Gender Roles and Expectations

One consequence of the advent of cyber communication is that increasing numbers of people go online to ask for, obtain, and presumably act upon advice dispensed by unknown peers. Just as advice seekers may not have access to information about the identities, ideologies, and other personal characteristics of advice givers, advice givers are equally ignorant about their interlocutors except for the bits of demographic information that the latter may offer freely. In the present study, that information concerns sex. As the sex of the advice seeker may be the only, or the predominant, contextual variable at hand, it is expected that that identifier will guide advice givers in formulating their advice. The aim of this project is to investigate whether and how the sex of advice givers and receivers affects the type of advice, through the empirical analysis of a corpus of web-based Spanish language forums on personal relationship difficulties. The data revealed that, in the absence of individuating information beyond that implicit in the advice request, internalized gender expectations along the lines of agency and communality are the sources from which advice givers draw to guide their counsel. This is despite the trend in discursive practices used in formulating advice, suggesting greater language convergence across sexes

Learning How to Learn Languages: A Transformative Learning Approach to Empower Effective Language Learners

This practice report describes a 12-week stand-alone course designed to address the challenges university students face in foreign language classes. Adopting principles of transformative language learning, course content, activities and resources were designed and implemented to dispel myths and preconceptions regarding language instruction, promote self-directed, independent learning, and raise awareness of the cognitive and socio-emotional processes involved in language learning. Students’ feedback indicate that the course had a significant impact on their perceptions of adult language learning, their capacity to reflect on their use of strategies, and the importance of developing a plan to continue applying these new understandings in their academic pursuits. The course fostered a shift in students’ perspective, from viewing themselves as passive recipients of ‘language injections’, to becoming self-directed, motivated, and independent learners

HOLM 2016 – The International Conference on Social and Affective Factors in Home Language Maintenance and Development

A report on a conference initiated by the International Association for Applied Linguistics (AILA) Research Network (ReN) on Social and Affective Factors in Home Language Maintenance and Development. The HOLM 2016 conference, held in Berlin in February 2016, attracted close to 70 scholars and practitioners from over 20 countries interested in home language maintenance and development who met over a period of two days to exchange ideas and discuss projects

Sixty years of second language aptitude research : A systematic quantitative literature review

Second language (L2) aptitude has been broadly defined as the rate and ease of initially acquiring a second language. Historically, L2 aptitude has been understood as a stable trait that predetermined L2 achievement, regardless of individual learners’ efforts to acquire an L2. This traditional view of L2 aptitude as fixed and stable has led to it being a relatively neglected area of research within second language acquisition (SLA) studies. The little research that was in fact conducted was diagnostic in nature, and mostly used tests such as the Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT) to select potentially gifted L2 learners. Given that six decades have passed since the publication of the MLAT, now is a good time to revisit the literature and investigate whether L2 aptitude continues to be viewed as an individual difference of little interest to SLA research. While summative literature reviews of L2 aptitude research have been written, few systematic reviews exist. This article conducts a systematic quantitative literature review (SQLR) to provide a principled, comprehensive and reproducible synthesis of research into L2 aptitude published over the last 60 years (1959–2019). In this SQLR, close to one hundred journal articles and PhD dissertations were examined to discern generalisations and limitations in the field. This SQLR identifies a shift in the rationale for L2 aptitude testing, in which a diagnostic focus has been replaced by an explanatory perspective. Furthermore, our article points to a renewed interest in L2 aptitude research, which has come to be characterised by a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the concept and its components