspectives, perpetuating the dominance of the Anglosphere and obscuring ongoing epistemic appropriation. It concludes that resisting epistemic injustices (erasure, silence, and theft) must be regarded as an ethical, ideological, and professional imperative and demand the deployment of rhetorical strategies, equitable citation practices, collaborative initiatives, and a sustained commitment to decolonial skepticism.
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February 15, 2024
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In this paper, we engage the frame of language ontologies to explore what language is or might be, vis-à-vis empirical data from practicing language teachers and researchers. We conducted semi-structured interviews with fourteen participants to explore their accounts and self-reported practices of language(s)/languaging. We present five ontological accounts of language(s)/languaging as shared by the participants during the interviews: language as a tool for communication, language as thought, language as culture, language as system, and languaging as practice. We discuss the implications of these five ontological accounts for teaching, learning, and understanding language as a multiplicity.
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February 13, 2024
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Open Access
February 13, 2024
Abstract
This study demonstrates how tribalism and nationalism, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, have given rise to the enregisterment of a cultural discursive practice – dui (怼) – on Chinese social media. Based on a sample of social media posts collected through a combination of ‘noticing’ and systematic data scanning and archiving over a month, our analysis shows that dui shifted from a discursive practice of friendly teasing, a specific function that underpinned its rise of popularity prior to the onset of the pandemic, to an oppositional discursive practice characterised by wrangling, words of violence and a conversationalised journalistic discourse of refuting. We argue that COVID-19 has heightened Chinese netizens’ sensitivities towards China’s perceived friends and enemies. This politicisation, together with the associated traditional discourses of national pride and humiliation, contributed to the emergence of dui as a tribalising discourse, which in turn has further destabilised and polarised the user community on Chinese social media and beyond. The study illustrates the mutually constitutive nature of the enregisterment of discursive practices and social relationships and the importance of bringing together discourse analytical and socio-cultural perspectives in analytical terms.
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February 9, 2024
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Drawing on recent theorizing of feedback in educational assessment and psychology, the current study aimed to examine the links between perceived teacher feedback practices, student feedback motivation and engagement in English learning. Seven hundred and sixty-four Chinese university students attending a tertiary-level English enhancement course ( N = 764; age: M = 19.45, SD = 0.88; 57.3 % female) participated in this study. The students completed surveys measuring their perceived teacher feedback practices, feedback motivation and engagement. Scaffolding feedback, verification feedback, and criticism were found to significantly predict student feedback motivation. Feedback enjoyment significantly predicted student feedback engagement, but there was no positive significant relationship between perceived feedback usefulness and feedback engagement. Indirect effects testing provided empirical evidence that student feedback motivation mediated the impact of teacher feedback on student feedback engagement in a university English enhancement course context.
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February 7, 2024
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The present study, given increasing attention to incidental vocabulary learning, explores how different input modes (i.e., listening, reading, and viewing captioned videos) affect such learning while considering frequency and prior vocabulary knowledge. One hundred twenty Chinese university students learning English as a foreign language were allocated to three treatment groups and one (test-only) control group. Target words included 48 terms appearing at various frequencies (1–6 occurrences) in a documentary video. Incidental vocabulary learning outcomes were measured through form and meaning recognition. Mixed effects models showed that the caption viewing condition led to the most pronounced incidental vocabulary learning and retention outcomes, followed by the reading and listening conditions. A significant interaction effect was identified between time, group, and prior vocabulary knowledge. A significant interaction effect was also observed between time, group, and frequency. Meanwhile, frequency was less important for incidental vocabulary learning than prior vocabulary knowledge. Pedagogical implications are discussed based on these findings.
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January 31, 2024
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The naming of the novel coronavirus was notably one of the most politically sensitive aspects of the pandemic. After former US President Donald Trump began using the term “Chinese Virus” in March 2020, partisans with different tribal affiliations in various countries and regions rushed to formulate arguments for and against using geographically marked and racially charged labels when referring to the virus. Informed by the principles of critical discourse analysis, this article analyses the naming of the virus in the US and Hong Kong, where similar practices of naming served the interests of very different political tribes and ideological agendas. It focuses on different aspects of meaning, i.e. analytic and synthetic, and the argumentation strategies various interpretive communities used to legitimize particular naming practices. It argues that it is not just certain practices of naming, but also certain practices of reasoning about names that comes to index different tribal loyalties.
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January 31, 2024
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Postcolonial critiques of contrastive rhetoric (CR) have called our attention to epistemological theft and appropriation in the field of second language (L2) writing. Published in Anglophone venues in the Global North, these critiques reveal that early contrastive rhetoricians dispossessed non-Western people from their ownership over certain knowledges, methodologies, and practices by normalizing their language, fixing their culture, and speaking for them. These critiques have contributed to a decolonial reckoning in L2 writing. To understand how the reckoning has impacted L2 writing in the Global South, this paper examines CR scholarship published in Chinese-language venues. The study reveals that while Chinese scholars are not unfamiliar with the decolonial reckoning, they have continued to embrace the traditional CR framework. By doing so, they took part in the epistemological theft and appropriation by reenacting the appropriation of students’ writings and narratives and interpreting them in ways that fit Western knowledges and perspectives. Their acts of epistemological theft and appropriation include racializing Chinese students as inferior to White native speakers, portraying Chinese language and culture as static and inferior, and celebrating CR as a means to solving students’ problems in English writing. Chinese scholars’ acts were motivated by their national identity being defined in opposition to the West and the complicity of capitalism and nationalist discourse in China, a reality that poses challenges in decolonizing L2 writing.
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January 30, 2024
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January 2, 2024
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While the effectiveness of facemasks against COVID-19 has now become largely uncontroversial, at the beginning of the global pandemic, wearers of facemasks were often the target of sometimes racially tinged attacks. Wearing facemasks (or not) became not just a question of science, but evolved into a more complex issue of social identity, morality and global citizenship embedded within the “tribal thinking” of mask-wearers and non-mask-wearers. This paper explores to what extent two bilingual YouTube influencers participated in either accentuating or softening of boundaries of the two “tribes” by embedding facemasks in their videos. Based on multimodal transcriptions of the two videos (Wang, Yilei, Dezheng Feng & Wing Y. J. Ho. 2021. Identity, lifestyle, and face-mask branding: A social semiotic multimodal discourse analysis. Multimodality & Society 1(2). 216–237), three moments were identified where facemasks were employed by the social actors to perform everyday activities, such as grocery shopping and family brunch. I then examine the interactional stances (Dubois, John W. 2007. The stance triangle. In Robert Englebretson (ed.), Stancetaking in discourse: Subjectivity, evaluation, interaction , 139–182. Amsterdam: John Benjamins) taken by the actors towards facemasks through language and other semiotic resources. By exploring their multimodal stance-taking, it is argued that the two YouTubers’ intercultural trajectories, their performances of authenticity, and their established influence on social media provided them unique means for participating in tribalizing discourses around facemasks by making perceived differences between different groups materials for cultural consumption. The paper concludes by discussing the opportunities and challenges of vernacular health communication through social media influencers.
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January 2, 2024
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This paper explores the relationship between epistemologies, tribalism and affect in the experiences of Chinese international students studying in the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on data from student diaries, interviews, and focus groups, it explores how boundaries between in-groups and out-groups were erected and dismantled through processes of socio-temporal scaling, whereby social actors configured affective geographies by linking local spatial relationships to higher level (national and international) scales. The analysis reveals how negative emotions like fear of infection led to practices of spatial distancing and the drawing of cultural boundaries between groups, while feelings of worry about family members in China shaped communication patterns and information flows across geographic spaces. At times, however, positive emotions like affection and sympathy helped participants transcend boundaries, leading them to readjust their emotional mappings of the world and reevaluate their beliefs about COVID. The study highlights the central role affect and emotional labor play both in the formulation of epistemologies around health and in the drawing of boundaries between groups.
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Open Access
November 29, 2023
Abstract
This article aims to build on prior research on translanguaging to document how linguistically and culturally diverse students in a primary ESL classroom mobilise a wide range of multilingual and multimodal resources to demonstrate their conceptual understanding of second language (L2) vocabulary knowledge during classroom interactions. The classroom interactional data will be analysed using Multimodal Conversation Analysis. The analyses of the classroom interactional data will be triangulated with the teacher’s video-stimulated-recall-interview data, which is analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis in order to analyse the teacher’s reflections on students’ use of translanguaging to externalise their thought processes. The findings demonstrate that students’ use of translanguaging resources allows for an externalisation of thinking processes which offers visible output for inspection by the teacher. The findings challenge the conventional perspective of L2 acquisition, which commonly involves comparing the learning outcomes of experimental and control groups to evaluate their L2 progress and development. I argue that students’ translanguaging practices can be used as interactional resources for them to visualise their conceptual understanding in progress, which offers valuable diagnostic information for the teacher to assess students’ current knowledge states in the learning process. The findings of this study can provide a comprehensive picture of the process of L2 vocabulary learning as an embodied activity, indicating the need for researchers to conduct fine-grained analysis of students’ translanguaging practices when documenting evidence of students’ L2 learning.
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October 17, 2023
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The ‘good-enough’ processing account argues that, given the parallel activation of two parsing routes—algorithmic and heuristic parsing, the processor prefers heuristics over algorithms when unfolding incoming input. Literature on L2 ‘good-enough’ processing conjoins with this argument, also claiming that various factors may modulate how the L2 processor adjusts its way to heuristic or algorithmic parsing. The present study investigates how L2 learners with contrastive L1 backgrounds (Czech; English) achieve ‘good-enough’ comprehension in Korean, a popular L2 target but understudied for this topic. We focus on morphological causative and suffixal passive constructions, which differ in terms of the alignment between thematic roles and case-marking and the interpretive computation that verbal morphology invites. Participants joined acceptability judgement and self-paced reading tasks, with manipulation of word order (verb-final vs. verb-initial). Results from these tasks suggest two aspects of L2 comprehension. First, L1 and L2 comprehension do not qualitatively differ regarding ‘good-enough’ processing: the L2 processor utilises both parsing routes to reduce the burden of work at hand at the earliest opportunity. Second, the divergence of L1 and L2 processing behaviours during comprehension may originate from various factors surrounding L2 learners (e.g., L2 usage, L1–L2 interface, task types), anchoring the noisy representations of L2 knowledge.
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September 29, 2023
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While teacher resilience has gained wide currency in the general education field, empirical research on language teacher resilience is still insufficient, especially with regard to the exploration of its inner structure. Against this backdrop, this study utilized a quantitative approach to investigate the structure of English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher resilience. An adapted Chinese version of the Multidimensional Teachers’ Resilience Scale (MTRS) was completed by 539 Chinese junior high school EFL teachers. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses provided an acceptable fit for the 13-item MTRS and identified a tri-factorial structure of teacher resilience concerning professional competence, sociability, and grit. Based on these findings, the paper offers some implications for developing studies on language teacher resilience in the future.
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Open Access
September 29, 2023
Abstract
Although the predictive effect of emotion on language achievement has been substantially established, little is known about whether language achievement could, in turn, shape a constellation of emotions in second language/L2 learning, especially in the field of languages other than English. Given this, grounded on the control-value theory, this tentative study aims to fill the gap by investigating the predictive effect of language achievement on emotions (enjoyment, boredom, and anxiety) and digging into the mediating relationships between them in the underlying L2 Chinese learning mechanism through structural equation modeling. Three hundred and seven ( N = 307) young students from a cram school in New Zealand participated in this study. The results indicated that students’ learning achievement, directly and indirectly, predicted three frequently experienced emotions in the multiple mediation model. In addition, positive and negative emotions interacted with each other in the L2 Chinese learning context. The finding of this study validated and extended the application of control-value theory in L2 Chinese learning.
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Open Access
September 27, 2023
Abstract
We tell one another stories of our lives. Sharing subjective experience is part of what it means to be an embodied, languaging being. In order to explore this aspect of our nature we need to relate our phenomenal experience to its neural bases as we talk. I describe a three-step procedure to do so as a person recounts a personal story. The first step characterizes their subjective experience. I describe two complementary ways to do so. The second step infers the attentional and attributional processes that compose that experience. I suppose that telling a personal story is a form of reliving it. The process of mental simulation involved recruits other attributional processes and is itself nested under one that sustains attention to the goal of telling the story. The third step identifies these processes with their possible neural bases expressed through the language network. I take the mapping from the phenomenal to the neural to be the neurophenomenal space and offer a visualization of it. I illustrate the procedure using the hypothetical example of a bilingual speaker who tells of a recent experience walking in a new city.
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September 25, 2023
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Although the number of studies into boredom in second and/or foreign language (L2) learning is evidently on the rise and our understanding of this negative emotion has been considerably extended, surprisingly, empirical evidence is still scant with respect to boredom experienced in out-of-school situations. This study addresses this gap by: (1) examining the relative contribution of factors underlying in-class and after-class boredom, (2) investigating relationships among these factors, (3) identifying distinct learner profiles connected with these factors, and (4) exploring the role of group-related variables in this respect. The data were collected from 107 Polish university students majoring in English through two tools designed for this purpose. The results demonstrated that in-class and after-class boredom are distinct yet multidimensional constructs and factors underpinning them cannot be easily separated. Four in-class and after-class boredom-specific cluster groups were identified and the impact of gender and attainment measures for some of these factors was found. Future research directions are discussed as well.
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Open Access
September 15, 2023
Abstract
By drawing attention to the translingual practices in Malaysian Mandarin (MM), this study uses lexical variations as an analytical lens through which the changes in linguistic dimensions can be viewed from a social perspective. We present translingual practice as a communicative, rather than a pedagogical, resource that has broader applied relevance in multilingual society. Two findings are presented. First, we elaborate on how MM is interwoven with translingual words of various heritage languages (HLs)/dialects and major/powerful languages; second, we examine how translingual words varied from or standardised towards Standard Mandarin (SM) over time, by HL and in place/region. We argue that intersection with competing levelling pressures reflects not only a “standardisation” process at schools/in society but can be further interpreted as the decline of local translingual practices and local sounds, suggesting the risk of losing rich ethnic and regional heritage and identities. By giving a voice to marginalised HL speakers, this study goes beyond the description of an unstudied/understudied research site or linguistic phenomenon, implying important aspects of power and inequality and a subtle resistance against dominant policies/discourses. This could be salient for advancing future studies and theories to address efforts in advocating critical language awareness and inclusive policies.
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Open Access
September 14, 2023
Abstract
There has been a recent proliferation of studies pertaining to translanguaging. This impetus is largely driven by the increasing acknowledgement of daily communications as translingual practice. In fact, the closely related construct of plurilingualism has been incorporated into the development of the companion volume of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe. 2020. Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment – Companion volume . Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing. Available at: www.coe.int/lang-cefr). Despite the rising awareness towards translanguaging and plurilingualism in European and Northern American contexts (cf. Vallejo, Claudia & Melinda Dooly. 2020. Plurilingualism and translanguaging: Emergent approaches and shared concerns. Introduction to the special issue. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 23(1). 1–16), scepticism remains, especially in classroom settings. Through detailed analyses of extracts taken from 27 h of recordings of UK university ESL classroom interactions among Taiwanese L1 Mandarin students transcribed based on Jefferson (Jefferson, Gail. 2004. Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In Gene Lerner (ed.), Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation , 14–31. Philadelphia: John Benjamins) and supplemented by Matsumoto (Matsumoto, Yumi. 2019. Material moments: Teacher and student use of materials in multilingual writing classroom interactions. The Modern Language Journal 103(1). 179–204) and Zhu et al. (Zhu, Hua, Wei Li & Agnieszka Lyons. 2017b. Polish shop(ping) as translanguaging space. Social Semiotics 27(4). 411–433), we aim to demonstrate the complementarity effect of various multimodal resources in progressing classroom instructions. Our analyses reveal that the different linguistic and non-linguistic resources deployed contribute to scaffolding and the development of a layered understanding of the concept in discussion (e.g. phrasal verbs). We argue that the translanguaging space enables students to engage in deeper learning. Students are empowered to break down the rigid power structure and actively participate in knowledge co-construction. We end our paper by calling for research that bridges current understanding of translanguaging and policy and assessment strategies development.
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September 14, 2023
Abstract
Prior studies have widely investigated women’s empowerment in Chinese social media, but women’s empowerment in new media-based health communication has gained insufficient attention. With an aim to empower female health in a new media-based context of China, this study employs a critical discourse analytic approach to study female empowerment in health communication by focusing on 48 articles in Health China . The results of text analysis demonstrate Health China releases an array of themes, including “female genital organs”, “pregnancy”, “women’s mental health”, “cosmetology”, and “general disease”. The findings also indicate that power, intertextuality, and coherence are employed as discursive practices embedded in Chinese women’s empowerment. The study also sketches out the social-cultural factors, like benevolent sexism, the plummet national birth rate, and the traditional Chinese cultural values, as the primary facilitators of Chinese women’s empowerment in health communication. This study contributes to better empowering health discursive strategies for female-related health communication in China and beyond.
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September 14, 2023
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This study was one (partial) replication of the first study focusing on FL teacher enjoyment with the Foreign Language Teaching Enjoyment (FLTE) Scale. The influence of well-being, resilience, and some selected socio-biographical variables on FLTE was examined with a more refined data analysis approach based on hierarchical regression (i.e., offering a range of effect sizes for each predictor). Results showed that resilience (Δ R 2 = 11.7 %–38.9 %) and well-being (Δ R 2 = 3.6 %–30.9 %) were important factors statistically significantly predicting FLTE for Chinese EFL teachers, whereas length of teaching experience (Δ R 2 = 0.1 %–2.2 %) was not regarded as an important predictor and gender (Δ R 2 = 0.02 %–0.13 %) was deemed unimportant. This replication study has (1) confirmed that well-being and resilience predict FLTE, (2) reaffirmed the value of the above-mentioned more refined approach, and (3) underscored the benefit for including at least one socio-biographical variable together with the researchers’ focal factors as predictors in hierarchical regression, which will provide useful reference for the relative importance of each predictor. Some practical implications are also discussed.
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Open Access
September 14, 2023
Abstract
Whilst existing studies have investigated ludic translanguaging practices in diverse contexts, little knowledge is available on dad jokes, a common language play phenomenon in Chinese online contexts. To fill this gap, focusing on dad jokes on the Weibo platform, this paper investigates how and why translanguaging practices operate in the Chinese language play by micro-blogging users. Drawing upon a theoretical framework of translanguaging and a qualitative phenomenological approach, four types of boundary-transcending language play: interlingual, image-based, trans-semiotic, and intercultural translanguaging play are identified in the current study. Results from semi-structured online interviews with voluntary participants revealed that such creative translanguaging further facilitated the ludic effects of dad jokes and ultimately constructed a humorous translanguaging space for viewers as a source of enjoyment. The findings enrich research literature on ludic translanguaging by demonstrating that the Weibo platform with multimodal semiotic resources provides new sociolinguistic affordances for inclusive, digital literacy practices in language play.
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September 13, 2023
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Emotion labor is a multidimensional construct that plays a key role in teachers’ emotional knowledge and emotional development. However, little empirical research has focused on such multidimensionality of emotion labor at personal, institutional, and sociocultural levels. The present study aimed to fill this gap by drawing on metaphors and integrating data from Iranian English language teachers through open-ended questionnaires, narrative frames, and semi-structured interviews. The analyses of the data revealed that the teachers used metaphorical language to display their negative emotions against the relational power that shaped their professional emotions and practices. Moreover, the teachers deployed such metaphors to represent the clashes between external power relations and their internal feelings. Our findings demonstrate the rigor and relevance of metaphor in capturing emotion labor. As a consequence, we present a taxonomy that can serve as a heuristic for institutional stakeholders to engage in closer scrutiny of teachers’ emotion work and the power relations that shape such work.
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September 13, 2023
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Teachers’ emotions have been approved to play a pivotal role in higher education. However, the interface of university teachers’ emotions and assessment practices has been widely ignored in second/foreign language contexts. To fill this lacuna, this study examined the perceptions of 35 Iranian EFL university teachers regarding the types, triggers, and regulation strategies of assessment-related emotions through a semi-structured interview. After a thematic analysis of the data by MAXQDA software, it was found that Iranian university teachers have experienced both negative and positive emotions during their assessment practices. Such emotions were mainly triggered by teachers’ assessment methods/practices, teaching context, and the assessment culture of the department. Furthermore, the results indicated that the participants employed several preventive and responsive strategies to regulate negative and positive feelings during the L2 assessment. Practical implications are discussed regarding the necessity of training university teachers on the interplay of emotions and L2 assessment.
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September 13, 2023
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With latent profile analysis (LPA), this study identified motivation profiles of rural English learners in China based on expectancy-value theory (EVT). The construct validity of the extracted latent profiles was verified by their association with learning strategy use and English achievement. A total of 2,433 Chinese rural students completed English achievement test and online questionnaire measuring self-efficacy, intrinsic value, utility value, English learning strategy, and demographic information. The LPA results demonstrated that a model with four latent profiles adequately represented the data, naming rural English learners with “high expectancy and high value”, “low expectancy and medium value”, “medium expectancy and low value”, and “low expectancy and low value”, respectively. Four subgroups showed significant differences in strategy use and English achievement. Rural learners with “high expectancy and high value” used the most cognitive and metacognitive strategies, and scored highest in English test, followed by those with “low expectancy and medium value”, “medium expectancy and low value”, and “low expectancy and low value”. This study is consistent with the situated nature of motivation and provides new insights into English instruction in rural areas.
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September 12, 2023
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Using the social-spatial notions of geosemiotic assemblage and chronotope, this participatory ethnographic case study examines the intersection of store signs in the Africatown in Guangzhou and transnational African migrants’ meaning-making and place-making practices. Data collection is employed through a combination of traditional and participatory ethnographic methods including visual texts, interviews, and virtual field observations with fieldnotes. Findings from this study indicate the Africatown as geosemiotic assemblage, which echoes the principle in human geography that material and social environments are imbued with meanings in daily practices. The Africatown as geosemiotic assemblage is a multifaceted and dialogic process in which meanings, perceptions, multi-senses, and symbols are tied together to a locality. This study illustrates that the African migrants’ perceptions of the Africatown are mediated by both material and social environments. Specifically, African migrants are able to engage in multilingual social practices with both non-human artefacts and humans, placing great emphasis on spatiality in their reconceptualization of Africatown as more than a local African migrants’ hub. This study further demonstrates that the materials assembled in the African migrants’ milleu are historical, social, cultural, and multilingual in facilitating their reconstruction of the Africatown’s transnational space and African migrants’ identities. This study argues that a geosemiotic assemblage approach is salient in expanding current understandings of multilingual and transnational research by foregrounding materiality in meaning-making and place-making practices.
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Open Access
September 12, 2023
Abstract
This qualitative study examines the language attitudes and language use of two North Korean refugees living in the Gyeongsang provincial region of South Korea and actively trying to assimilate into mainstream Korean society. In interviews, the participants expressed a hierarchical view of three varieties of Korean (their North Korean Hamgyong dialect, the South Korean Gyeongsang dialect, and standard South Korean). They discussed how their North Korean accents exacerbated their marginalization, described the Gyeongsang dialect as “ignorant” and “rude,” and explained how and why they were trying to acquire standard South Korean. They also described how their North Korean accent continued to affect their communication with local South Korean speakers, who often perceived them as sounding angry and commanding. The participants had developed diverse communicative strategies in response to these language-related challenges, including smiling so as to not appear aggressive, remaining silent to avoid being outed by their speech, speaking carefully to appear more South Korean and avoid potential misunderstandings, and proactively revealing their North Korean background and seeking their interlocutors’ understanding in advance. Based on the findings, the study offers practical implications for language-support programs designed for North Korean refugees.
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September 11, 2023
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This case study explores the pedagogical implications of translingual practices for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). The case study examines how a multilingual undergraduate student at a Sino-U.S. joint-venture university in China employs translingual practices to understand, deepen, and broaden her understanding of research content and improve her academic writing with different language resources. Specifically, this study investigated how translingual practices were used and perceived to improve content development and language learning in a CLIL context and discussed how translingual practices could be implemented for CLIL. The results show that translingual practices facilitated content learning by allowing the student to use her full linguistic repertoire and helped her scaffold the understanding of new concepts and vocabulary. In addition, translingual practices enhanced the student’s language learning by exposing her to different linguistic structures, conventions, and vocabulary, and promoting a more inclusive and equitable learning environment. These findings suggest that incorporating translingual practices into educational settings, particularly in CLIL contexts, can lead to more effective and equitable learning outcomes for multilingual students.
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Open Access
September 11, 2023
Abstract
Stakeholders and researchers in higher education have long debated the consequences of English-medium instruction (EMI); a key assumption of EMI is that student’s academic learning through English should be at least as good as learning through their first language (usually the national language). This study addressed the following question: “What is the impact from English-medium instruction on students’ academic performance in an online learning environment?” “Academic performance” was measured in two ways: number of correctly answered test questions and through-put/drop-out rate. The study adopted an experimental design involving a large group ( n = 2,263) randomized control study in a programming course. Student participants were randomly allocated to an English-medium version of the course (the intervention group) or a Swedish-medium version of the course (the control group). The findings were that students enrolled on the English-medium version of the course answered statistically significantly fewer test questions correctly; the EMI students also dropped out from the course to a statistically significantly higher degree compared to students enrolled on the Swedish version of the course. The conclusion of this study is thus that EMI may, under certain circumstances, have negative consequences for students’ academic performance.
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August 10, 2023
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Amidst the backdrop of anti-Asian violence and the COVID-19 pandemic, this article addresses key social justice issues and praxes in language education with Asian American populations, especially with regards to pedagogy and K–12 schooling contexts. The article’s structure utilises four main sections, with the first section presenting key demographics and typology on who is considered ‘Asian American’ in the US schooling system. The second section provides an overview of major historical developments in language education with Asian American students, teachers, and researchers, over a time period spanning the past 50 years. The third section addresses the falsely essentialised binary of being an ‘Oppressed Minority’ versus a ‘Model Minority’ which Asian Americans often have to contend with, and effects of that binary in schooling. The fourth section presents some promising approaches to improving research methodology and classroom pedagogy with Asian American students, teachers, and families. Ultimately this papers seeks to make a contribution, along with the other papers in this special issue, towards more equitable research, policy and practice concerning communities of Asian heritage in North America.
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August 1, 2023
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Although automated translation has been available for decades in myriad forms, the implication of the current exponential advancement in artificial intelligence (AI) for communication in general and translation in particular is more starkly affrontational than ever. Although Large Language Models, of which ChatGPT is exemplary, were not specifically designed for translation purposes, they are attested to have attained a sufficient degree of technical sophistication as to generate translations that match or surpass dedicated translation systems in the market like Google Translate and DeepL. This impacts the modus operandi of communication and the self-concept of language professionals including, of course, translators. This article asks how translation as a field of practice can best respond to this development. It critically reflects on the implications of AI for the conception of translation, arguing that an alternative framing around the idea of distribution allows us to rescale translation toward broader competencies and conceive of AI as a prosthesis of translators’ minds. The article advocates a posthumanist perspective on translation with a view to expanding its spectrum of skills, modes, and media as well as transcending the traditional personae of translators.
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Open Access
July 13, 2023
Abstract
Outcomes-oriented assessment in translingual language education carries with it the necessary definition of the object of learning and the concomitant verifiability or construct validity of the means of assessment. At the same time, pedagogies for multilingual creativity should ideally seek to identify dimensions that effectively reflect their intended outcome. While reflection and critical thinking increasingly form part of criteria for assessment in language education at all levels, the assessment of these dimensions in relation to creativity has proved more intractable, due in part perhaps to the potentially stifling effect of assessing an elusive quality that is valued for fostering affective engagement with individuals’ unique identity and lived experience and enabling creativity to achieve transformative learning. Recognizing that translingual language play can be sanctioned in the arts as a way of legitimating and giving voice to minoritized and oppressed populations, can lessons be drawn from different disciplines to rejuvenate assessment in language education, for example by placing some of the onus on learners monitoring their own learning? This paper presents a holistic and inclusive, arts-informed pluridimensional lens on creativity in language education whereby new forms of assessment aim to foster tolerance, diversity and translingual practices in the classroom, while resisting the drive to institutionalize the neo-liberal mandates of the creative economy.
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July 13, 2023
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June 5, 2023
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In this case study, seventy Tibetan residents selected from two Tibetan villages in Danba county, Southwest China, were invited to participate in an investigation of their everyday use of Tibetan, standard Chinese, and English, as well as their expectations of future multilingual practices. It was found that there are intergenerational differences in the participants’ use of these languages. This paper, in the context of neoliberal ideology and rural development, suggests that attention should be given to support local Tibetan residents’ language learning and improve their multilingual competence, thus enabling the conversion of their linguistic/human capital to economic capital. The study contributes to understandings of how local multilingual resources can be exploited for the betterment of living standards and opportunities, and it calls for governments to address the issues regarding poverty reduction, rural development, and language preservation by improving the quality of multilingual education in ethnic minority areas.
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June 2, 2023
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This article presents an assessment design that embraces creativity, criticality, and translanguaging as guiding principles. The design was implemented in the language and content learning classrooms of three Bangladeshi universities. Although the design indicates considerable pedagogical and social benefits, the participants demonstrated conflicting attitudes from the individual, institutional, and ideological dimensions towards implementing such an assessment design in mainstream classrooms. The article recommends teacher education, training programmes, and prestige planning of translanguaging practices for successful implementations of translanguaging oriented assessments in Bangladeshi higher education and related contexts.
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May 31, 2023
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Second/foreign language (L2) writing emotions play an important role in language writing outcomes. However, extant literature was dominated by L2 anxiety with other types of emotions being neglected. Further, little is known about whether English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) writers demonstrate heterogenous patterns of emotional experiences in English writing. The aim of the study was to identify intra-individual differences in EFL writing emotion patterns and how these patterns differed from each other in terms of writing buoyancy, motivation, and proficiency. Through convenience sampling, three hundred and sixty-three EFL undergraduates in China were recruited and they completed a battery of questionnaires. Latent profile analysis (LPA) revealed a three-profile solution. They were labelled as the “positive type” ( PT ), “negative type” ( NT ) and “moderate type” ( MT ). Three groups reported significantly different levels of writing buoyancy and motivation with the highest scores of them being found among the PT group, followed by MT , and lastly NT . The writing proficiency was higher for the PT group than for the NT group, but the PT group did not differ from the NT or MT group. The dominance of MT group suggested that most students exhibited mild attitudes toward EFL writing. The distinct patterns of EFL writing emotions and their influences on writing outcomes suggested that teachers should boost students’ emotional learning competence and adjust the teaching approach accordingly.
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This paper explores how beginners in a second language (L2) perform on and perceive an online writing test that is designed based on the notion of translanguaging. The test was administered during emergency remote teaching when many L2 courses navigated creative solutions to online testing. Situated in an ab initio Mandarin Chinese course in New Zealand, 163 students’ first-time digital compositions in Chinese and responses to an immediate follow-up survey on their translanguaging practices were analysed as part of evaluating a new assessment design. Students’ digital compositions demonstrated purposeful translanguaging in assessment conditions, judiciously negotiating their existing linguistic knowledge when completing the task. The writing assessment showed augmented task completion when learners’ trans-semiotic repertoires were recognised as a legitimate resource for identity expression. The survey found that most students supported the creative design that integrated digital multimodal composition and translanguaging, replacing the monolingually-focused handwriting-based test tasks. Some students were sceptical of the translanguaging approach and found it unexpected, unnecessary, and inauthentic. The study suggests that L2 writing test design might incorporate translanguaging as a creative and transformative assessment facet to genuinely engage beginning learners in meaningful writing tasks when their proficiency level is limited.
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May 25, 2023
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Foreign language peace of mind (FLPOM) is conceptualized as a Chinese culture-specific low-arousal positive emotional state of inner peace and harmony. It is used to describe learners’ psychological well-being in the Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) context. This study examines the intermediate mechanism for the positive effect of FLPOM on language achievement by testing learners’ cognitive engagement as a mediator on the relationship between FLPOM and language achievement and competitive psychological climate as a moderator of the mediation effect. Foreign language enjoyment (FLE), a comparatively high-arousal positive emotion, is also tested in the same model for comparison purposes. Results showed that cognitive engagement mediated the relationship between both FLPOM and FLE and language achievement and that competitive psychological climate negatively moderated (i.e., weakened) the mediation effect of cognitive engagement on FLE and achievement, but did not moderate the mediation effect of cognitive engagement on FLPOM and achievement. The findings point to the role of FLPOM in gaining learners’ individual resources (e.g., cognitive engagement) and, more importantly, the distinctive role of the low-arousal emotion of FLPOM in lowering resource loss and maintaining learner engagement in high resource loss (e.g., high competitiveness, high stress) circumstances.
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May 25, 2023
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In Chinese primary EFL classrooms, translanguaging between English and Chinese is commonly used by teachers and students out of need for efficient communication, however, this practice has been and is still widely believed to hinder students’ English development. Although recent studies have revealed the benefits translanguaging offers for teaching and learning, little has been done to understand teachers’ perceptions and use of a translanguaging pedagogy in their formative assessment practices, which is expected to play a more important role than before in China’s primary education due to recent policy reform. To close this gap, this exploratory study conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 Chinese primary EFL teachers, who are varied in their geographical location and teaching experience. Adopting an abductive thematic analysis approach, data analysis aimed at understanding how translanguaging was used to facilitate the implementation of formative assessment. Through the lens of creativity, three essential types of translanguaging practices – translanguaging for meaning-making (through preparation and expansion), collaboration, and empowerment – were identified, which have the potential to facilitate different procedures of formative assessment by accelerating understanding and expression, stimulating critical thinking and exploration, maintaining interest and engagement, and promoting autonomy and peer learning.
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May 25, 2023
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Classrooms provide a context in which teachers and learners co-construct meaning in light of their sociocultural understandings and profiles. However, to date, few studies have scrutinized the way such profiles contribute to teachers’ classroom discourse. Informed by the methodological framework of conversation analysis and drawing upon a corpus of 20-h naturally-occurring classroom interactions, the present study examined variations in novice and experienced teachers’ classroom discourse in providing opportunities for learner interlanguage development. The study relied on Walsh’s (2006. Investigating classroom discourse . Routledge) conceptualization of classroom context mode in the data collection and analysis stages. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data revealed that the experienced teachers’ discourse was marked by greater simultaneity and immediacy characteristics targeted at learner engagement in comparison to novice teachers. The study findings highlight variations between the two groups across a range of discursive constructions and provide implications for enhancing novice teachers’ classroom discourse.
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May 25, 2023
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English-medium Instruction (EMI), that is, the use of the English language to teach academic subjects apart from English, is a growing phenomenon around the world. In view of the facilitative role of language in content learning, scholars have stressed the need to incorporate a language focus into EMI classrooms. One practical question that arises from this discussion is “How?” This study, through a telling case, intends to reveal the classroom practices of an EMI teacher who explicitly addresses different language issues during her content teaching in a psychology course in a Macau university. Drawing on multiple sources of data including field observations and interviews, the authors unearth three forms of the teacher’s language-related teaching practices – (1) teaching language for content comprehension, (2) teaching language for classroom engagement, and (3) teaching language through feedback. Specific teaching techniques are further identified and discussed in relation to various personal and contextual factors surrounding the EMI classroom. Practical insights are offered to individual EMI teachers in embracing a language focus to facilitate content learning in EMI programs across geographical contexts.
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April 28, 2023
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As a burgeoning area of interdisciplinary enquiry, linguistic landscape (LL) research can shed light on the sociopolitical, cultural and demographical realities of a particular locale. However, LL research has seldom explored major international cities from a translation and contrastive perspective. Drawing on a corpus containing 450 photographs (e.g. shop fronts and public signs), this study investigates the multilingual landscape involving the Arabic-English pair in Dubai, an international hub representing a vivid case of micro-cosmopolitanism and superdiversity in the 21st century. An examination of the bilingual and translation practices enacted on Dubai’s LL points to a ubiquitous phenomenon that the Arabic information is often not authentic Arabic but transliterations from English (pseudo Arabic in disguise). Such use of transliteration privileges the phonetic transference of sounds, at the expense of meaning and function. The prevalent use of transliteration as a ‘go-to’ strategy is interesting, considering the obvious existence of pure Arabic equivalents. To provide some ethnographic context for the analysis, 10 people in Dubai were interviewed (Arabic speakers from different Arab countries) to establish whether the transliterated Arabic can be understood and the possible rationale behind this interesting linguistic decision. Such symbolic and decorative use of Arabic reflects Dubai’s global city status with immigrants significantly outnumbering the indigenous Arabic-speaking natives. The widespread aesthetic use of ‘Arabised English’ points to the influence of English in a globalised world. Some tentative reasons are provided to explain the phenomenon.
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Open Access
March 7, 2023
Abstract
Secondary research is burgeoning in the field of Applied Linguistics, taking the form of both narrative literature review and especially more systematic research synthesis. Clearly purposed and methodologically sound secondary research contributes to the field because it provides useful and reliable summaries in a given domain, facilitates research dialogues between sub-fields, and reduces redundancies in the published literature. It is important to understand that secondary research is an umbrella term that includes numerous types of literature review. In this commentary, we present a typology of 13 types of well-established and emergent types of secondary research in Applied Linguistics. Employing a four-dimensional analytical framework, focus, review process, structure, and representation of text of the 13 types of secondary research are discussed, supported by examples. This article ends with recommendations for conducting secondary research and calls for further inquiry into field-specific methodology of secondary research.
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Open Access
March 7, 2023
Abstract
Bilingual education has become increasingly popular in China, with a subsequent growth in research, particularly research with a qualitative component that examines learners’ and teachers’ experiences and perspectives. These studies have mostly been conducted in individual classroom settings where contexts and learners differ, making findings less transferrable to other educational settings. To address this need, we conducted a qualitative synthesis of research that aims to provide a holistic and rich description of bilingual education in China. Our focus is on the implementation of bilingual education in different educational contexts, learners’ and teachers’ perceptions of bilingual education, and the research instruments used for the evaluation of bilingual education. Following a discipline-specific methodological framework for conducting qualitative research synthesis (Chong, Sin Wang & Luke Plonsky. 2021. A primer on qualitative research synthesis in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly 55(3). 1024–1034), we identified suitable studies using a pre-determined search string within various databases. Search results were screened based on a set of inclusion criteria and relevant information was extracted from the included studies using a piloted data extraction form. The extracted data were synthesised using grounded theory to identify new themes and sub-themes. Our findings point to the need for more fine-grained classifications of bilingual education models, despite the fact that Chinese learners generally show positive attitudes towards bilingual education. The study ends with an analysis of limitations, as well as recommendations for future research and practice.
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February 23, 2023
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This study investigated the effects of two learner-related factors on English as a first language (L1E) ( n = 20) and English as a foreign language (EFL) ( n = 20) learners’ incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading an authentic novel. Central to the study was the participants’ reading of the novel: A Clockwork Orange by British novelist Anthony Burgess. The novel contains slovos, which are words from nadsat , a foreignized argot used by the teenage gang members in the novel. Two unannounced tests followed the reading to measure the participants’ word meaning recall and recognition of target words. Regression analyses revealed that reading speed was a robust factor that affected both the L1E and the EFL learners’ acquisition of both word meaning recall and recognition; apparently, the faster the reading, the more words the readers acquired. However, positive affect, measured as reading enjoyment, did not turn out to be a factor in word acquisition. The findings indicate that the cognitive factor, i.e., reading speed, overrides the positive affect of reading enjoyment in determining L1E and EFL learners’ incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading. This research concludes with a discussion of the pedagogical implications of repeated and extensive reading, which promote the development of reading speed.
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February 20, 2023
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This article examines the effects of task conditions (i.e., with and without a sentence-writing task), multimedia input (definition only, definition + information, definition + information + videos), and combinations of these two variables on the learning gains of new words. This study involved a 2 × 3 research design. In total, 235 Chinese EFL learners were allocated to the six conditions. Vocabulary learning outcomes were measured by pre- and post-tests on 24 target items. The results showed that the definition + information + videos group scored significantly higher than the definition + information and the definition-only groups. Additionally, the sentence-writing task increased the effectiveness of vocabulary learning versus the condition without this task. The combination of the definition + information + videos condition and sentence-writing task was identified as the most effective technique for learning lexical items. This study highlighted the effectiveness of combining multimedia input with a sentence-writing task to learn new words. Relevant teaching and theoretical implications were also discussed.
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February 17, 2023
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This study investigated the use of language learning strategies (LLS) by Australian students and East Asian students in Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learning, and then interpreted the findings from cultural and educational perspectives. Using a questionnaire and semi-structure interview, the researchers found that there were significant differences in strategy use between Australian students and East Asian students. The East Asian students employed more learning strategies associated with working hard and perseverance, whereas the Australian students used more learning strategies related to self-realization. Meanwhile, the strategies used more frequently by the East Asian students were relevant to high acceptance of power and authority, but the strategies used more often by the Australian students were associated with low acceptance of power and authority. Finally, the traditional teaching methods used in East Asian countries resulted in the students’ use of learning strategies concerning analysis of grammatical rules and linguistic details, but the communicative approach employed in Australia helped the students use the strategies leading to improvement of communicative competence and understanding of overall meaning in a text. A deep analysis of these findings shows that the disparities in students’ strategy use could be linked to some cultural and educational factors.
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February 10, 2023
Abstract
Unlike Korean or Vietnamese adoptees who came to the U.S. during the postwar era, Chinese adoptees are mostly abandoned female infants under China’s one-child policy from 1980 through 2015. Little work has documented Chinese adoptees’ identity (trans)formation across time and space. This study examines how three Chinese adoptees from the U.S. who chose to go to Taiwan to teach English make sense of their Chinese heritages and their lives in and out of Asia. Drawing on the frameworks of positioning and chronotopic identities, this cross-sectional, multiple case study documents the participants’ identity (trans)formations through their narratives on their moves across the U.S., China, and Taiwan during different points of their lives. Our adoptee participants’ home and work experiences over time represent diverse pathways for their negotiations of various aspects of their identities – linguistic, cultural, Chinese, American, Asian American, and adoptee – in their life trajectories transnationally. Their diverse experiences complicate current understandings of adoptee identities within and across the adoptive home, the “homeland” of their birth places, and beyond.
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February 10, 2023
Abstract
This autoethnographic narrative shows how discourses of belonging for racialized identities within Canada’s mosaic are bounded by history, cultural politics, and attendant social struggles. Using an intersectional framework of Asian Critical theory, politics of location, and cultural capital, this paper demonstrates how ideologies of belonging are sustained by processes of cultural and institutional socialization which maintain hierarchies privileging some social groups over others and produce racial/ized difference and inequities within Canadian citizenry. As a second-generation of Chinese ancestry born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, my lived experiences in a predominantly white English-speaking environment illustrate how my status as “model minority” or “honorary white” has been a precarious position. Bonilla-Silva warns us that “honorary white” positioning may be revoked in times of economic, racial or ethnic tension. Dramatic increases in anti-Asian hate incidents during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic—earning Vancouver, BC, the title of the “anti-Asian hate capital of North America”—is an example of how these racialized statuses are paradoxical designations which deny the existence of social inequities. Critical research must interrogate how the continued use of mis-aggregated data that essentializes diverse population groups and perpetuates harmful distortions of Canadian citizenry contribute to, rather than dismantle, discourses of race in “multicultural” Canada.
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February 10, 2023
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By inscribing and ascribing particular indexical signifiers to people while ignoring and/or dismissing actual individual performative enactments and self-identifications, neoliberal multicultural discourses, in claiming tolerance and acceptance, frame racialized people as “an essentialized and totalized unit that is perceived to have little or no internal variation” (Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 2000. Racialized discourses and ethnic epistemologies. In Norman K. Denzin & Yvonna S. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of qualitative research , 2nd edn., 257–277. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage). In doing so, these discourses supposedly celebrating ‘diversity’ disregard the complexities, hybridities, and differences that constitute and are constitutive of any individual. Thus, in drawing on the ethos of tolerance and acceptance, ‘multicultural’ discourses paper over societal conflicts, internal divisions and oppressions, and homogenize racial, linguistic, and cultural identities ignoring the complex identifications people may perform and hold in any given interactional situational context. In this critical autoethnography, I illustrate how an indexical order of ‘Asianness’ in its ‘model minority’ variety has been shaped and subverted at times by my situated appropriations of various enregisterments (Agha, Asif. 2007. Language and social relations . Cambridge University Press) of a working-class heteronormative masculinity in interactional contexts. These enactments illuminate how an indexical order of an Asian American male has continually shifted and reacted to such positionings in a white supremacy society.
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Open Access
February 6, 2023
Abstract
Research on translanguaging practices in multilingual contexts has explored how translanguaging highlights the multilingual and multicultural nature of social interactions and its transformative nature in transgressing established norms and boundaries. This article aims to provide an alternative view of interactional competence by connecting it to the notion of translanguaging and its emphasis on the active deployment of multiple linguistic, semiotic, and sociocultural resources in a dynamic and integrated way. We argue for extending the notion of interactional competence as we suggest that translanguaging is the practice of drawing on a speaker’s interactional competence for constructing new configurations of language practices for communicative purposes. Such a conceptualization reinforces the meaning-making process as a locally emergent phenomenon and a jointly accomplished social action. It also conceptualizes the undertaking of co-constructing social interactions as a process of translanguaging whereby interactants need to seek out available multilingual and multimodal resources and make strategic choices among these resources in order to achieve their social actions on a moment-by-moment basis. This article utilizes Sequential-Categorial Analysis, which combines Multimodal Conversation Analysis and Membership Categorisation Analysis, in its analysis of classroom video recordings of vocabulary instruction in a beginner-level adult English-for-Speakers-of-Other-Languages classroom in order to demonstrate our argument.
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January 30, 2023
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As teaching a foreign language (FL) is a demanding and frustrating career, FL teachers might face different challenges and difficulties which in turn would lead them to quit their jobs. Therefore, FL teachers need to keep their effort, energy, and passion to achieve their teaching goals. FL teacher grit (i.e., perseverance of effort and consistency of interest in FL teaching) is the concept that deals with these issues. In this study, we developed a new FL teacher grit scale (FLTGS) and investigated how FL teacher grit is related to their burnout and different discrete emotions. To this end, a total of 235 FL teachers filled out the questionnaires. The results of the study indicated, firstly, that the newly developed FL teacher grit scale had high reliability and a two-factor model fitted the data adequately. Secondly, findings indicated that both grit components had positive correlations with FL teaching enjoyment and negative correlations with FL teaching anxiety, boredom, and burnout. Finally, the results of relative weight analysis showed that FL teacher grit components can be as important as emotions in predicting burnout. Our findings suggested that the newly developed grit scale could provide us with a valid and reliable tool to assess FL teacher grit. Moreover, our findings suggested that higher levels of FL teacher grit can prevent them from experiencing burnout.
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Open Access
January 23, 2023
Abstract
In this paper, we present an approach for applied linguists to undertake research on speech acts in an interactionally anchored way. We first critically revisit studies on speech acts, with a special focus on L2 pragmatics, arguing that there is a clear need to further interconnect speech acts and interaction by relying on a finite, replicable and interactional typology of speech acts. We then suggest a methodological procedure through which such a typology can be employed in applied linguistic inquiries. Finally, we describe a case study featuring irritations faced by Chinese learners of English when it comes to extracting oneself from an interaction while the other keeps on talking. Such irritations are analysed through the lens of the approach proposed in this study.
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Open Access
January 20, 2023
Abstract
The multilingual turn in applied linguistics has produced a number of models that approach multilingualism from a variety of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. However, fully developed models of multilingualism that focus on the language practices of individuals and groups are still lacking. This paper contributes to address this gap by introducing visual models that represent the contexts of practice and attitudes to the languages in the repertoire of lower secondary pupils in Norway. The paper starts by introducing the rich linguistic scenario in Norway and the role of language learning in developing students’ multilingual abilities. After a brief discussion on the role of practice in language learning, we provide an outline of current models of multilingualism, situating our visual models, the Ungspråk Practice-Based Models of Multilingualism (UPMM), in the field. The paper then focuses on the properties of the UPMM, which represent data collected from an online questionnaire answered by 593 students in lower secondary school and allow for the exploration of data both from the perspective of the whole group of participants and from an individual perspective. Particular attention is paid to the interactive features of the models, which can be used by teachers and educators as pedagogical tools for exploring multilingualism and language learning. The paper concludes with a discussion of the contexts of practice for the languages in the participants’ repertoires based on the visual models.
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Open Access
January 20, 2023
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January 19, 2023
Abstract
Previous research on foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) has reported inconsistent findings. One significant reason is that these studies mainly adopted a data-driven approach and lacked a strong theoretical basis. This study thus examined the factors underlying FLCA with worry-emotionality theorization of anxiety (Liebert, Robert M. & Larry W. Morris. 1967. Cognitive and emotional components of test anxiety: A distinction and some initial data. Psychological Reports 20. 975–978). A preliminary survey was conducted to validate the original FLCAS with 603 English majors from two Chinese universities, and 20 of them were invited for individual interviews to better understand the factors contributing to their FLCA. Based on these, a questionnaire was constructed through adapting the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale (FLCAS) and used in a main survey among 557 Chinese university English majors. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were performed to analyse the survey data, while thematic analysis was used to analyse the interview data. In addition to three factors reported in the FLCA factor validation literature, communication apprehension, self-confidence in speaking English and fear of negative evaluation, this study identified peer pressure as a new factor. The findings reveal the multidimensional nature of FLCA and support the worry-emotionality theorization of anxiety. Implications for the conceptualization of FLCA are discussed.
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January 16, 2023
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In this study, we provide a scientometric analysis of 43,685 studies published in 51 quartile-1 journals in the field of applied linguistics (1970–2022). Scientometric analysis uses citation records to quantitatively compute networks of cited works and map out how published works have been cited. We adapted a multi-stage scientometric method consisting of database identification, dataset generation, document co-citation analysis, research cluster identification, and cluster characterization. A number of major research clusters were identified and a high degree of interconnectedness in terms of theoretical base was observed between the clusters. The pre-2000 publications had a conspicuous focus on theories derived from language use, which might be said had set the tone for the maturation of the field. By contrast, the clusters that emerged from the 2000s showed more specificity and granularity in focus and scope, suggesting the beginning of a research era with more specialized directions. Despite this trend, we identified influential publications which received several spikes in citations in different eras, indicating their continued temporal and thematic relevance in different clusters. In addition, we found evidence of inter-cluster cross-pollinations. We discuss how each cluster should be characterized in terms of its knowledge base and knowledge front. Highly cited works form the knowledge base of a cluster while novel works form the knowledge fronts of a cluster. Future directions are mentioned and highlighted.
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Open Access
January 13, 2023
Abstract
The International Database of Education Systematic Reviews (IDESR.org) contains summary records of published systematic reviews in education and protocols for unpublished reviews and reviews in preparation. During its pilot phase, IDESR is concentrating exclusively on curating systematic reviews in language education. IDESR makes ready access to extant evidence syntheses for researchers, who can use this information to assess the strength of the warrant for any proposed new primary research and/or additional evidence syntheses. By using IDESR to publish review protocols prospectively, review authors commit to high standards of transparency and rigour in producing their research. We have used the data held in IDESR to assess the topics, publication patterns, and reporting quality in the language education literature. We found (i) that language education has seen exponential growth in systematic reviews of research; (ii) that a variety of topics have been addressed, but those related to educational technology have dominated; (iii) that reviews are published in a wide range of outlets, going beyond language education journals; and (iv) that there is room for improvement in the quality of reporting evidence syntheses in language education.
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January 10, 2023
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This study provides a systematic review of the methodological features of meta-analyses in second language learning. The synthesis aims to inform how meta-analyses in L2 learning have been conducted, evaluate whether methodological decisions are aligned with norms and standards, identify issues, and suggest solutions based on expert advice, statistical guides, and best practices. A total of 120 meta-analyses were retrieved and coded for key features related to bibliographic and demographic characteristics, search and selection, publication bias, quality control, data coding, data analysis, and effect size interpretation. The synthesis showed that 98 meta-analyses examined the effectiveness of instructional treatments, 21 investigated correlations, and one explored the occurrence of events. These meta-analyses included an average of 37 primary studies (range = 9–302). Common selection criteria the meta-analyses applied included publication type, availability of data for effect size calculation, learner traits, learners’ target languages, publication dates, publication language, independent variables, and dependent variables. Major strategies used to detect publication bias included creating a funnel plot, using trim-and-fill analysis, and calculating a fail-safe N. Typical moderators examined in the meta-analyses related to research context, treatment features, sample characteristics, and outcome measures. The synthesis also identified a number of issues, including failure to report key features such as model selection (fixed- vs. random-effects model), effect size weighting, and so on; conducting moderator analysis based on very small cell sizes (e.g., only one study in a subgroup); lack of justification for certain methodological decisions such as using d instead of g, using confidence intervals rather than Q -tests to identify significant moderators; lack of quality control; and confounding study-based and synthesis-based moderators. We offer advice on identified issues and call for more transparency of reporting.
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January 10, 2023
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The last decade has seen a proliferation of studies about emotions in FL teaching and learning. The present study examined three of the most researched and well-known FL emotions to date, namely anxiety, boredom, and enjoyment, and their relationships with learners’ engagement in English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) classes and their EFL proficiency. One hundred and eleven Grade 3–4 EFL children completed a questionnaire and English tests. Various statistical analyses (correlation, hierarchical multiple regression, and path analysis) revealed that all five variables were significantly inter-correlated. Enjoyment was the strongest predictor of engagement and proficiency, followed by boredom. The path analysis indicated that the hypothetical path of emotions→engagement→proficiency did not exist; rather, only two direct relationships were found in the model: Enjoyment→engagement and enjoyment→proficiency. The findings highlight the crucial role of enjoyment for young learners in FL teaching and learning.
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January 10, 2023
Abstract
Immigration from diverse countries of origin has brought to Australia a great linguistic diversity. Moving to Australia, many migrant communities tend to shift from their heritage languages (HLs) and shift to English. Korean migrant communities, however, buck this trend. Notable within the Korean communities are ethnic church congregations, which offer social networks to maintain Korean identity. Focusing on the Korean communities in Australia, this study extends the limited knowledge about the potential of migrant religious organisations to promote HL maintenance. Specifically, drawing on data from 300 surveys collected from parents and semi-structured interviews with eight parents and their children, this study compares experiences of HL maintenance among families who attend a Korean church with those who do not. A key finding is that families affiliated with a Korean church are more likely to prioritise HL learning, practise the language and be proficient in the language than those who are not. Additionally, participants in this study reported that Korean churches provide valuable opportunities for HL learning. This study contributes to an understanding of the intertwined dynamics of migration, religion and language.
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January 9, 2023
Abstract
Despite an increase in ethnic diversity within the country, the English language teaching workforce remains undeniably binary in Korea. Using an intersectionality lens, this study was an exploration of the racialized experiences of one Ugandan female teacher of English working in Korean ELT. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to investigate how she perceived herself as an English speaker and teacher and how Koreans’ stereotypes of ideal English teachers and Black people affected her professional identity and self-perceptions. Findings suggest that the Ugandan woman was rejected by the formal accreditation process and faced considerable challenges in her efforts to be accepted as a qualified English teacher in Korea. On the other hand, she perceived herself as a native-like English speaker and a fully qualified English teacher with an MA degree in TESOL and years of English teaching experience. This study reveals not only the practical difficulties of a biased assessment system, but also the narrow discourse concerning who can legitimately be recognized as an English teacher in Korea, which is at odds with the Korean policy of a pursuing multicultural society and honoring diversity and with the global trend of recognizing multiple English.
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January 6, 2023
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Drawing on conversation analysis, this study examines primary-concern solicitation in Mandarin-speaking medical encounters in China. Based on the observation of naturally occurring solicitation sequences, we identify the major question formats and problem-solicitation patterns in China’s mainland. It is found that Chinese medical openings feature both the dominance of generic solicitation in primary-concern solicitation and the recurrence of phase-skipping business-specific solicitation. Chinese primary-concern solicitation tends to be both more permissive and restrictive than its English counterpart, driven by the same concern of consultation efficiency. The study contributes to a cross-cultural comparison of the medical activity and enriches the understanding of culture and language’s influence on performing social actions in medical encounters.
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December 21, 2022
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To date, a growing body of second language (L2) research has investigated linguistic alignment as a pedagogical intervention, focusing on L2 learners’ alignment behaviors in task-based interactions (e.g., Jung, YeonJoo, YouJin Kim & John Murphy. 2017. The role of task repetition in learning word-stress patterns through auditory priming tasks. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 39(2). 319–346; Kim, YouJin, YeonJoo Jung & Stephen Skalicky. 2019. Linguistic alignment, learner characteristics, and the production of stranded prepositions in relative clauses: Comparing FTF and SCMC contexts. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 41(5). 937–969). Linguistic alignment refers to a tendency where one speaker’s utterances align with particular language features of those of the other speaker in dialogue. The current study investigated how L2 speakers’ alignment behaviors differ in natural dialogues between L2-L1 and L2-L2 dyads in terms of language style (i.e., stylistic alignment) and the role of non-linguistic factors in the occurrence of stylistic alignment. The study analyzed a corpus of 360 texts using a computational tool. Results showed that stylistic alignment occurred to a greater extent in the L2-L2 dyad than in the L2-L1 dyad with respect to the word range, word frequency, word imageability, and proportion of bigrams proportion produced by the interlocutors. Furthermore, findings demonstrated the degree of stylistic alignment on each of the four selected lexical features was affected by numerous factors including age, group membership, nonnative speaker status, familiarity between interlocutors, and linguistic distance between L1 and L2. The effect of each factor on stylistic alignment in conversation is discussed in detail.
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November 29, 2022
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Recent work has called for increased investigation into methods used to explore second language (L2) speech perception (Flege 2021). The present study attends to this call, examining a common practice for developing listening prompts in the context of at-home administrations. Vowel perception studies have historically used fixed consonantal frames to determine how well participants can discriminate between target L2 vowels, and the present study compares the effects of employing a fixed consonant-vowel-consonant frame (h-vowel-d) with open (phonologically diverse) consonantal environments using real and nonce words. Thirty-eight Mandarin ( n = 31) and English ( n = 8) first language speakers participated in a listening experiment and a post-experiment question. Data were framed within Best and Tyler’s (2007) Perceptual Assimilation Model-L2. Internal consistency and proportion correct were calculated and a generalised linear mixed model design was used to investigate how well performance with h-vowel-d prompts predicts performance with the more diverse prompt types. Results suggest an inflation of scores for the fixed frame prompt and support the use of diverse words for listening prompt designs. Findings have implications for vowel perception researchers as well as computer (and mobile) assisted language learning developers wishing to inform their designs with relevant empirical evidence.
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November 15, 2022
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This study adopted a synthetic approach to review empirical studies on oral corrective feedback (OCF) for lexical errors. It examined OCF types, lexical target types, interlocutors’ attention to lexical errors, and OCF effectiveness in promoting vocabulary development. After the application of inclusion and exclusion criteria on studies retrieved from a search of six databases, 31 primary studies were available for coding and analysis. Findings revealed that interlocutors showed a greater preference for recast than prompt and explicit correction. However, recast resulted in the lowest rate of lexical repairs, whereas prompt was found the most effective. Lexical errors received OCF at a higher rate than grammatical errors and phonological errors, indicating that interlocutors paid greater attention to vocabulary problems. OCF was most often provided for the inappropriate choice of lexical items, or inaccurate use of word derivation, involving a wide range of word classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs). Only a few studies looked into OCF targeting a single lexical feature. Findings suggest it may be more effective for teachers to employ prompts to elicit repairs of lexical errors from learners. There is a need for future researchers to conduct empirical OCF studies on a single lexical target.
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November 10, 2022
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Previous research has recognised the value of translanguaging in Chinese language teaching but has focused primarily on using English as the medium of instruction. However, teachers and students may not share a common language with which to communicate in a multilingual class, which is a significant challenge in Chinese learning and teaching. This study incorporates translanguaging into the pedagogical design by implementing a translanguaging-based task, perceiving Chinese learners as creative agents orchestrating numerous semiotic resources in meaning-making. The participants were a cohort of beginner-level Chinese learners with diverse ethnolinguistic backgrounds taking an online Chinese course at a Chinese university. Data sources included the participants’ video-recorded oral presentations and their reflective journals. Drawing on social semiotic theory, analysis of the video recordings shows that the learners moved creatively between modalities (written and spoken, visual and auditory, gesture and drawing) that worked together as an assemblage to make meaning beyond their linguistic capacity while ensuring audience comprehension. The reflective journals, however, reveal ambivalent attitudes: using multilingual resources eased concerns about the audience’s reception of the participants’ meaning-making, but also generated guilt among the participants. Based on these findings, this study argues for the transformative power of translanguaging-based pedagogy and highlights the communicative affordance of semiotic resources including cultural artefacts and knowledge. The pedagogical implications of designing translanguaging-based tasks in the teaching of Chinese and other Asian languages are discussed.
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November 10, 2022
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Translanguaging practices in Chinese as a second language (CSL) classrooms have been a heated topic in recent years, despite the longstanding Chinese-monolingual ideology. Against this backdrop, we have explored the functions of translanguaging practices in CSL classroom and the interplay of translanguaging and learners’ participation, by comparing the language practices of a translanguaging-oriented classroom and a Chinese-monolingual classroom. We found the functions of classroom translanguaging include meaning-negotiation, peer-assisting, efficiency-increasing and communication encouraging. The findings also reveal that although multilingual practices can also be found in the Chinese-monolingual classroom, they are characterized by a norm-conforming pattern, in contrast to the norm-breaking pattern in the translanguaging-oriented classroom, and the latter can empower students and motivate them to become engaged in Chinese learning. Moreover, multilingual practices deliberately adopted by teachers can be regarded as pedagogical translanguaging and facilitate learner engagement only when there exists no discrepancy between their pedagogical ideology (i.e. advocating translanguaging) and practices. Based on our findings, we advocate a reflection and adjustments to the current monolingual policy in CSL classroom.
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Open Access
November 2, 2022
Abstract
This mixed-methods study explored the development of morphological awareness in learning Chinese as a third language, focusing on how the activation of a learner’s multilingual repertoire can influence morphological awareness. The study was conducted for a period of eight weeks with 62 Japanese students in a Chinese learning program at a university in China. The students are native Japanese speakers with English and Chinese as their second and third languages. The students were allocated into an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group received translanguaging instruction, while the control group completed learning through the monolingual approach for which the language of instruction was Chinese. The main aim of the translanguaging intervention was to help students utilize their multilinguistic repertoire across languages for their morphology learning. The results revealed that morphology learning scores were higher for the participants in the experimental group than the control group. The focus group interviews revealed that the students in the experimental group favorably perceived the use of translanguaging strategies for morphology learning. Moreover, the students in the experimental group reported cognitive, interactive, and affective benefits from translanguaging pedagogy. Finally, this paper presents relevant implications for the use of translanguaging pedagogy for teaching morphology.
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Open Access
November 2, 2022
Abstract
This research offers a post-structuralist multilingual lens to examine translanguaging practice in Chinese as an Additional Language (CAL) teaching and learning. It investigates a cohort of bilingual Chinese teachers who had been trained in a teacher-researcher education programme in an Australian university. This research asks how the Chinese teachers utilised their own and their students’ bilingual repertoires to assist the learning of Chinese in Australian schools. The participant teachers’ theses were collected, and the evidentiary chapters reporting on their classroom teaching were analysed. Informed by the initial results, a follow-up stimulated recall interview was conducted. This research found that the teachers’ translanguaging practices were identified in the form of theirs and their students’ lingual and non-lingual capitals, and these practices showed a strong pedagogical purpose, particularly in motivating and engaging learners. The teachers’ translanguaging practices contributed to CAL pedagogy across three dimensions: teachers’ classroom instruction, teaching and learning resources, and learning activity design. These practices have demonstrated an impact on the students’ engagement, the enrichment of teaching content and improvement in dynamic teaching processes. This research is expected to provide insights into the future development of translanguaging curriculum and pedagogy in CAL education.
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October 31, 2022
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Asian scripts that are significantly different from Roman-derived alphabets usually impose difficulties in learning. Translanguaging has therefore been explored as a pedagogical tool for the language classroom, including Chinese. While learning Chinese characters is thought to be one of the main challenges for students learning Chinese as a foreign language (CFL), there seems to be a paucity of up-to-date research into the strategies that adult students use to learn this logographic script. Situated in the translanguaging framework, this study employs the think-aloud method to investigate strategies utilised by a group of CFL beginner adult learners when learning characters. Drawing on the results of five think-aloud exercises with CFL learners over five weeks, as well as follow-up tests of their long-term memory of Chinese characters, this study shows that a variety of translanguaging strategies were utilised during the process of learning Chinese characters, and that overall three types of translanguaging strategies were observed: a) embodiment, b) translanguaging resemblance, and c) hybrid. The proposed typology of translanguaging strategies contributes to the further application of translanguaging as a methodology. It also sheds light on future learning strategy research across different linguistic systems.
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Open Access
October 31, 2022
Abstract
This study explores how translanguaging has been enacted in a university-wide curriculum transformation project in an additional language programme in Aotearoa New Zealand. Its aim is to reveal students’ perspectives on integrating Indigenous epistemology into the curriculum of a beginner-level Chinese course. The survey data, collected from 155 students, show that most students react positively to the idea of embedding Indigenous epistemology into language teaching through a translanguaging assessment design. Moreover, students’ translingual practices in their digital multimodal compositions demonstrate that they can enact translanguaging to enable the coexistence of different bodies of knowledge while learning an additional language. Based on these findings, I suggest that language teaching should integrate place-based worldviews that are meaningful to all local students. It is also important to adopt translanguaging as a decolonising approach to facilitate a pluriversal epistemological stance that promotes plurilingualism in language education. The nexus between translanguaging and decoloniality needs to be explored further, as does the possibility for cross-civilisational learning through translanguaging.
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October 31, 2022
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The “writing-to-learn” dimension of the second language (L2) writing has generated theoretical and empirical intrigue in the past decade. Task repetition is one variable of interest; however, little attention has been given to its role in individuals’ writing processes. This study explores the influence of task repetition on L2 Chinese learners’ attention to form by analyzing their writing processes. Four advanced learners of Chinese as a second language (CSL) were asked to complete one writing task twice in 10 days under think-aloud conditions. Language-related episodes (LREs), the representation of writers’ attention to form, in participant-produced think-aloud protocols were analyzed along three dimensions: language-related problems, problem-solving strategies, and depth of processing. Results indicated that task repetition in individual writing contributed to learners’ Chinese acquisition, as learners 1) attended closely to the typological characteristics and new/complex forms of Chinese; 2) strove for precise language expression; and 3) were granted time to access external resources and expand their linguistic repertoire. Implications related to task repetition in L2 writing, L2 Chinese instruction, and associated research are discussed.
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October 31, 2022
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This study examined the extent to which working memory (WM) capacity and distance-based complexity influenced how second language (L2) learners used morphosyntactic information incrementally during online processing of L2 English long-distance subject-verb number agreement dependencies. The moving-window self-paced reading experiment involved 40 agreement-lacking first language (L1) Thai learners of English and 40 native English speakers. Distance-based complexity was manipulated based on whether the agreement controller and the agreeing verb were intervened by a short-distance subject-extracted relative clause or a long-distance object-extracted relative clause in line with the Dependency Locality Theory. The findings indicated that both native speakers and L2 learners experienced less processing difficulty in short-distance conditions, showing heightened sensitivity to agreement violations. Their sensitivity was, however, modulated as a function of distance-based complexity and WM capacity. The L2 learners’ lack of sensitivity in the long-distance conditions was associated with their limited pool of cognitive resources. Consistent with the L1–L2 structural competition account, these findings suggest in relation to morphology learning in SLA that L2 learners may labor under parallel activation during crosslinguistic competition, whereby cognitive resources are insufficient to resolve long-distance agreement dependencies, thus resulting in reduced sensitivity to L2 morphosyntactic violations.
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October 31, 2022
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While extensive studies have been devoted to English-medium-instruction programs as a major strategy of internationalization, there is a paucity of research on the content-and-language learning experiences of international students enrolled in non-English-medium-instruction programs in the Asia-Pacific region. Drawing on the notions of translanguaging and sociolinguistic infrastructuring, the present study investigates translanguaging among instructors and international students in Chinese-medium-instruction (CMI) postgraduate programs in the humanities and social sciences departments in a top university in China. Content analysis of student and instructor interviews reveals that despite the monolingual language policy that governs the medium of instruction for international degree programs at the institutional level, translanguaging serves as sociolinguistic infrastructuring to support some international students’ active participation in knowledge construction, as well as to negotiate tensions imposed by epistemic injustice inherent in disciplinary histories in Chinese academia and the enacted CMI curricula. It is argued that, as a defining feature of translanguaging, sociolinguistic infrastructuring highlights the agentive role of both teachers and international students, who coordinate and navigate distributed and diverse material-semiotic conditions, which can be used to foster a decolonial space for knowledge construction in CMI programs. Pedagogical and curriculum design implications are discussed at the end of the article.
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October 28, 2022
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October 24, 2022
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Understanding the intricate relationships among strategic competence, tasks and performance is an issue of perennial interest in the assessment of foreign/second languages especially in integrated speaking assessment, a field that is under-researched. Against this background, we investigated such complex relationships in the context of integrated speaking assessment of English as foreign language (EFL) learners, hoping to provide additional empirical evidence to address the problem. In the investigation, strategic competence was defined as metacognitive strategy use and was measured via an inventory administered on 120 Chinese university EFL students; task characteristics were conceptualised as task complexity and were measured on a self-rating scale by the students and five EFL teachers; and the students’ speaking performance was indicated by their scores on four integrated speaking assessment tasks. Data analysis through a hierarchy linear modelling approach led to two primary findings: Monitoring, one form of strategic competence, moderated the effect of task complexity on performance; strategic competence had no substantial effects on performance which had an inverse relationship with task complexity. These findings will add validity evidence for the foreign language speaking assessment literature and provide implications for speaking instruction and test development.
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October 14, 2022
Abstract
In keeping with discipline-specific genre expectations for writing in scientific and technological fields, students enrolled in English writing classes for future engineers are often required to produce collaborative reports on team projects. For freshman engineering students, such collaborative report writing, which constitutes a cornerstone in their academic literacy, is an entirely new genre. Drawing on Engeström’s (Engeström, Yrjö. 1987. Learning by expanding: An activity theoretical approach to developmental research . Orienta-Konsultit Oy) activity system and Storch’s (Storch, Neomy. 2002. Patterns of interaction in ESL pair work. Language and Learning 52(1). 119–158) interaction model, this paper explores two engineering freshmen’s experiences of working collaboratively in separate groups in the same writing class. Our focal students were both native-English-speaking women at a U.S. midwestern university. Over the course of one semester, they provided their class notes and project report drafts, and they and the course teaching assistant participated in interviews. Our findings demonstrate that while both students had similar levels of commitment to the collaborative project, their writing experiences differed depending on their respective group members and their own attitudes and experiences. Our case study has implications for engineering freshman writing education as we illustrate how the ESP class we examined can help students prepare for academic and professional communication. We also discuss ways to help apprentice future engineers overcome discipline-specific communication difficulties as they enter a new discourse community.
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October 12, 2022
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Drawing on methodological insights from psycholinguistic research protocols, the present study employed a structural equation modelling approach to examine whether explicit and implicit grammatical knowledge of English language learners would be influenced by their onset age of language learning and hours of exposure to language instruction; and if so, in what way? The present study further examined how the hypothesized causal effects might be mediated by explicit and implicit grammatical knowledge. The results showed that while early onset appeared to exert a facilitative effect on the participants’ implicit grammatical attainment, the role of exposure to instructed input was more relevant to their explicit grammatical attainment. Importantly, early onset facilitated the participants’ implicit grammatical attainment more than their explicit grammatical attainment, most likely because early learners’ analytical learning mechanism was still immature. Notably, while superior implicit grammatical attainment was conducive to the participants’ explicit grammatical attainment, their better explicit grammatical attainment did not necessarily facilitate their implicit attainment. The insights of this study shed light on the necessity of implementing early foreign language education when the curriculum goal concerns developing learners’ intuition regarding the FL, and provides empirical evidence of the need to adjust current instructional hours and foci in school.
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October 12, 2022
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Preparation for university entrance tests now forms a significant part of international English language pedagogy, with considerable numbers of learners aiming to study abroad requiring supportive instruction. This important learning stage underpins subsequent experiences and requires further investigation, if later challenges faced by international university students are to be understood. This paper’s Japan-based research included observing an entire intensive IELTS preparation course ( N = 12 students) over a five-week period. Additionally, two instructors and seven learners were interviewed, and forty homework essays collected. Pedagogical approaches, participant perspectives and the test preparation process itself are described in depth. Thematic analysis of qualitative data indicated three key findings. First, a think-plan-write essay model may improve students’ performance under timed test conditions, if supported by classroom exercises on lexis, grammar and structure. Second, introducing unfamiliar academic writing structures using model answers and increasing test knowledge (particularly using simplified rubrics) helped clarify expectations of western-style writing. Third, test preparation should be broader than increasing score gains alone; introducing academic writing is a justified and viable objective of preparation courses.
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October 3, 2022
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Returnee scholars are regarded as key agents to advance internationalisation in many non-Anglophone countries where internationalisation through the medium of English has raised concerns about the preservation of national language, culture, and identity. This study investigated how eight Chinese returnee scholars used their linguistic repertoires in their professional practice and daily lives and how their language practices interacted with multiple identities. Gathering data from a questionnaire, semi-structured interview, and regular class observations, this study reveals that in research, all participants predominantly used English and many expressed concerns about their Chinese academic writing skills. In teaching and daily lives, most participants embraced bilingualism and were open to translingual practices. The participants’ language practices appeared to be linked to their self-conception as competent English users and English-mediated ideal professional identities. However, their bilingual practices did not correspond to a bicultural identity, indicating a disconnect between language use and cultural belonging. Drawing on the findings, suggestions are offered for institution- and state-level authorities to better facilitate the integration of returnee scholars into their home academic communities and to promote academic multilingualism.
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September 30, 2022
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Ongoing debates in the field of sociolinguistics are centred around the implications of the commodification of the languages and cultures of ethnic minorities. Previous research has adopted synchronic approaches to describing how ideologies of tourist consumption shape language choices in the linguistic landscape. However, such snapshot analyses have proved to be inadequate in revealing changes in the linguistic landscape over time, especially the nuanced perceptions of minority communities who are subjects to ethnic tourism. This paper examines the use of Dongba script in the linguistic landscape of the Naxi minority in Lijiang under the conditions of commodification in tourism. A diachronic comparison of photographic data collected in 2016 and 2021 revealed the increasing visibility and prominence of Dongba script on public signs; interviews with ordinary inhabitants, tourism industry practitioners and Dongba priests within the Naxi community further demonstrated the evolving attitudes towards linguistic commodification, from hesitation and objection to integration and creative accommodation. The study provides new insights into how a diachronic perspective can help reveal the dynamic between packaging languages as commodities and retaining signs of identity, religion and culture.
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September 30, 2022
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The present study investigated the direct and indirect contributions of morphological awareness to vocabulary knowledge among a group of Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) students in a university in China. Using multiple regression analysis and structural equation modeling analysis, the study found that morphological awareness made significant contributions to vocabulary knowledge after lexical inferencing was controlled for. To be more specific, the prediction of morphological awareness on vocabulary depth was stronger than its prediction on vocabulary breadth. The direct effects of morphological awareness were stronger than its indirect effects on vocabulary. More importantly, the study revealed that the relationships between morphological awareness (morpheme recognition and morpheme discrimination) and vocabulary knowledge were mediated by discourse clues rather than grammar clues.
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September 30, 2022
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The increasing view of Spanish as a pluricentric language has raised awareness of its linguistic diversity also in the grammatical domain. The concept of Pan-Hispanism—the recognition that varieties different from Castilian Spanish can be acceptable as Standard Spanish—has been publicly implemented by the prescriptivist institutions. The goal of this article is to analyze the influence of Pan-Hispanism and awareness of syntactic variation in teachers of Spanish as a second language. To do so, we surveyed 264 native and non-native teachers of Spanish across the world through an online questionnaire where they had to (a) implicitly judge sequences which reflected grammatical phenomena of different diatopic varieties of Spanish, and (b) explicitly indicate which variety they used in their classes. The results show that, despite the advances and institutional efforts towards pluricentrism, awareness of Pan-Hispanism in grammar is still very low among teachers of Spanish, since most tend to reject grammatical uses that are alien to their own variety. The prevalence of the prestige of Castilian Spanish is linked to a still dominant Eurocentrism in the teaching of Spanish as a second language, thus showing the need for adopting a more tolerant and inclusive view of Spanish linguistic diversity.
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September 30, 2022
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It is one of the concerns of EAP to bridge the disparity of discursive practice between novice and expert writers, but the comparison is largely made across a broad knowledge field and little is known about the likely divergence within a disciplinary divide. In this study, we explore the epistemic positioning in research writing by PhD students and expert writers across applied and pure science disciplines. By focusing on hedges and boosters as its main devices, we examine their forms and functions in the academic texts. Results show that PhD students in applied disciplines use significantly fewer epistemic devices than experts but no significant difference was found in pure sciences. Apart from the differences in linguistic choices, student writers show a preference for authorial positioning at the outset of academic texts while professionals tend to comment on research findings and establish a persuasive interpretation of their value. Additionally, novice writers are inclined to hedge on numerical information ( about ) but expert writers hedge on claims ( likely ). We discuss the results from the perspectives of disciplinary epistemology and writer identity. Pedagogical implications are raised on the teaching of epistemic positioning and the enculturation of disciplinary stance in academic writing classrooms.
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September 29, 2022
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Despite the ubiquity of boredom and its aversive effects in educational contexts, it has received scant attention from second/foreign language (L2) researchers until very recently. This article reports on one of the first empirical attempts to explore boredom in L2 learning and its sources in Chinese tertiary-level EFL contexts through eliciting responses of 1,502 university students to open-ended questions and conducting 16 individual semi-structured interviews. The qualitative data analysis revealed that participants perceived wide-ranging learner-internal and learner-external factors as sources of their foreign language learning boredom: (1) task characteristics, (2) teaching and learning activities, (3) student factors, (4) course content, (5) classroom factors, (6) teacher factors, and (7) feeling unoccupied in the class. Moreover, open-ended responses showed greater prominence of the first three categories of factors than others, lending support to the central role of control-value appraisals in inducing boredom, and suggesting situation-sensitive nature of boredom. Additionally, the study revealed that multiple factors, both learner-internal and learner-external, can interact and jointly shape control-value appraisals, which suggests the congruence between the person-in-context perspective on SLA and the control-value theory, and the potential to integrate the two approaches to extend L2 emotion research.
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August 30, 2022
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This article draws on a transidiomatic interaction between South Africa and Brazil activists to investigate the emergence of “hybrids” (Latour 1993. We have never been modern . Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press) of body, language, and politics, while simultaneously looking to the contextual objectification of communicative resources. The interaction took place during the 2013 Circulando, an annual event promoted by the NGO Raízes em Movimento in the Complexo do Alemão favelas in Rio de Janeiro. As both Brazil and South Africa were on the route of mega sporting events and the neoliberal transformation of the city into business, activists from both peripheries produced comparable views of their struggle against forced removals ahead of the FIFA World Cup. In this ethnographic case, translanguaging as hybrid embodied practice occurs alongside other semiotic moves, such as circumscribing specific pragmatic functions. The empirical and epistemic findings may be of relevance for translanguaging research. Specifically, activists’ engagement with “non-modern” modes of hybridization (e.g., their contextual mingling of language resources, technologies and the body) and “modern” forms of objectification, such as the circumscription of specific “genres of listening” (Marsilli-Vargas 2022. Genres of listening: An ethnography of psychoanalysis in Buenos Aires . Durham: Duke University Press) suggest that it is not fruitful seeing as separate in our data the dynamics of hybridization and objectification, or the dynamics of transglossia and uniformization.
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August 24, 2022
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The Commentary critically reflects on the papers published in the Special Issue (SI) of Applied Linguistics Review titled ‘Reflection and Reform of Applied Linguistics from the Global South: Power and Inequality in English users from the Global South’. While the papers in the SI add new insights to the recent innovations in the ontology and epistemology of Applied Linguistics based on research studies done in the contexts of Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Nepal, the Commentary shows that more research studies on the multi-modal meaning-making processes and the spatiality and temporality of semiotic resources will give a greater understanding of the meaning-making processes. The Commentary also indicates that the politics underlying the governance, policy packages of neoliberalism in education, and hidden linguistic governmentality observable in language policies and practices in both Global South and Global North require further attention. Decoloniality, moreover, requires delinking from the academic practices that give immense importance to northern theories. Minimizing intellectual dependency on northern theories may help gain the intellectual sovereignty of the South. Hence, the Commentary indicates that it is high time to explore what the epistemological South and geographical South have to say about the Global South.
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August 16, 2022
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This article examines the construction of epistemic injustice in creating and implementing an EMI policy. Drawing on “epistemic injustice” (Fricker, Miranda. 2007. Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing . Oxford: Oxford University Press) and “misframing” (Fraser, Nancy. 2009. Scales of justice: Reimagining political space in a globalizing world . New York: Columbia University Press), we discuss how the EMI policy in Nepal’s school education has reinforced the epistemic nature of social injustice. Taking an ethnographic approach, we have analyzed how EMI policies are created, interpreted, and implemented in two public schools located in historically marginalized ethnic minority/Indigenous communities. Our analyses show that the schools misframe and misrecognize Indigenous/ethnic minority parents’ and children’s linguistic knowledge and awareness of language education policy. While reproducing neoliberal values, EMI policies construct a deficit identity of Indigenous/ethnic minority communities by erasing and stigmatizing their knowledge of mother tongues in school. Such policies not only promote an English-only monolingual ideology but also pose multiple challenges for epistemic access of Indigenous/minority students and affect parents’ “party of participation” (Fraser, Nancy. 2009. Scales of justice: Reimagining political space in a globalizing world . New York: Columbia University Press) in policymaking process.
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August 9, 2022
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August 8, 2022
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In this paper, we consider the role of high-stakes testing in mediating access to English in two Central Asian contexts where English is increasingly important not just in terms of mobility, but in identity construction on an individual and national level. We argue that in these contexts, English is increasingly constructed not only as a global language but the global language, which also has important implications for determining what counts as an ‘internationalized space’ or ‘internationalized person’, and as part of national strategies intended to make Kazakhstan and Mongolia more international. High-stakes tests like IELTS and TOEFL act as a focal point due to the role of these tests in verifying and ‘converting’ English ability into a quantifiable, transportable figure. We draw on a survey about test-takers’ experiences and practices concerning IELTS and TOEFL as well as interview data about the role and significance of English. Since access to knowledge and preparation for these tests is not evenly distributed across the population, our work provides evidence that some people may be in a more advantageous position to succeed on and benefit from high-stakes testing than others. Previous research on IELTS/TOEFL has largely focused on washback effects on school curriculums, test reliability, and strategies for test preparation, while research on globalization needs to continue to engage with specific mechanisms of how scales and hierarchies are created and maintained. We bridge this gap by considering how success or failure on IELTS/TOEFL becomes internalized as a quality of the individual and a reflection of their abilities, dedication and cosmopolitanism, and how testing contributes to carving out particular ‘international’ spaces. This paper will focus on how English comes to be conflated at least in some cases with being international, and how individuals make sense of high-stakes testing as a way of accessing an ‘international’ scale which may or may not involve literal movement abroad.
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August 2, 2022
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Global North settings such as Australia are an attractive option for prospective students from the Global South to undertake tertiary studies. Using Linguistic Ethnography, we investigate the experiences that postgraduate students from the Global South have when studying in Australian university settings, to understand how translingual English discrimination affects them. We find that many students from the Global South encounter situations of translingual English discrimination, which affect their academic sense of belonging and the hiring order of things. Being penalised for their linguistic practises in their assignment work, or being provided with unclear and insufficient information during the early stages of their studies can both result in a loss of sense of academic belonging. These students may also be affected by the hiring order of things through additional barriers in gaining university employment due to perceptions that they have linguistic, work experience and qualification shortcomings, despite strong evidence to the contrary. We outline the implications of these forms of translingual English discrimination and recommend institutional changes to address these discriminatory actions.
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July 21, 2022
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Drawing on ethnographic interview analysis of Aboriginal participants in Australia, this study seeks to expand the critical discussions in Applied Linguistics by understanding the concept of translanguaging in relation to its “mundanity” (or ordinariness). Our data shows that rather than perceiving translanguaging as extraordinary, for Aboriginal speakers it is more likely to be considered normal, unremarkable, mundane, and as a long-existing phenomenon. The concept of the mundanity of translanguaging is thereby expanded through three main discussions in this article: 1) negotiating identity and resisting racism, where the Aboriginal speakers choose to translanguage using their full linguistic repertoires, but with appropriate communicative adjustments made for their interlocutor; 2) a display of respect towards their land, heritage and language; and 3) as an inherent and mundane everyday practice where they constantly negotiate between heritage languages, English, Kriol, and Aboriginal English varieties. The significance of this study lies in the normalisation of translanguaging as a mundane disinvention strategy, as this urges us to perceive linguistic separateness as a colonial ideological construct that is used to exhibit control over diverse peoples and to maintain uniformity and stability of nation-states.
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July 21, 2022
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Although the potential of translanguaging within ESL/EFL classroom contexts to promote students’ linguistic learning has been well-documented, most studies have focused on ESL/EFL teachers (whose L1 is not English) and their students’ ideologies and experiences, with little attention paid to the experiences and perspectives of native English teachers (NETs) working in the Global South and postcolonial areas. This study examined 11 native English teachers’ engagement with translanguaging in Hong Kong TESOL classrooms. Data were gathered through in-depth semi-structured individual interviews and video recordings of classroom interactions. A recursive qualitative analysis elicited a taxonomy of NET teachers’ engagement with translanguaging, comprising resistant, ambivalent, and reductionistic approaches. The findings also demonstrate that ambivalent engagement with translanguaging turned out to be adopted the most among the NET participants. The findings call for examining two new translanguaging forms through NET teachers who have worked under a linguistically policed discourse, i.e., the underground and disguised translanguaging, and multimodal translanguaging without involving students’ L1. The findings indicate that multimodality can be used as a bridge to create a translanguaging space, and that creating a translanguaging space through multimodality appears to be more politically neutral for NET teachers.