Researching grammar learning strategies: Combining the macro- and micro-perspective

Udostępnienie publikacji Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego finansowane w ramach projektu „Doskonałość naukowa kluczem do doskonałości kształcenia”. Projekt realizowany jest ze środków Europejskiego Funduszu Społecznego w ramach Programu Operacyjnego Wiedza Edukacja Rozwój; nr umowy: POWER.03.05.00-00-Z092/17-00

Text reconstruction activities and teaching language forms

Even though there is a broad consensus that teaching language forms is facilitative or even necessary in some contexts, there are still disagreements concerning, among other things, how formal aspects of the target language should be taught. One important area of controversy is whether pedagogic intervention should be input-oriented, emphasizing comprehension of the form- meaning mappings represented by specific linguistic features or output-based, requiring learners to produce these features accurately in gradually more communicative activities. The present paper focuses on the latter of these two options and, basing on the claims of Swain‘s (1985, 1995) output hypothesis, it aims to demonstrates how text-reconstruction activities in which learners collaboratively produce written output trigger noticing, hypothesis-testing and metalinguistic reflection on language use. It presents a psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic rationale for the use of such tasks, discusses the types of such activities, provides an overview of research projects investigating their application and, finally, offers a set of implications for classroom use as well as suggestions for further research in this area

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This final 2019 issue of Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching brings together six original empirical studies and two book reviews. In the first paper, Marco Octavio Cancino Avila reports the results of a study that investigated the learning opportunities arising in classroom interactions, placing special emphasis on the contribution of teachers’ and learners’ overlapped turns. Using conversational analysis, he analyzed extracts from six classes taught by three teachers to adult learners of English as a foreign language in Chile. He found that teachers’ skill in appropriately handling learners’ turns that overlapped or directly followed their own had a positive impact on participation and language learning as long as learners were given adequate interactional space (Sert, 2015). The second contribution by Reza Shirani also focuses upon classroom interaction, with the caveat that the main concern is with the effectiveness of different types of corrective feedback (CF). The study explored the relationship between the level of explicitness of input-providing (i.e., recasts) and output-promoting (i.e., prompts) CF moves, and the occurrence of uptake and repair in a foreign language context in Iran. Using the model of error treatment proposed by Lyster and Ranta (1997) to analyze transcripts of 36 hours of classroom interactions in three intact classes, the researcher found that prompts tended to be used more frequently than recasts, which stands in contrast to previous findings, but at the same time produced evidence that greater salience of CF is a crucial factor for the occurrence of self-correction, which is in line with prior research

Grammar Learning Strategies and Language Attainment: Seeking a Relationship

Despite major advances in research on language learning strategies, there are still areas that have received only scant attention, and one of them is undoubtedly learning grammar. The paper contributes to the paucity of empirical investigations in this domain by presenting the findings of a study which sought to investigate the relationship between the use of grammar learning strategies (GLS) reported by 142 English Department students and target language attainment, operationalized as their performance in a practical grammar course and the end-of-the-year examination. Information about GLS use was obtained by means of a tool that was designed on the basis of a theoretical scheme proposed by Oxford, Rang Lee and Park (2007) in which GLS are divided into three categories depending on whether they represent implicit learning with focus on form, explicit inductive learning and explicit deductive learning. The analysis failed to find a strong positive relationship between the use of GLS and achievement, irrespective of the level of the BA program, or statistically significant differences in this respect between lower-level and higher-level participants. The highest, albeit very weak, correlation was identified between the use of GLS associated with explicit deductive learning and grammar course grades, which testifies to the traditional nature of instruction the subjects receive. The findings serve as a basis for putting forward a handful of recommendations for learning, teaching and testing grammar as well as directions for future studies into grammar learning strategies

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The last 2016 issue of Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching includes six papers, five of which are reports of original research projects and one is a conceptual piece. The initial two contributions are concerned with different aspects of pragmatics, both with respect to the teaching of this subsystem and the process of its acquisition. In the first of these, Andrew D. Cohen addresses the crucial issue of how native and non-native teachers of second and foreign languages deal with sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic features in their classes. He reports the findings of an online survey of 113 teachers of different additional languages from across the world, which demonstrated that while there exist many similarities between the native and non-native instructors, the former are often at an advantage, although they by no means confine themselves to reliance on their intuition. In the second, Qiong Li undertakes a synthesis of 26 original longitudinal research studies on naturalistic pragmatic development in adult learners with the purpose of identifying patterns of variation in the acquisition of pragmatic features and providing potential explanations for the occurrence of such variation. The analysis showed that there are differences in the rate of development of various aspects of pragmatics (e.g., speech acts vs. lexical features), which can be accounted for in terms of factors related to the target language (e.g., the frequency of the feature in the input), the situation (e.g., social status) and the learner (e.g., initial knowledge about the target feature). The following two papers shift the emphasis to the role of individual factors in the process of second language acquisition, more specifically the contributions of motivation and willingness to communicate (WTC). Ali Al-Hoorie reports the results of a survey study conducted among 311 young Arabic adult learners of English as a foreign language, providing evidence, somewhat in contrast to much previous research, that achievement in second language learning is a function of implicit attitudes to L2 speakers and L2 learning experience rather than the ought-to self or attachment to the L1 group, with such constructs as the ideal L2 self or intended effort being unrelated to success. The study by Mystkowska-Wiertelak investigated fluctuations in WTC of advanced learners of English during seven conversation classes which she taught over the period of one semester. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the data gathered by means of self-assessment girds, interviews, questionnaires and detailed lesson plans indicated that WTC was indeed in a state of flux, both within single lessons and over time, with such changes being attributed to an intricate interplay of contextual and individual factors. The last two contributions focus on the role of critical thinking in foreign language learning. Jelena Bobkina and Svetlana Stefanova present a model of teaching critical thinking skills with the help of literature, arguing that such skills can be fostered through encouraging critical reader response to fictional work embedded in social phenomena as well as illustrating how this model can be applied to classroom practice. In the last paper, Paweł Sobkowiak underscores the interdependence of critical thinking and the development of intercultural competence, discussing the findings of a study of 20 coursebooks used in the Polish contexts and concluding that activities used in these coursebooks fall short of achieving either goal. As always, I am confident that all of the papers included in the present issue will provide food for thought to the readers and serve as a springboard for future empirical investigations that will help us better understand the exceedingly complex processes of second language learning and teaching

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The first 2013 issue of Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching brings together six contributions from scholars from different parts the world, five of which constitute reports of original research studies. As many as four of the papers are devoted to the role of affective factors in the process of learning and using second and foreign languages, which speaks to the considerable emphasis that is currently placed on the mediating effect of the affective domain

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The second 2019 issue of SSLLT brings together six papers, all of which report empirical studies dealing with different aspects of teaching and learning additional languages in various contexts, and it also includes two book reviews. In the first contribution, Alastair Henry combines Hermans’ (2008) concept of the dialogical self with the tenets of complex dynamic systems theories (Hiver & Al-Hoorie, 2016) to investigate the developing professional identity of a preservice teacher of English during the practicum in a school in western Sweden. Using a combination of intra-personal data in the form of semi-structured interviews conducted before and after the practicum as well as inter-personal data in the form of forum postings and a stimulated recall discussion of a lesson taught by the participant, Henry shows that the construction of teacher identity entails interaction between present experiences and the imagined self. In the subsequent paper, Anne Huhtala, Anta Kursiša and Marjo Vesalainen seek to identify the motives driving 51 Finnish university students to learn foreign languages other than English, in this case French, German and Swedish, adopting as a theoretical framework Dörnyei’s (2009) theory of the L2 motivational self-system. Qualitative analysis of the narrative reflections written by the participants revealed that although the initial decisions to engage in language learning may be driven by social pressure, or the ought-to self, in the course of time it is the ideal self and the L2 learning experience that start to play the dominant role

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Review of Written corrective feedback for L2 development; Authors: John Bitchener, Neomy Storch; Publisher: Multilingual Matters, 2016; ISBN: 9781783095032; Pages: 156

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