Volume 17, Number 2, December 2020 DOI: 10.56040/e-flt.173
This study of intercultural competence in Chinese-speaking study abroad (SA) context involved 72 international students studying Chinese as a second language in college language centers in China and Taiwan. Two research questions are addressed: “What kinds of intercultural competence do students who study Chinese as a second language abroad possess?”, and “Do the SA students’ intercultural competence differ based on the following factors: (1) gender, (2) length of stay in the Chinese-speaking community, (3) previous SA experience, and (4) self-rated Chinese proficiency level?”. Factor analysis and MANOVA tests were run based on the participants’ answers to the Intercultural Abilities ques-tionnaire. The results of the factor analysis test showed that the participants had three components of intercultural competence, namely, intercultural skill and the awareness of the importance of intercultural competence while in the host culture, intercultural attitude and the awareness of the effect of inter-culture and its development, and intercultural knowledge. The results of the MANOVA test found a significant interactive effect between the participants’ self-rated Chinese proficiency levels and their previous study abroad experience on intercultural knowledge.
It is crucial for second language (L2) teachers to understand L2 learners’ motivation in order to meet learners’ learning needs and improve their performance. This study investigated Arabic language teachers’ perceptions of their students’ L2 learning motivation change patterns and sociocultural factors that affect motivation by conducting interviews with seven teachers. Also, five graduates and six students in Arabic language departments were recruited as interview participants for the purpose of data triangulation. The analysis showed that Arabic teachers recognize job expectations, parents or teachers’ advice, cultural interest, and desire to go to college as major motivating factors for their students to learn Arabic. All the teachers believed that the motives for Arabic learning went through some remarkable changes after the September 11, 2001 attacks, contributing to increasing the employment expectations of learners. In particular, this study identified media, Confucian culture, and academic elitism as sociocultural factors influencing motivation to learn the Arabic language, which is categorized as a Less Commonly Taught Language in South Korea.
Agnieszka Kałdonek-Crnjaković
Naturally Occurring Language Learning Strategy Instruction in an Adult EFL classroom (pp. 392–404)
The purpose of this study is to identify the types of professional knowledge, which are activated by pre-service teachers of English, when they design a lesson plan. This study utilized the qualitative research methodology. As research subjects, 60 pre-service EFL teachers from three universities located in Chile were considered. Non-participant observation and a semi-structured interview with stimulated recall were used as techniques to generate data. Content analysis was employed to process the data by means of ATLAS.ti software. The findings suggest that the participants mobilize different types of professional knowledge when they design a lesson plan. These involve content knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, curricular knowledge, knowledge of learners, and knowledge of educational contexts. It is recommended that EFL pre-service education fosters prospective teachers’ reflection on their teaching practices so that they can reshape, in a progressive and permanent way, their professional knowledge connected to successful teaching practices.
The present study adopted a predictive-correlational design to explore whether self-reported motivated strategies for learning and language-learning strategies of Chinese EFL learners (N = 97) were associated with the following: (a) engagement with a learning management system (LMS), (b) engagement with flipped-classroom materials, and (c) final grades in a flipped EFL course. The Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) and the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL) were administered to sophomore-level English writing students in a cross-border higher education setting in the Henan province of China; predictor variables were then explored for association with end-of-term criterion variables operationalized by behavioral and performance data. Results indicated that the MSLQ and SILL failed to predict engagement or success with flipped classroom materials. Instead, the amount of time learners actually spent engaging with flipped materials was significantly, positively associated with student success measured by final grades.
For so long, tests have been teacher-generated. Hence, an intact group of Medical-related university students were asked to design original test types as part of their final written exam in Spanish 2. The study aimed to analyze the features of these student-constructed tests. The identified corpus-driven elements were the language of the directions; the test types; the language of the tests; the lexical bundles/n-grams; and the artistic, creative, and visual elements. Results show that English is the main language of the test directions; translation, matching type, and puzzle are the top three test types; English is the overall language of the tests; “mi nombre es” and “cuál es el” are the top two Spanish lexical bundles; and limited images show the students’ artistic side. Overall, these patterns demonstrate the students’ language ability, knowledge of, exposure, creativity, engagement, and manipulation of Spanish that is (almost) foreign to them. Implications and research trajectories offered can go beyond the scope of Span-ish teaching-learning process.