Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: enfoque por tareas

Resumen:

While the research on pretask planning has concentrated on its effects on learners’ task performance in terms of fluency, accuracy, and complexity, its possible influence on the overall discourse level, such as discourse management and coherence, has been largely ignored. The present study addresses the inadequacy by uncovering the potential effects of pretask planning on Chinese EFL (English as a foreign language) learners’ selection of referential expressions in oral narratives. Fifty-six intermediate-level learners were tasked with retelling the story of Modern Times under one of two conditions, that is, either with 10-minutes strategic planning or without any planning time. An additional 25 native speakers (NSs) also narrated the same story under the same task conditions. Their narratives were audio recorded, transcribed, and...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: enseñanza/aprendizaje de vocabulario

Resumen:

Learners entering higher education may learn specialized vocabulary of new disciplines in their second language (L2) with or without support from their first language (L1). However, these learners cannot rely on an established conceptual representation in L1 when learning L2 specialized vocabulary. The effects of learning a new concept in L1 prior to learning and testing the same concept in L2 are yet unclear. The present study compared the effectiveness of L1-mediation and L2-repetition word learning methods randomly assigned to 75 bilingual adults. Participants learned subject-specific specialized vocabulary through reading a series of definition sentences in two learning episodes a week apart. The L1L2 group ( N = 31) first learned L1 words on Day 1 and then their L2 translation equivalents on Day 2, while the L2L2 group ( N = 44)...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: motivación

Resumen:

Adopting a quasi-experimental design, this study investigated the effects of motivational interventions on second language (L2) willingness to communicate (WTC), self-confidence, and anxiety over a period of 27 weeks. A total of 391 Chinese junior secondary students were assigned to four instructional conditions: Instruction incorporating no motivational strategies (control condition), instruction supported by experience-related motivational strategies (Intervention 1), instruction utilizing vision-related motivational strategies (Intervention 2), and instruction drawing on experience-related and vision-related motivational strategies (Intervention 3). The effects of the interventions were assessed through measures administered at three timepoints to track changes in participants’ WTC, self-confidence, and anxiety. A combination of...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: feedback/retroalimentación

Resumen:

This quasi-experimental classroom study examines the effects of recasts and negotiated prompts on oral interactions in a foreign language (FL) context where the instructional approach primarily focuses on grammar and accuracy. Ninety adult native speakers of Mandarin Chinese from two intact classes were randomly assigned to one of two experimental groups (recast or negotiated prompt) or a control group, and were asked to complete pre-/post-tests on their use of question and past tense forms in English. Between the pre-test and the post-tests, the learners of the two experimental groups had three treatment lessons for feedback outside their usual English classes, the interaction data of which are reported. ANOVA analyses revealed that recasts were highly effective for accuracy development of wh-questions, interrogative questions and...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: expresión oral

Resumen:

The present study examines the effects of pre-task explicit instruction on second language (L2) oral self-repair behaviour while controlling for the effects of working memory. The participants were 121 Iranian learners of English at incipient levels of language proficiency. Their working memory was measured using an operation span task and then they were randomly assigned to a control and an experimental group. Both groups performed a picture story-retelling task that was preceded by five minutes of planning time. During the planning time, the experimental group also received a grammar handout that explained English relative clauses. The instances of self-repairs were identified through stimulated recall interviews that immediately followed performance on the oral task. They were then classified into categories of global form repairs...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: evaluación

Resumen:

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Argumentative writing has long been recognized as challenging for English second language (L2) writers yet central to their academic success in educational settings. This article investigates the effectiveness of a writing instructional enrichment program informed by diagnoses from dynamic assessment (DA) in promoting L2 learners’ argumentative writing abilities. Grounded in Vygotskian Sociocultural Theory, DA introduces mediation into the assessment procedure, so that learner emerging abilities are diagnosed through observing their responsiveness to mediation when difficulties arise. In this study, prior to and following the instructional programs, a three-step, interactionist DA procedure was...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: atención a la forma

Resumen:

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This research examined both the short-term and long-term effects of processing instruction (PI) and its main element, structured input (SI), on learners’ acquisition of English passive forms. A total of 70 English as a second language (ESL) learners participated in the study and were randomly divided into three groups: a PI group (n = 24), an SI group (n = 25), and a control group (n = 21). Participants in the PI and SI groups completed 1 hr of computer-based instructional activities, whereas the control group received no instructional treatment. Learners’ performance was evaluated using self-paced reading (SPR) and self-paced listening (SPL) tasks, which assessed response accuracy, picture...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: enseñanza/aprendizaje de lenguas

Resumen:

This quasi-experimental study reports on the outcomes of a video-synchronous learning program in which an element of project-based foreign language learning was integrated. The project chosen was to cooperatively create a homepage. American students learning Japanese in the United States and Japanese students learning English in Japan made pairs and communicated in both their native and target languages via Skype to complete the project. The goals of this educational program were to increase intrinsic motivation in learners and improve their target language oral abilities, and identify challenges and problems with implementation. The program was conducted during the spring semester in 2017 and evaluated both quantitatively (via pre- and posttests) and qualitatively (via surveys and reflection papers). The results show that both groups...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: pronunciación

Resumen:

Studies have reported comparable effectiveness of teacher assessment and learner assessment in promoting second-language (L2) writing skills (Vuogan & Li, 2022; Yu & Lee, 2016). However, whether learner assessment is equally helpful in enhancing L2 pronunciation learning remains underexplored. Addressing this gap, this pretest–posttest quasi-experimental study examined the effects, validity and reliability, and learners’ perception of peer assessment and self-assessment in L2 English pronunciation. The participants, 183 English majors at a university in China, were divided into three groups, each receiving one type of assessment for the segmental and suprasegmental modules of a pronunciation course. The participants’ performances were examined by pre- and post-intervention reading tasks and assessment forms, and their...

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Tipo: artículo

Metodología: estudio empírico

Temas: adquisición de segundas lenguas

Resumen:

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This study investigates whether a targeted grammar training session enhances English as a second language (ESL) learners’ sentence comprehension, focusing on garden-path sentences as a test of syntactic ambiguity resolution. Chinese ESL learners were assigned to a grammar training group or a control group before completing a self-paced sentence reading experiment. The training session followed a multiple-step progression from simple to complex sentence structures to raise the grammatical awareness in the learners for improving their syntactic parsing skills. Mixed-effects modeling of the data showed that ESL learners with grammar training outperformed those without training, as shown in both...

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