Search results for "learner"

Towards multilingual competence: examining beliefs and agency in first year university students’ language learner biographies

2021

As working life across the world is increasingly multilingual, multicultural and multidisciplinary, higher education language teaching is faced with a challenge of how to prepare students for it. Many universities have recently developed multilingual pedagogies but central to their success is learners’ perceptions of these practices. To fill this gap, this article explores first year university students’ language learner biographies to gain insight into how learners construct their linguistic realities. The biographies were studied with discourse analytical methods to examine the participants’ beliefs about language learning and their sense of agency in it. The results reveal that participa…

Examining L2 Learners' Use of Engagement Strategies in Telecollaborative Written Interactions

2018

Based on an intercultural telecollaboration project between two universities from either side of the Atlantic Ocean, this chapter analyzes written discourse produced by advanced learners of Spanish as a foreign language and higher intermediate learners of English as a foreign language in order to explore how second-language learners negotiate their ideological positions, create new knowledge, and build their arguments when discussing their first culture (C1) and second culture (C2) in telecollaborative written asynchronous interactions. Two research questions are addressed: a) the extent to which learners engage in a dialogic activity in online forums when discussing their C1 and C2, and b)…

Comparing formulaicity of learner writing through phrase-frames: a corpus-driven study of Lithuanian and Polish EFL student writing

2018

Learner corpus research continues to provide evidence of how formulaic language is (mis)used by learners of English as a foreign language (EFL). This paper deals with less investigated multi-word units in EFL contexts, namely, phrase-frames (Fletcher 2002–2007), i.e. sets of n-grams identical except for one word (it is * to, in the * of). The study compares Lithuanian and Polish learner writing in English in terms of phrase-frames and contrasts them with native speakers. The analysis shows that certain differences between Lithuanian and Polish learners result from transfer from their native languages, yet both groups of learners share many common features. Most importantly, the phrase-frame…

Learning from learners: a non-standard direct approach to the teaching of writing skills in EFL in a university context

2016

Corpora have been used in English as a foreign language materials for decades, and native corpora have been present in the classroom by means of direct approaches such as Data-Driven Learning (Johns, T., and P. King 1991. 'Should you be Persuaded'- Two Samples of Data-Driven Learning Materials. In Classroom Concordancing,1-16. Birmingham University. English Language Research Journal 4.). However, the suitability of using learners' output in classroom tasks remains controversial. This paper describes a pilot study in the application of a non-standard direct approach where Spanish university students are invited to reflect on their production. In the experiment, carried out in several sessions…

The Effects of Multiple‐Exposure Textual Enhancement on Child L2 Learners’ Development in Derivational Morphology: A Multi‐Site Study

2021

Researching pronunciation learning strategies: An overview and a critical look

2018

Disparate goals that learners might have in learning second or foreign language pronunciation and the scant classroom time that can be dedicated to teaching this target language subsystem dictate that learner autonomy is of vital importance in this case and adept use of pronunciation learning strategies (PLS) can be viewed as key to the development of this attribute. Surprisingly, research on these strategies is scarce, mainly focusing on the identification and classification of PLS, diverse instruments are used for data collection and the findings are inconclusive. The paper provides an overview of the available research on PLS with respect to their identification, learners’ preferences co…

Stop the Deficit: Preparing Pre-service Teachers to Work with Bilingual Students in the United States

2018

This chapter explores the education of bilingual students from an American teacher education perspective. Bilingual students in the United States are often diminished to their student status of “English Language Learner” (ELL). Not only does this ELL designation assume a onesize-fits-all approach to education for and understanding of bilingual children, but the label itself implores a deficit perspective which neither captures nor values bilingual children in the United States. Driven by the goal to model and introduce assets-based pedagogies to our pre-service English as Second Language (ESL) teachers, the main question guiding our work was, as teacher educators, how can we challenge pre-s…

Strategic Processing of Chinese Young English Language Learners in an International Standardized English Language Test

2018

Strategic competence is acknowledged to be able to explain variations in language test performance. Research with adult language test-takers has shown that strategic competence has dual components: strategic knowledge and strategic processing. Of the two components, strategic processing, which is state-like, unstable, and tends to fluctuate from contexts to contexts, is more closely related to language test performance. To date, none of the existing studies investigates strategic processing with children English language learners (ELLs) and explores the relationship between strategic processing in all the four skills of language learning and the test performance. Addressing these gaps, the …

Digging up the frequency of phrasal verbs in English for the Police: the case of up

2016

The present study focuses on the frequency of phrasal verbs with the particle up in the context of crime and police investigative work. This research emerges from the need to enlarge McCarthy and O’Dell’s (2004) scope from purely criminal behavior to police investigative actions. To do so, we relied on a corpus of 504,124 running words made up of spoken dialogues extracted from the script of the American TV series Castle shown on ABC since 2009. Based on Rudzka-Ostyn’s (2003) cognitive motivations for the particle up, we have identified five different meaning extensions for our phrasal verbs. Drawing from these findings, we have designed pedagogical activities for those L2 learners that stu…

FACILITATING THE ADULT LEARNING PROCESSES IN SECOND CHANCE EDUCATION : WHAT DO THE LATVIAN ADULT LEARNERS AND THEIR EDUCATORS THINK ABOUT ?

2015

The paper aims at presenting the findings of the research on core competences of adult educators conducted in Latvia during the study "Identification and analysis of new challenges and solutions that have influence on engagement and reintegration of adults (18- 24 years) in lifelong learning" funded by ESF project "Support to research in educational field" (sub-activity 1.2.2.3.2.), No 011/0011/1DP/1.2.2.3.2/11/IPIA/VIAA/001. The adult educators and adult learners from the field of second chance education (evening shift schools) were involved in an online survey (2011-2012) using the research tool developed in the project “Qualified to Teach” − QF2TEACH. The main research results are analys…