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The article looks at language learner autonomy as a social construct in relation to the context and its user based on the example of Italki, a social networking site for tandem language learning. Considering the two foci – the context and the learner – the study is divided into two parts, both carried out from the perspective of online ethnography, each utilising different techniques and tools. Part 1, based on participatory observation and user experience of the author, was aimed at investigating the context of Italki as a language learning environment. Its affordances, noted in the course of the study, are analysed against the three aspects of social learner autonomy (Murray 2014): emotional, political, and spatial, in order to investigate the potential of Italki for interdependent learning. In Part 2 of the study, with its focus on the learner, the data were gathered by means of semi-structured open-ended interviews with Italki users (N=10). One of these interviews evolved into a case study, in which elements of social network analysis (SNA) were utilized to look at learner autonomy of an individual user. The results of the study indicate that learner autonomy in the digital age can be both self- and other-regulated; characterized by learner independence as well as interdependence. All this is very much promoted by new tendencies in language learning and affordances offered by the new media. At the same time, though, the nature of the autonomy exercised will, to a large extent, be determined by individual learner agendas, motives and attitudes.
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Many studies have confirmed the importance of tasks on language learning. Nowadays, many teachers apply different kinds of tasks in their classrooms. The current study investigated the effect of mobile assisted language learning tasks (MALL) on participants’ English grammar learning. The researcher administered a pre-validated grammar test to 90 junior high school participants aged between 14 to 16 with the mean age 15. The researcher taught grammar to both groups inductively and asked the participants to do their assignments according to their group’s tasks. Based on the post-test results, it can be concluded that the experimental groups had better results than the control group. The study supports the hypothesis that sharing tasks in virtual networks can have positive results for language learning, specifically grammar learning.
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The advent of mobile learning platforms and Web 2.0 technologies is believed to provide an autonomous learning space that minimizes the power structure between the teacher and students in Indonesian EFL classes, accommodating the students to display their capacity to navigate their own learning. Schoology m-learning platform, a social networking learning management system, is one of potential platforms facilitating the exercise of autonomy in English language learning. This paper aims to report how Schoology m-learning platform facilitated the exercise of learner autonomy in an EAP class at an Indonesian higher education. The qualitative case study involved twenty one-students enrolled in an EAP course that adopted a blended learning method. The findings suggested that Schoology m-learning platform helped the students to exercise autonomy in EAP learning. The students exercised their control over learning management, cognitive process, and selection of learning materials. The exercise of autonomy is due to the affordance of Schoology. First, Schoology’s social networking interface facilitated interaction and communication among the students. Second, its mobile application enabled the students to learn English at their pace, time, and place. Third, the media-rich materials encouraged the students to further explore other materials online
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This study explores the use of educational technology for teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) at 10 state schools in the South of Ecuador. It aims to find out the current state of the use of technology in English classrooms. The research combines both quantitative and qualitative methods to gather information about the use of technology in the teaching-learning process. The main instruments applied were teachers’ and students’ surveys and observation sheets. One hundred and fifty students and fifteen teachers took part in the surveys and were observed once a week during a period of four months. The findings confirm that technology is not commonly used in state schools of the south region of Ecuador or, if used, it is not adequately applied. For this reason, in order to develop students’ performance of all four language skills it is necessary to integrate technology tools combined with appropriate teaching strategies in EFL classrooms.
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Terminology in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) classes is a central issue. Specific purposes actually suppose, most of the times, a particularly lexical focus, considering that language does not change in terms of structures as we move across different jargons (technical one, in our particular case). Yet, the literature also speaks of specific structural features in the case of technical English, all of them supporting the final general goal of conciseness and objectivity. Our paper aims at presenting several teaching techniques that we have researched and afterwards applied in class with a view to introducing terminology to undergraduate students of technical specialisations. Our focus is on the specificity of the strategies and on both the presumed and the effective results.
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Language educators in many parts of the world are torn between preparing language learners to pass language proficiency tests and trying to let theirclassrooms reflect the messiness of out-of-class communication. Because testing is “an activity which perhaps more than any other dictates what istaught” (Hall, 2014, p. 379), helping students to pass language proficiency tests seems to be a current top priority. Since globalisation “has destabilised the codes, norms, and conventions that FL [foreign language] educators relied upon to help learners be successful users of the language once they had lefttheir classrooms” (Kramsch, 2014, p.296), the gap between what is taught in classrooms or measured in examination halls and what is used in real life situations has become much bigger. Testimonies from Study abroad students feed into this discussion. This article addresses the gap between being a languagelearner and a language user and the implications of this on learners’ perceptions of their language abilities, as illustrated by the story of Mahmoud,a study abroad student in the UK. It also features learner’s voice, exploring Mahmoud’s views of his previous formal language education and concludes with pedagogical implications for language educators.
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This paper deals with the problems of teaching English as a foreign language(EFL) and as a lingua franca (ELF) in the Italian educational system and, in particular,with introducing language variation in the English class. After briefly illustrating how English teaching has changed in the last few decades, an outlineis drawn of what happens in the Italian school system today from childcare to university as far as English teaching is concerned. The second part ofthe contribution focuses on the increasing variability of English as a world language,both within and outside the native speakers’ domain. The second partalso deals with the issues that the complex nature of variation in English hasraised when teaching it, and underlines how such issues have recently, althoughonly partially, been acknowledged by the Italian Ministry of Education.The final section, illustrates a proposal for implementing the teaching of Englishvariation in Italian schools, based on the concepts of utility and usabilitywhich have given birth to a student-tailored approach called Bespoke LanguageTeaching.
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Jumbled sentence items in language assessment have been criticized by someauthors as inauthentic. However, unscrambling jumbled sentences is a common occurrence in real-world communication in English as a lingua franca. Naturalistic inquiry identified 54 instances of jumbled sentence use in daily life in Dubai/Sharjah, where English is widely used as a lingua franca. Thus it is seen that jumbled sentence test items can reflect real-world language use. To evaluate scrambled sentence test items, eight test item types developed from one jumbled sentence instance (“Want taxi Dubai you?”) were analyzed in terms of interactivity and authenticity. Items ranged from being completely decontextualized,non-interactive, and inauthentic to being fully contextualized, interactive,and authentic. To determine appropriate assessment standards for English tests in schools in this region, the English language standards for schools and Englishlanguage requirements for university admission in the UAE were analyzed. Schools in Dubai/Sharjah use Inner Circle English varieties of English (e.g., Britishor American English) as the standard for evaluation, as well as non-native-English-speaker varieties (e.g., Indian English(es)). Also, students applying to English-medium universities in the UAE must meet the required scores on standardizedEnglish tests including the IELTS and TOEFL. Standards for evaluation ofcommunication in English involving tasks of jumbled sentences in classroomtests must reflect the language learning goals of the school and community.Thus standards for classroom assessment of English in Dubai/Sharjah are determinedby local schools’ and universities’ policies.
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The paper presents discussion of the results of extensive empirical research into efficient methods of educating and training translators of LSP (language for specialpurposes) texts. The methodology is based on using popular LSP texts in the respective fields as one of the main media for translator training. The aim of thepaper is to investigate the efficiency of this methodology in developing thematic,linguistic and cultural competences of the students, following Bloom’srevised taxonomy and European Master in Translation Network (EMT) translator training competences. The methodology has been tested on the students of aprofessional Master study programme called Technical Translation implemented by the Institute of Applied Linguistics, Riga Technical University, Latvia. The group of students included representatives of different nationalities, translatingfrom English into Latvian, Russian and French. Analysis of popular LSP texts provides an opportunity to structure student background knowledge andexpand it to account for linguistic innovation. Application of popular LSP texts instead of purely technical or scientific texts characterised by neutral style andrigid genre conventions provides an opportunity for student translators to developadvanced text processing and decoding skills, to develop awareness of expressive resources of the source and target languages and to develop understandingof socio-pragmatic language use.
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Various newspaper articles report that British ministers, university representatives, exam chiefs and business bodies agree that foreign languages skills in primary, secondary and tertiary UK education are in crisis. Lower funding and policy changes have caused language skills deficiencies feltgravely in the business sectors. Funding and support initiatives pledged bypolicy makers appear to be election-driven, barely outliving newly electedgovernments. Others blame secondary school language curriculum for failingto inspire students to take up a language when they reach 13 or 14.Others still argue that severe A-level examinations marking deters studentsfrom taking up a foreign language at 6th form level, producing fewer prospectivelanguage learners for university departments. Community languages are also undervalued as small-entry languages could soon be axedfrom GCSE and A-level examinations. In a world increasingly interconnected,it is essential the importance of language learning be reinstated inall our educational institutions. This paper reviews two decades of the conditions of language provision in the UK in general, with an emphasis onLeeds Beckett University. It also attempts to answer two questions emerging form the author’s personal teaching experience and reflections: Whatare the realities and challenges language teaching faces at Leeds Beckett University? And, how may we support language learners in fulfilling their ambition to acquire the required skills to communicate effectively in this globalised world?
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Based on a mega corpus, The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), this study aims to determine the most frequent adjectives used in academic texts and to investigate whether these adjectives differ in frequency and function in social sciences, technology, and medical sciences. It also identifies evaluative adjectives from a list of a hundred most frequently used adjectives. A total of 839 adjectives, which comprises the list of frequently used adjectives in COCA, were searched using a search engine. 334 of the adjectives were found to appear more frequently in the academic sub-corpus than in other sub-corpora (spoken, fiction, magazine, and newspaper). There was only one adjective that was used more frequently in technology and medical sciences than in social sciences. Some adjectives were very dominant in a specific discipline of academic texts. The frequency of evaluative adjectives in most frequently used 100 adjectives was also listed. It is found that almost 40% percent of the adjectives are evaluative. The results of the study were discussed in terms of frequency effects in language learning and writing in the foreign language as providing learners with corpus data may improve language knowledge and the correct use of adjectives.
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Storytelling is one of the most common activities used in teaching English proficiency to language students. It is widely accepted as a teaching technique by many educators because it engages students in learning. This study seeks to examine students’ readiness in using technology-aided applications in telling their stories. It also investigates how cybernated storytelling could encourage them to communicate more in groups. This qualitative study involved 35 secondary school students, selected based on purposive sampling technique, from a multi-ethnic secondary school in Malaysia. After having initial exposure to cybernated storytelling video production, the students were divided into small groups and required to engage in developing a cybernated storytelling video for a period of 90 days using the English language. While engaging in the activity, students were expected to communicate orally in face-to-face meetings and in writing using WhatsApp (WA) and Facebook (FB) platforms. Their WA and FB entries were compiled and analysed thematically besides interview responses which were collected during the group interview. The findings point to how technology aided language learning could be a strong support in enhancing students’ English communication skills.
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This study examines the effect of Moodle-enhanced instruction on Jordanian EFL students’ reading comprehension and grammar performance. The study uses a quasi-experimental, pre-/post-test design. A purposeful sample of 32 students, enrolled in a language requirement course at a Jordanian state university, was randomly divided into an experimental group (n=17) and a control group (n=15). The former used blended learning in which Moodle supplemented in-class instruction whereas the latter used in-class instruction only. Using means, standard deviations, ANCOVA and MANCOVA, the analysis revealed that the experimental group outperformed the control group (at α = 0.05) in both reading comprehension and grammar.
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Communication Technology (ICT)-based College English Course (CEC) in China. The research used a five-point Likert-scale questionnaire based on Simsek (2008). A factor analysis confirmed the construct validity of the questionnaire and 6 factors were delineated. 200 non-English majors who responded mentioned that ICT was well integrated into the CEC. They reported that the ICT-based CEC gave them a good environment for independent learning and they were more motivated to learn English as they had more opportunities to communicate, interact and cooperate with other students in English using authentic language in a variety of contexts. They found learning was more effective compared to the traditional learning environment; it provided freer learning environment, less restricted communication, more time flexibility and more self-scheduled study plan ensuring learner-centeredness and learning autonomy.
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Noticing plays an important role for second language acquisition. Sincethe formulation of the output hypothesis (Swain, 1985), it has beenproven that producing output can lead to noticing. Studies on noticing have revealed little focus on grammar, and an in-depth investigation ofgrammar noticing has not been conducted so far. Studies into problem solving strategies applied to resolve noticing in writing have provided differing classifications. The current study investigates the noticing of ten young learners (15 to 16 years) of L2 English while performing a writing task, with a special focus on grammar. The problem-solving strategies these learners applied are analyzed. With regard to the linguistic areas, results suggest that verb forms, especially the use of modals, and the choice of prepositions, are the main issues encountered in morphology. In syntax, learners mainly dealt with the length of sentences and the ways of connecting clauses. Learners relied on their intuition and existing knowledge, common sense and rephrasing as grammar problem-solving strategies. These results open a new area of study into noticing grammar and suggest some implications for teaching.
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This paper examines the process of acquiring L2s that are closely related to the L1through data on how adult French speakers learning L2 Spanish in a formal setting develop knowledge and use of past tenses in this L2. We consider the role of transferand simplification in acquiring mental representations of the L2 grammar, specifically in the area of tense and aspect, and how learners deal with integrating grammatically encoded, lexical and discursive information, including mismatching feature combinations leading to particular inferential effects on interpretation. Data is presented on the Spanish past tenses (simple and compound past, pluperfect, imperfect and progressive forms) from two tasks, an oral production film retelland a multiple-choice interpretation task, completed by learners at A2, B1,B2 and C1 CEFR levels (N = 20-24 per level). L1 influence is progressively attenuatedas proficiency increases. Difficulties were not always due to negative L1 transfer, but related also to grammar-discourse interface issues when integrating linguisticand pragmatic information in the interpretation process. This has clear implications for the teaching of closely related languages: instruction should not only focus on cross linguistic contrasts, but also prioritize uses requiring complex interface integration, which are harder to process.
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This article examines the second language acquisition (SLA) of Spanish dativeclitics in clitic doubling (CLD) structures that are closely related to the double object construction (DOC) in English and Dutch. It also addresses the question of how adult English and Dutch speakers learning L2 Spanish in a formal setting develop knowledge and use of the animacy constraint in the target language, which is different from the first language (L1) counterparts. The role of transfer in acquiring new syntactic structures has been taken into account, where dative clitics appear and animate objects are marked by the dative preposition ‘to.’ New findings are obtained on CLD and the Spanish animacy constraint from a grammaticality judgement task (GJT), completed by English and Dutch learners at B1 and B2 CEFR levels. The difficulties learners experienced were not always due to negative L1 transfer, but also related to the complexity of the argument structure where the clitic is inserted. This has clear implications for the teaching of pronominal elements which are closely related to different syntactic configurations in Spanish.
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