Search results for "Second language"
showing 10 items of 187 documents
The role and theoretical relevance of study choices in explaining social inequalities of educational outcomes
2005
05094http://www.equalsoc.org/paper_fetcher.aspx?id=27; The theoretical model mobilized for explaining the importance of socially diversified choices is most often the rational one. However, research has mainly concerned "vertical" choices, between clearly unequal paths. The presentation investigates whether some "horizontal choices" seem to exist in France today. We will show 1) that horizontal choices are mostly vertical ones : they matter mainly because they warrant access to some specific educational resources, leading to a better place in the file for the best subsequent tracks and so to the best jobs; 2) that some horizontal choices exist, as the differences in choices between boys and…
PRODUCTION OF THE SPANISH VOWEL SYSTEM BY CHINESE SPEAKERS
2018
RESUMEN En este trabajo se comparan los sistemas vocálicos del español y del chino pronunciados por hablantes nativos con el objetivo de presentar a continuación las peculiaridades del sistema vocálico español de un grupo de estudiantes de China con un nivel intermedio de español. El estudio de las similitudes y las diferencias entre los sistemas nativos nos ha permitido prever en qué áreas pueden diferir las vocales pronunciadas por aprendices chinos de las vocales españolas. Los resultados indican que el sistema vocálico español de los estudiantes chinos es estructuralmente similar al sistema nativo, pero con algunas diferencias fonéticas: en primer lugar, tiene una extensión mayor por lo…
The Rally Course : Learners as co-designers of out-of-classroom language learning tasks
2019
This chapter introduces a “Rally Course” as a novel CA-inspired approach to teaching a second language. This approach builds on an understanding of language learning as a social process that is closely intertwined with L2 speakers’ evolving membership in the surrounding community. It addresses the need to develop experiential pedagogies that widen learners’ opportunities for interaction and support the socialisation process. Building on recent pedagogical initiatives supporting language learning in the wild, we illustrate the overall structure of the Rally Course, describe the main materials that were designed to support the learning objectives and present a case analysis of a student carry…
Topical Depth and Writing Quality in Student EFL Compositions
1992
ABSTRACT This study tests a method to describe the relationship between coherence and writing quality by using topical structure analysis. Originally the method was used to examine short professional texts written in the mother tongue (L1) but in the present study it is applied to short compositions written in English by students learning this foreign language (EFL). The analyses showed that what characterized good writers was the ability to develop the topics in their compositions more evenly across several topic levels than mid‐quality writers and especially the poor writers. Good writers were more homogeneous (measured by the size of standard deviation) as a group in handling topics at h…
Unveiling the needs of students who stutter in the language skills - a study on anxiety and stuttering in EFL learning
2019
The aim of this study is to discuss the needs of learners who stutter (LWS) in the skills of speaking, listening, reading, and writing in English as a foreign language (EFL) learning based on their levels of anxiety, and their experiences as individuals who stutter in the process of learning this language. To this end, the anxiety of these students (n = 16) in the foreign language was measured using the Foreign language classroom anxiety scale (FLCAS), and the Specific language skills anxiety scale (SLSAS), whilst their experiences were elicited through semi-structured interviews. Their foreign language anxiety (FLA) levels were then compared to those obtained from a control group of non-st…
Challenges concerning argumentative writing in a second language context
2018
The current study is based on parts of the data collected in a quasi-experiment conducted in four English classes of Norwegian upper secondary school students. The purpose of the quasi-experiment was to explore whether a teaching intervention based on systemic functional linguistics and genre-pedagogy would support students in improving their competence in writing argumentative texts in English. The improvement was measured by comparing evaluations of pre-and post-tests. The current study investigates what seemed to be the main challenges for Norwegian students concerning this type of genre in a second language context based on the pre-tests and the evaluations of the pre-tests. The most ch…
L’aprenentatge de la pronúncia anglesa mitjançant REO: El cas de Voki
2018
Al llarg dels anys, l’anglès s’ha situat com una vertadera llengua global a la nostra societat. Això ha donat pas a l’aplicació d’un nombre de mètodes i enfocaments pel que fa a l’àrea d’ensenyament i aprenentatge de l’anglès com a llengua estrangera o segona llengua, on tant la integració de les Tecnologies de la Informació i la Comunicació (TIC) com dels Recursos Educatius Oberts (REO) és primordial. Tenint això en compte, aquest estudi té dos objectius. D’una banda, es pretén investigar fins a quin punt els estudiants universitaris matriculats a l’assignatura de Pronunciació i Comprensió de l’ Anglès Oral són capaços de millorar la pronunciació mitjançant l’eina en línia anomenada Voki. …
Pedagogical translation, subtitles and ICTs: collaborative projects in L2classroom
2017
[EN] With this paper we offer a contribution to the debate on the importance of translation for learning a second language in the classroom. We exemplify its use as a didactic resource and as a learning tool. We show the methodological bases for a proposal consisting of three collaborative translation projects. This projects were carried out in higher education, namely in a Catalan as a Foreign Language (CLE) classroom at the Université de Picardie Jules Verne (France) in face-to-face and virtual scenarios. These practices are grouped into three different didactic sequences that deal with a given discursive genre –a music video, a commercial and a recipe– and that are realized as a teamwork.
Accommodating Teachers Attitudes Towards New Educational Testing Paradigms Through the OPENPAU Project
2015
Abstract Testing is an issue of increasing importance. While for many teachers language learning should be communicative; in fact, they expect their students to provide evidence of their knowledge. Thus, there is a clear mismatch on the approach to language teaching and language testing. As a consequence, there is an evident need change the testing paradigms. Purpose of the paper: This paper suggests guidelines that are currently researched in the OPENPAU project to change the teachers’ perspective towards oral testing. Sources of Evidence: Evidence was obtained through the interaction of four expert teachers with experience in oral testing. Analysis and results: The study indicates that te…
The Difficulty of Change: The Impact of Personal School Experience and Teacher Education on the Work of Beginning Language Teachers
2009
This case‐study investigates the impact of personal school experience and initial teacher education on the work of six beginning language teachers. Insights into the thinking and acting of the subjects are gained through an interpretative analysis of their interviews. The findings indicate that one’s own school experience has an important role in constructing practical knowledge during the first years of teaching. Part of this experience is unconscious and difficult to express in words; nevertheless, it has an impact on the actions of the beginning language teacher. Furthermore, the ability of the teachers in the study to use knowledge learned during the teacher education is dependent on th…