Modelling the role of inter-cultural contact in the motivation of learning English as a foreign language.

The research reported in this paper explores the effect of direct and indirect cross-cultural contact on Hungarian school children's attitudes and motivated behaviour by means of structural equation modelling. Our data are based on a national representative survey of 1,777 13/14-year-old learners of English and German in Hungary; 237 of the students learning English with the highest level of inter-cultural contact were selected for analysis. Our model indicates that for our participants, motivated behaviour is determined not only by language-related attitudes but also by the views the students hold about the perceived importance of contact with foreigners. The results of our study also reveal that the perceived importance of contact was not related to students’ direct contact experiences with target language speakers but was influenced by the students’ milieu and indirect contact. Among the contact variables, it was only contact through media products that had an important position in our model, whereas direct contact with L2 speakers played an insignificant role in affecting motivated behaviour and attitudes

The effects of specific learning difficulties on processes of multilingual language development

This paper reviews current research findings on how specific learning difficulties (SLDs) impact on the processes of multilingual language development. The review includes studies of young language learners in instructed classroom settings as well as of multilingual children in second language contexts. The paper starts with a definition of the concepts of disability and SLDs. Next, it discusses the interaction of cognitive factors with L1 and L2 literacy development and L2 learning. The paper also outlines possible ways in which SLDs can be identified in different L2 learning contexts. A detailed analysis of how cognitive factors influence the development of second language skills of young learners with learning difficulties is given in the last part of the paper

The structure of self-repairs in the speech of Hungarian learners of English

The study reported in the paper investigates the structure of L2 self-corrections in the speech of 30 Hungarian learners of English and 10 Hungarian native speakers. The aim of the research is to examine what the well-formedness of the corrections, the use of editing terms, the placement of cut-off points and the effect of the participants' level of proficiency on the structure of self-repairs reveal about the psycholinguistic processes of speech production. The results of the study lend additional support for modular models of speech production (e.g., Levelt 1983, 1989; Levelt et al. 1999) and reveal an important role of pragmatic constraints in psycholinguistic processing

Egyéni különbségek a nyelvtanulásban

Dörnyei Zoltán tavaly megjelent könyve sok szempontból kiemelkedik az idegennyelv-elsajátítással foglalkozó szakmai kiadványok sorából

'Great Expectations': The motivational profile of Hungarian English language students.

In this article we investigate what characterizes the language learning motivation of Hungarian English language students in terms of Dörnyei and Ottó's process model of motivation (Motivation in Action, 1998). We used a mixed-method research design, in which qualitative interviews conducted with 20 students were supplemented with questionnaire data gained from 100 participants in order to have a better understanding of the apparent discrepancy between students' and society's expectations of teaching English Language at tertiary level and the present educational system in Hungary. The ambivalent nature of English language students' motivational profile was found to reflect this situation. The interview data revealed that the respondents had very favourable motivational characteristics but they did not invest sufficient energy in maintaining and improving their language competence. This is explained with reference to a low level of learner autonomy primarily caused by teacher-centered instruction

Attentional processing of input in explicit and implicit learning conditions:an eye-tracking study

In this study we examined language learners’ attentional processing of a target syntactic construction in written L2 input in different input conditions, the change in learners’ knowledge of the targeted construction in these conditions and the relationship between the change in knowledge and attentional processing. 100 L2 learners of English in Sri Lanka were divided into four experimental groups and control group: input flood, input enhancement, a specific instruction to pay attention to the target grammatical construction in the input, and an explicit metalinguistic explanation of the target construction. Eye tracking was used to collect data on the attentional processing of 45 participants in the sample. The eye-tracking measures of learners who received a specific instruction to pay attention to the target structure and an explicit metalinguistic explanation indicated increased attentional processing. The learners in these groups also improved their knowledge of the target structure significantly. The results suggest that increased attentional processing is needed for development in L2 grammatical knowledge and that explicit instruction to pay attention to the input and metalinguistic explanation are successful in directing learners’ attentional resources towards novel grammatical constructions in the input

Syntactic and lexical development in an intensive English for Academic Purposes programme

This study investigates how the lexical and syntactic characteristics of L2 learners’ academic writing change over the course of a one-month long intensive English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programme at a British university. The participants were asked to produce two argumentative essays, at the beginning and at the end of the EAP course, which were analysed using measures that are theoretically motivated by previous research in corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics, and developmental child language acquisition. The results indicate improvements, with regard to lexical diversity, both for intermediate-level students who were preparing for undergraduate university studies in the UK and upper-intermediate level participants who were planning to continue their studies at postgraduate level. The academic argumentative texts of the students in the lower proficiency group also demonstrate development in noun-phrase complexity and in the use of genre-specific syntactic constructions. The findings suggest that despite no explicit focus on lexis and syntax in the EAP programme, by the end of the course the students’ writing exhibited a developmentally more advanced repertoire of lexical and syntactic choices that are characteristic of expository texts in academic contexts

Az interkulturális kapcsolatok és az idegen nyelvi motiváció összefüggései. Egy interjúkutatás eredményei

Az idegen nyelvek elsajátítása és az interkulturális kapcsolatok között szoros összefüggés van. Interjúkra alapuló kutatásunkban arra a kérdésre kerestük a választ, hogy a magyarországi diákok milyen interkulturális kontaktus-szituációkat tapasztalhatnak meg, illetve, hogy milyen különbségek vannak a nyelvtanulási motiváció területén a különböző mértékű kontaktusokkal rendelkező diákok között

Affective factors influencing fluent performance:French learners’ appraisals of second language speech tasks

The present mixed-methods study examined the role of learner appraisals of speech tasks in second language (L2) French fluency. Forty adult learners in a Canadian immersion program participated in the study that compared four sources of data: (1) objectively measured utterance fluency in participants’ performances of three narrative tasks differing in their conceptualization and formulation demands, (2) a questionnaire on their interest, task-related anxiety, task motivation, and perceived success in task-completion, (3) an interview in which they elaborated on their perceptions of the tasks, and (4) subjective ratings of their performances by three native speakers. Findings showed the cognitive demands of tasks were associated with learners’ affective responses to tasks as well as objective and subjective measures of fluency. Furthermore, task-related anxiety and perceived success in task completion were the most important affective factors associated with fluent task performance, whereas interest and task motivation were correlated with native speakers’ fluency ratings. These results are discussed in terms of how task design and implementation can contribute to enhanced task motivation and performance in the classroom