Observing EFL teachers’ use of formulaic language in class

Mastering formulaic language is said to be crucially important in second language (L2) learning as it showcases the L2 user’s different levels of competency: linguistic, psycholinguistic, and communicative. Frequent use of these formulaic sequences also makes an L2 speaker sound more native–like. In a language teaching and learning context where English is a foreign language (EFL), the language teacher is the one major resource of spoken language exposure. Therefore, the quality of teacher’s instructions in an EFL classroom clearly has effects on the learner’s language learning process. Mercer (2001) puts it, “[a]ll […] aspects of teacher’s responsibility are reflected in their use of language as the principal tool of their responsibilities” (p. 243). A great deal of research has been devoted to L2 learners and the acquisition of formulaic language, and classroom interaction, but very little attention has been paid to teachers’ use of formulaic sequences in their classrooms. This paper presents a descriptive study with analytical discussion of extracts from four video–recorded lessons conducted by school teachers in different South–east Asian countries. This small-scale study attempts to explore to what extent non–native EFL teachers are familiar with and use formulaic language during class time

The acquisition of formulaic language through subtitles: a study across genres

Màster de Lingüística Aplicada i Adquisició de Llengües en Contextos Multilingües, Departament de Filologia Anglesa i Alemanya, Universitat de Barcelona, Curs: 2017-2018, Tutor: Roger Gilabert GuerreroThe present Master’s thesis adopts a multidisciplinary approach and blends the literature related to subtitles, formulaic language, multimedia learning, and teaching and learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The aims of the research are, first, to examine whether genre affects meaning recall of target multi-word expressions (MWEs) by EFL learners, and second, to explore whether input enhancement of target MWEs aids learning. 40 EFL adult learners participated in this study. Participants were exposed to four short clips subtitled in English. Half of the participants watched the videos with the target MWEs enhanced. The highlighting was removed from the target MWEs for the other half. The videos used belonged to four distinct genres: documentary, public lecture, detective story, and comedy. Overall, findings revealed an effect of genre. Additionally, results showed limited but positive effects of input enhancement of the target MWEs. Results were triangulated with qualitative findings from a retrospective protocol analysis questionnaire

Pragmatic gains in the study abroad context: Learners' experiences and recognition of pragmatic routines

The present study investigates second language (L2) learners' pragmatic development during study abroad (SA) programs by focusing on the recognition of pragmatic routines, and how sociocultural adaptation and intensity of interaction influence pragmatic gains. It is a longitudinal investigation that employed a mixed-method approach. Thirty-one Brazilian students in their first semester of study in a US university completed a pretest and posttest version of a sociocultural adaptation questionnaire, a language contact survey, and a routine recognition test. Quantitative data were complemented with qualitative information from semi-structured interviews with 2 of the participants, who provided details about the nature of their adaptation experiences and the patterns of interaction they held during the sojourn. Findings revealed that the recognition of pragmatic routines significantly increased during a semester abroad, and that this development was influenced by both sociocultural adaptation and intensity of interaction, interaction being the main predictor of pragmatic gains. Results from this study emphasize the importance of SA programs for the acquisition of pragmatic routines, and suggest that learners' willingness to acculturate in the SA environment, and exposure to recurrent situations outside of the classroom are determinant aspects for routine recognition

Game-based instruction of pragmatics: Learning request-making through perlocutionary effects

Using the single-group pre-posttest design, this exploratory study examined whether L2 learners of English can learn a speech act by experiencing perlocutionary effects of the act as feedback (observing their interlocutor’s reactions to their choice of speech act expressions). Sixty undergraduate English learners at a university in China played a digital game, developed at the researcher’s institution, involving 10 hypothetical request-making interactions that took place on a university campus. For each interaction, participants read a brief scenario description and watched a video that depicts that scenario. After watching the video, they were presented with four options of request-making expressions and asked to select the most desirable expression directed to the speaker in each video. Each option was linked to specific reactions depicted by speakers in the videos (perlocutionary effects). After choosing a response, participants were shown a reaction video designed to give feedback on the appropriateness of their selected response. Recognition and production tests were used for pre, post, and delayed posttests to assess participants’ knowledge of targeted request-making forms. Results revealed a significant gain from the pre to immediate post-test in both modalities, but the gain was not retained at the delayed post-test. The effect of game-based instruction appeared larger in the production (Cohen’s d = 0.83) than in the recognition test (d = 0.45). Participants’ game performance significantly correlated with their test scores

Let's grab coffee sometime! : enhancing pragmatic consciousness-raising tasks through metapragmatic discussions

textAs perspectives on second language teaching and learning evolved throughout the decades, SLA specialists are reconsidering the traditional ways of teaching languages. Since languages are dynamic systems constantly morphing to adapt to their speech communities, focusing on usage in L2 classroom appears to be inevitable. Instructors must think of teaching at the intersection of language and culture in order to foster fully competent L2 learners. Therefore, this paper aims at providing a thorough literature review on the subject of instructional pragmatics and metapragmatic discussions (MPD). Anchored in foundational tenets of the field, this paper presents a variety of instructional techniques that intend to raise the learners' consciousness of pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic elements of a target languaculture. Finally, the review will be followed by pedagogical recommendations explaining how to recreate the conditions necessary for an effective metapragmatic discussion to take place, based on current research in the field of second language acquisition.Foreign Language Educatio

A communicative English-speaking supplementary curriculum: Using WeChat to develop Chinese EFL learners’ speaking fluency

The development of English communication skills is ignored by most EFL learners in China. This problem attributes to sufficient practice during their English-learning process in class, since most public schools in China, grammar-translation is still the mainstream teaching approach. Which means that Chinese not English is used to give lectures. Students do grammatical analysis and vocabulary memorizing instead of communicating in the target language. However, this approach cannot help the development of students’ speaking fluency. The deficiency of English speaking a variety of problems when students need to communicate with English speakers. Besides, the inner shy personality and face-saving culture cause anxiety when Chinese EFL learners speak English. Thus, this project provides a curriculum for EFL instructors, which aims at increasing more oral practice opportunities to help EFL learners enhance English-speaking skills. The whole curriculum is conducted on WeChat which is the most popular social mobile application in China and all of the lessons are task-based learning. Through completing tasks on WeChat, students can gain English-speaking practice without time and space constraint. What’s more, speaking English on social network sites can help Chinese EFL learners reduce anxiety effectively

Meeting the Needs of Adult Language Learners: A Focus on Communication and Literacy

This portfolio is a compilation of the author’s perspectives and reflections about teaching and language acquisition during her time in the Master of Second Language Teaching (MSLT) program at Utah State University. The portfolio includes samples of writing on a variety of topics surrounding second language teaching and acquisition developed through study and teaching experience. This collection of papers begins with the author’s perspectives on teaching, including a description of her desired professional environment, a reflection on her experiences observing other language teachers, and the author’s teaching philosophy statement. In the second section, the author presents two research papers and an annotated bibliography which demonstrate her research interests in the field of adult language learning

Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English

Since 2003, RTE has published the annual “Annotated Bibliography of Research in the Teaching of English,” a list of curated and annotated works reviewed and selected by a large group of dedicated educator-scholars in our field. The goal of the annual bibliography is to offer a synthesis of the research published in the area of English language arts within the past year for RTE readers’ consideration. Abstracted citations and those featured in the “Other Related Research” sections were published, either in print or online, between June 2020 and June 2021. The bibliography is divided into nine sections, with some changes to the categories this year in response to the ever-evolving nature of research in the field. Small teams of scholars with diverse research interests and background experiences in preK–16 educational settings reviewed and selected the manuscripts for each section using library databases and leading scholarly journals. Each team abstracted significant contributions to the body of peer-reviewed studies that addressed the current research questions and concerns in their topic area

What Difference Does One Academic Year Make? Features And Development Of International Foundation Students’ Academic Lexis In Assessed Writing At A UK University

Despite extensive research into academic writing of university students from various linguistic backgrounds and disciplines at various levels of study, little research has focused on longitudinal studies of assessed writing produced by heterogeneous groups of students at a foundation level. This study seeks to fill this gap by investigating the most prevalent examples, features and development of academic lexis used in UK-based international foundation students’ written assignments and the main contributors to this development. These aims are addressed with the assistance of three tools, namely Text Inspector.com (Bax 2015), AntWordProfiler (Anthony 2013) and AntConc (Anthony 2014) which provide an insight into the qualitative and quantitative aspects of students’ use of academic lexis comprising individual words and phraseologies in accordance with the Academic Word List (Coxhead 2000), the New Academic Vocabulary List (Gardner and Davies 2013), the Academic Collocation List (Ackermann and Chen 2013), and the Academic Formulas List (Simpson-Vlach and Ellis 2010). The textual analysis is complemented by individual qualitative interviews identifying the main contributing factors to the development of the students’ academic lexis. This small scale longitudinal study is based on a number of written assignments, produced by six international foundation students forming the entire 2016 - 2017 cohort of the International Foundation Programme at a London-based University, which were submitted to the University during the academic year. The results indicate that despite an extensive usage of individual academic words, the use of academic phraseologies remains surprisingly limited in the students’ assessed writing. Moreover, the most prevalent examples of individual academic vocabulary and collocations seem to be drawn from the assignment topics. In addition, the interview data identified exposure to academic lexis in lessons and reading materials as primary contributors to its development. These findings have potentially important pedagogical implications by highlighting the importance of more explicit teaching of academic lexis and greater exposure to relevant reading materials

Japanese EFL Learners’ Pragmatic Development in the Production of Speech Acts Drawing on ACT-R Model and Skill Acquisition Theory

This mixed-methods quasi-experimental study explored the development of pragmatic competence of lower-proficiency EFL learners in their university English classes in Japan. Although pragmatic competence has emerged as a key topic within the field of interlanguage pragmatics (ILP), almost all studies have examined L2 learners’ language use rather than pragmatic development focusing on learning outcomes than process. This study investigates both learners’ language use and development, in order to draw a more comprehensive picture of pragmatic development. It also attempts to identify the mechanisms that drive this development by employing a framework of Adaptive Control Thought-Rational (ACT-R) theory in tandem with skill acquisition theory, which is a promising but underexplored framework in the L2 pragmatic development context. As such, this study aims to fill a gap in the research literature and make a theoretical contribution by showing the potential of the framework to account for learners’ pragmatic development. For this study, I recruited 120 Japanese EFL learners making up four intact classes to examine the development over one term (14 weeks) of their skills for producing speech acts after receiving pragmatic instruction. The development was examined both in terms of knowledge and processing ability with more focus on the latter to produce speech acts. Four types of speech acts were chosen for this experiment: request and refusal speech acts, for which specific instruction was provided; and complaint and disagreement speech acts, for which no instruction was provided. Request and refusal were selected as they were most widely studied, and complaints and disagreements were selected as they are relatively similar in nature to request and refusal speech acts and a good candidate to examine learners’ ability of knowledge extension. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were employed to see how much learners improved their production of request and refusal speech acts - in light of the effectiveness of instruction they had received. A similar analysis was carried out on the uninstructed speech acts of complaint and disagreement to assess their capability to extend their learned knowledge from request and refusal making to the production of new speech acts, namely to assess their processing capability. The results showed that the participants in the treatment groups (TGs) improved in the production of both instructed and uninstructed speech acts by developing their knowledge and processing ability. The development of such knowledge was assessed by measuring the TGs’ improvement in the use of politeness strategies, which are associated with declarative knowledge. As for the development of their processing ability, this was assessed in two ways: in terms of their ability to select contextually appropriate strategies and to apply their learned knowledge sufficiently to produce uninstructed speech acts, these being associated with procedural knowledge. Since the application of the learned speech act schema enables learners to produce ostensibly ‘new’ speech acts with relative ease, not from scratches. This frees up most of the working memory to be available for other purposes, such as planning what to say next, and looking for more sophisticated expressions. This was reflected in the results of this experiment that showed, following instruction, the use of a wider range of strategies and more sophisticated lexical and syntactic expressions. However, the results did show that the participants were still in an early stage of proceduralisation and needed further practice to improve their processing ability to move toward automatisation. This study has pedagogical, theoretical, and methodological implications. Pedagogically, there are several implications afforded by a clearer understanding of learning processes that can be used to revise the EFL curriculum. Theoretically, by showing how pragmatic competence develops in an EFL classroom, this study shows the potential of the ACT-R model, partially revised to apply to this study, to elucidate the operational mechanism of pragmatic ability. Methodologically, this study shows how the application of the revised model I formulated through adaptation and clarification of a range of interpretations of the ACT-R model can better account for proceduralisation in pragmatic development, raising implications for allowing related research to move forward in an otherwise muddled ongoing discussion in the field