Volume 1, Number 1, December 2004
Do understandings of classroom practice change (ergative sense) or does somebody change them (transitive sense) when applied linguistic perspectives meet practitioner perspectives in language teaching? This article starts out as a selective review of the often complex and problematic relationship between applied linguistic thinking and language teaching experience, and develops into a position paper on the place of applied research and reflective practice in a journal such as e-FLT. My discussion gives attention to both aspects of this journal’s title, namely the electronic medium of communication and the teaching of foreign languages. Essentially, I attempt to renew and promote arguments against externally driven interventionist approaches, and in favour of more sustained interactive and reflective approaches towards understanding events and practices in FLT classrooms, including virtual ones. Closing comments briefly review some implications for teaching and learning investigations and conceptions of change management in education.
Anna Uhl Chamot
Issues in language learning strategy research and teaching (pp. 14–26)
Learning strategies are the thoughts and actions that individuals use to accomplish a learning goal. Extensive research has identified the learning strategies used by students of a variety of second and foreign languagesand a somewhat smaller body of research has documented the effectiveness of helping less successful language students improve their performance through learning strategy instruction. This article discusses current issues in language learning strategy research that affect teachers and learners of foreign languages. These issues include: identification procedures of learning strategies, terminology and classification of strategies, the effects of learner characteristics on strategy use, the effects of culture and context on strategy use, explicit and integrated strategy instruction, language of instruction, transfer of strategies to new tasks, and models for language learning strategy instruction. These eight issues are explored through a discussion of existing research that illumines the issues. Suggestions are presented for future research on issues that have not yet been thoroughly explored,
Erwin Tschirner
Breadth of vocabulary and advanced English study: An empirical investigation (pp. 27–39)
Worldwide, foreign language instruction – particularly EFL instruction – starts at increasingly earlier ages and takes up more space in the overall primary and secondary school curricula. The question is: Do long sequences of study necessarily lead to higher proficiency levels among students, particularly with respect to advanced competencies in receptive and productive skills, including academic language skills? As breadth of vocabulary has been identified as one of the most important indicators of reading proficiency and of academic language skills more generally, the present study focuses on vocabulary gain over eight years of English language instruction in secondary schools in Sachsen, a state in Eastern Germany. The study shows that even extended sequences of English instruction of eight years and more do not necessarily enable students to meet vocabulary thresholds for academic purposes. Even vocabulary goals such as in Sachsen that lie at the lower end of the ones suggested by research are met by very few students. Particularly the productive goals are missed by a wide margin. In addition to describing the vocabulary levels attained by the participants, the paper discusses the relationship between test scores and background data such as length of time spent in English-speaking countries, number of English language books read per year, study strategies, etc.
This article identifies two causes of the absence of methodology for teaching Japanese reading to children from overseas: 1. The absence of a theoretical foundation for the principle of acquisition of academic Japanese; 2. The absence of content-based reading instruction − that is, instruction for learning school subjects. This article then proposes the Endogenous Development Model as a theoretical framework for teaching Japanese reading to these children. This framework is designed to develop proficiency in reading academic Japanese based on first language proficiency and the cognitive, affective, social, and cultural abilities which these children have developed before their arrival in Japan. This article also presents a concrete format for the model, to realize the following goals: 1. With the support of the mother tongue, children understand textbooks and lectures on school subjects in Japanese so that they can progress in subject learning; 2. By making the content of subject learning in Japanese comprehensible, children learn Japanese academic language; 3. Through the use of the mother tongue for the purpose of learning academic Japanese, children maintain and further develop their mother tongue.
Stephen F. Culhane
An intercultural interaction model: Acculturation attitudes in second language acquisition (pp. 50–61)
This paper puts forth a model to enhance understanding of second language acquisition (SLA) by integrating factors from acculturation research. An emergent approach to sojourner acculturation and intercultural interaction is presented, the Intercultural Interaction Model (Culhane, 2003; 2001a; 2001b) depicting interaction patterns among SLA sojourners. It is suggested to be an analogous approach for learner motivation in SLA that can advance understanding of learner behaviour within second language (L2) and Culture (C2) instructional and residential contexts. Discussion of research into motivation in SLA and acculturation attitudes is presented as an overview and background to a construct introduced in the paper, interaction motivation. A brief review of research efforts aimed at evaluating this construct is made, followed by consideration of how it may broaden conceptualization of the multifaceted process of learning a second language.
Daming Xu
Gender differences in foreign language learning: A study of Chinese university students' English usage (in Chinese) (pp. 62–80)
我们对大学英语二级程度的学生的一项书写练习进行了定量分析，发现了在词语使用方面所存在的性别差异。这些差异一方面反映了英语原有的社会语言学方面的特征，另一方面反映了中国大学生的一些社会心理状态。分析的结果为性别差异在外语习得方面的表现提供了证据，也进一步诠释了语言与社会共变的关系。研究结果表明，即使是中等程度的英语，也会明显地反映出语言使用上的性别差异。通过对男女大学生心理和语言两方面表现出来的差异以及一致性的定量分析，言语社区的“有序异质体”的本质得到更深入的认识。
Thien Nam Nguyen
Errors in using classifiers in learning Vietnamese as a foreign language (in Vietnamese) (pp. 81–88)
Báo cáo sẽ đề cập đến ba kiểu lỗi loại từ trong tiếng Việt của người nước ngoài là (a) lỗi dùng thiếu loại từ; (b) lỗi dùng thừa loại từ; (c) lỗi chọn sai loại từ. Chúng tôi dựa vào lý thuyết phân tích lỗi (Error Analysis) của Pit Corder để xử lý tư liệu. Qua khảo sát và tìm hiểu nguyên nhân của các lỗi, chúng tôi có được những kết luận sau: Loại từ trong tiếng Việt là đơn vị ngữ pháp rất khó sử dụng đối với người nước ngoài. Lỗi loại từ trong tiếng Việt của người nước ngoài là lỗi tự ngữ đích (intralingual error). Sinh viên nói các ngôn ngữ thứ nhất khác nhau đều mắc nhiều lỗi giống nhau về việc sử dụng loại từ. Đây là điều đặc biệt quan trọng và có ý nghĩa về mặt phương pháp luận đối với việc giảng dạy tiếng Việt cho người nước ngoài, giúp người dạy hiểu rằng, người học mắc lỗi tiếng Việt không đơn thuần chỉ do ảnh hưởng của tiếng mẹ đẻ. Hầu hết những lỗi này đều do nguyên nhân vượt tuyến (overgeneralisation), ngoài ra, tuỳ mức độ, có thể có sự quy tụ của nguyên nhân chuyển di giảng dạy (transfer of training), nguyên nhân chiến lược giao tiếp (communication strategy). Trong các vị trí của ngữ đoạn danh từ mà chúng tôi đã khảo sát, tỷ lệ mắc lỗi về loại từ là cao nhất. Chúng tôi cũng đề xuất việc sử dụng những bài luyện tập ngữ pháp mang tính tri nhận để góp phần khắc phục những lỗi này.
Reviews
Review of "STUDIO 100 niveau 1, STUDIO 100 niveau 2 and STUDIO +" (in French) (pp. 89–94)
reviewed by Sylvie Thibonnet & Christophe Galian
Review of "A survey of teaching Chinese as a second language" (in Chinese) (pp. 95–96)
Review of "A reference Indonesian grammar for speakers of Indonesian as a foreign language" (in Indonesian) (pp. 97–99)