Search results for "Language learning"

Pronunciation Learning Strategy Chains: A Qualitative Approach

2014

Language learning is a daunting process frequently enhanced by a number of factors, for example, language learning strategies deployed in an orchestrated manner (Oxford 1990). Similarly, pronunciation learning may be supported by effective strategies used either separately or in logically combined chains. However, little attention has been given so far to the strategies L2 learners employ when learning the target language pronunciation, not to mention pronunciation learning strategy chains. Hence, there have been a limited number of empirical investigations into pronunciation learning strategies (PLS) in general and in particular the ones following the qualitative design (cf. Bukowski 2004;…

Grammar is the heart of language : grammar and its role in language learning among Finnish university students

2015

This article presents and discusses views on grammar and its role in formal language learning amongst Finnish university students. The results are based on a questionnaire which was distributed to students at the University of Jyväskylä as part of institutional action research. The background to the project was a feeling amongst some teachers of increased divergence between student respectively language teacher understandings of the role of grammar in language teaching. This concern raised the need to find out how students view grammar. The knowledge about thoughts on grammar amongst students would then help teachers to adjust and adept the way grammar is used in language teaching. The main…

Language Learning Methodology for Adults: A Study of Linguistic Transfer

2014

Abstract The purpose of the present research is to bring together the evidence on transfer in adult L2 and L3 language acquisition and investigate the use and the relationship between languages in contact. The role of linguistic transfer ( Odlin, 1989 ) i.e. the imposition of previously learned patterns onto a new learning situation, has a facilitation or inhibition effect on the learner's progress in mastering a new language (L2 or L3). Our findings reveal that the cross-linguistic influence occurs both from the direction of the L2 to the L3 and from the L3 to the L2 ( Odlin, 2003 , Jarvis and Pavlenko, 2008 ). In the case of our participants, in the acquisition of L2 as the foreign langua…

From canon to chaos management: blogging as a learning tool in a modern Finnish literature course

2015

This article is based on the teaching experiment implemented in summer 2013 in a modern Finnish literature course organised by the Centre for International Mobility (CIMO) and the University of Jyvaskyla Language Centre. In order to break away from the traditional conception of literature and text, students’ independent blogging was chosen as the final course assignment instead of a traditional final project. Our aim has been to determine what blogging as an activity can add to second-language learning (i.e. learning the language in a country where it is spoken as a native language) in the context of modern Finnish literature. Our special interest is how new learning environments and approa…

“It’s Practically a Must” : Neoliberal Reasons for Foreign Language Learning

2017

Refugee-background students negotiating academic literacy practices in L2: a dialogical and nexus analytical approach

2022

Tässä artikkelissa tarkastellaan pakolaistaustaisten opiskelijoiden osallistumista akateemisiin tekstikäytänteisiin toisella kielellä. Näillä opiskelijoilla oli myös aiempaa korkeakoulutusta. Ryhmä on jäänyt aiemmissa tutkimuksissa vähälle huomiolle. Tutkimuksen konteksti on uudenlainen korkeakoulutaustaisille maahanmuuttajille tarkoitettu koulutus, jossa yhdistyvät kieli- ja sisältöopinnot. Tutkin, miten kaksi avainosallistujaa ymmärtää ja ottaa haltuun suomenkielisen laskentatoimen kurssin tekstikäytänteitä osana koulutusta. Teoreettisesti ja metodologisesti tutkimus nojaa dialogiseen lähestymistapaan ja neksusanalyysin viitekehykseen. Ensisijainen aineisto koostui haastatteluista ja vide…

‘I don’t feel like I’m studying languages anymore’ : Exploring change in higher education students’ learner beliefs during multilingual language stud…

2022

To educate multilingual global citizens and follow the multilingual turn in language education, universities are faced with the challenge of developing their language pedagogies. This article reports on a study conducted in the context of university language studies that take a multilingual perspective to learning languages for academic and professional purposes. Although multilingual pedagogies have been widely developed in what could be traditionally considered as bilingual education, practical implementations are rarer when considering students that generally have one home language but study multiple foreign languages. To assess the effects of multilingual teaching in this kind of contex…

Facework and Prosocial Teasing in a Synchronous Video Communication Exchange

2019

This study centres on the analysis of prosocial teasing during a videoconference (telecollaboration) exchange between mixed-gender adolescent secondary school students from Spain and Germany. We contend that the provocative elements present in prosocial teasing activate a play frame, in Gregory Bateson’s terms, in which seemingly hostile face acts can be interpreted as playful behaviour. We argue that successful teasing can ultimately enhance the face of the teaser and that of the person being teased and thus build up rapport between them. Our analysis of the facework in the interaction during this telecollaboration exchange is based on Erwin Goffman’s notions of face, demeanour and deferen…

Situated Language Learning Methods: a cross-sectional study on General Teaching and Language teaching

2018

Language teaching bases its theoretical and methodological framework on an axiom: object and teaching tool coincide in the target language. There follows that active learning is the key to efficacious linguistic knowledge as well as to transferable learning from a specific disciplinary context to a general one. This perspective is in tune with the educational claims and the learning aims fixed by the EAS teaching model, according to which learning is mediated by action and by the learner’s ability to simulate real life situations within classroom The present study means to start up an epistemological reflection moving from the comparison between language teaching and general teaching with r…

Writing tasks in EFL teaching : analysis of the writing tasks in Finnish schoolbooks

2015

Perusopetuksen opetussuunnitelman perusteet (2004) englannin kielen kirjoitustaidon osalta jättävät vastuun kirjoitustehtävien suunnittelusta opettajille ja kirjantekijöille. Oppimateriaaleja tutkimalla voidaan saavuttaa tietoa englannin kielen opetuksesta Suomessa. Tutkielma pyrkii selvittämään, minkä tyyppistä kirjoitustaitoa opetetaan suomalaisissa englannin kielen oppimateriaaleissa ja tutkimus keskittyy kirjoitustehtävien painopisteiden tutkimiseen kahden kysymyksen kautta. Ensiksi tutkittiin kirjoitustehtävien sijoittumista muotoa painottavien ja sisältöä painottavien tehtävien väliselle akselille, ja toiseksi selvitettiin, minkälaisia kirjoittamisen taitoja tehtävät harjoittavat. Ain…