This research creates an empirically derived, pedagogically useful list of formulaic sequences for academic speech and writing, comparable with the Academic Word List (Coxhead 2000), called the Academic Formulas List (AFL). The AFL includes formulaic sequences identified as (i) frequent recurrent patterns in corpora of written and spoken language, which (ii) occur significantly more often in academic than in non-academic discourse, and (iii) inhabit a wide range of academic genres. It separately lists formulas that are common in academic spoken and academic written language, as well as those that are special to academic written language alone and academic spoken language alone. The AFL further prioritizes these formulas using an empirically derived measure of utility that is educationally and psychologically valid and operationalizable with corpus linguistic metrics. The formulas are classified according to their predominant pragmatic function for descriptive analysis and in order to marshal the AFL for inclusion in English for Academic Purposes instruction.
Two hypotheses were tested: Similarity between first language (L1) and second language (L2) orthographic processing facilitates L2-decoding efficiency; and L2-decoding efficiency contributes to word-meaning inference to different degrees among L2 learners with diverse L1 orthographic backgrounds. The participants were college-level English as a second language (ESL) learners with either alphabetic or logographic L1 backgrounds. Response speed and accuracy of English real- and pseudoword naming served as the decoding efficiency measure. The participants read three passages that contained pseudowords and inferred their meanings. Results showed that (i) alphabetic, as opposed to logographic, L1 background was associated with better decoding; (ii) the groups did not differ in meaning-inference performance; and (iii) the relationship between decoding efficiency and meaning-inference was stronger in the alphabetic group.
Within a Dynamic System Theory (DST) approach, it is assumed that language is in a constant flux, but that differences in the degree of variability can give insight into the developmental process. This longitudinal case study focuses on intra-individual variability in accuracy rates and complexity measures in Finnish learner language. The study illustrates the use of several useful DST methods and techniques such as min–max graphs and regression analyses to gauge whether different degrees of variability are meaningful, and Monte Carlo analyses to test for significance. Error rates were found to decrease rapidly in most cases except in four notoriously troublesome ones. Both word complexity and sentence complexity, and word complexity and NP complexity develop simultaneously and can be seen as connected growers, but NP complexity and sentence complexity alternate in developing and can be considered competitors. The study clearly shows that the interaction of different complexity measures change over time. Quite surprisingly, no meaningful relationship was found between accuracy and complexity measures over time.
This study examines the linguistic complexity and lexical diversity of both overt and covert L2 output produced during synchronous written computer-mediated communication, also referred to as chat. Video enhanced chatscripts produced by university learners of German (N = 23) engaged in dyadic task-based chat interaction were coded and analyzed for syntactic complexity (ratio of clauses to c-units), productive use of grammatical gender, and lexical diversity (Index of Guiraud). Results show that chat output that exhibits evidence of online planning in the form of post-production monitoring displays significantly greater linguistic complexity and lexical diversity than chat output that does not exhibit similar evidence of online planning. These findings suggest that L2 learners do appear to use the increased online (i.e. moment-by-moment) planning time afforded by chat to engage in careful production and monitoring.
Authenticity has been a part of the intellectual resources of language teaching since the 1890s but its precise meaning and implications are contested. This commentary argues for a view of authenticity which recognizes the limits of the concept as a guide for pedagogic practice and acknowledges the fact that texts are processes rather than products. First, authenticity may help to decide what texts not to use in class but provides no guidance about which authentic texts are, for example, motivating. Secondly, the term authenticity is misleading because it leads us to conceptualize authenticity as the bringing of a text from a communicative event into a classroom. Texts are the result of an interaction between what we might term a proto-text, sound waves, or marks on paper or screen, and a language user. The authenticity of a text in the classroom depends on the similarity between the way it is used in the classroom and the way it was used in its original communicative context.
This research creates an empirically derived, pedagogically useful list of formulaic sequences for academic speech and writing, comparable with the Academic Word List (Coxhead 2000), called the Academic Formulas List (AFL). The AFL includes formulaic sequences identified as (i) frequent recurrent patterns in corpora of written and spoken language, which (ii) occur significantly more often in academic than in non-academic discourse, and (iii) inhabit a wide range of academic genres. It separately lists formulas that are common in academic spoken and academic written language, as well as those that are special to academic written language alone and academic spoken language alone. The AFL further prioritizes these formulas using an empirically derived measure of utility that is educationally and psychologically valid and operationalizable with corpus linguistic metrics. The formulas are classified according to their predominant pragmatic function for descriptive analysis and in order to marshal the AFL for inclusion in English for Academic Purposes instruction.
Two hypotheses were tested: Similarity between first language (L1) and second language (L2) orthographic processing facilitates L2-decoding efficiency; and L2-decoding efficiency contributes to word-meaning inference to different degrees among L2 learners with diverse L1 orthographic backgrounds. The participants were college-level English as a second language (ESL) learners with either alphabetic or logographic L1 backgrounds. Response speed and accuracy of English real- and pseudoword naming served as the decoding efficiency measure. The participants read three passages that contained pseudowords and inferred their meanings. Results showed that (i) alphabetic, as opposed to logographic, L1 background was associated with better decoding; (ii) the groups did not differ in meaning-inference performance; and (iii) the relationship between decoding efficiency and meaning-inference was stronger in the alphabetic group.
Within a Dynamic System Theory (DST) approach, it is assumed that language is in a constant flux, but that differences in the degree of variability can give insight into the developmental process. This longitudinal case study focuses on intra-individual variability in accuracy rates and complexity measures in Finnish learner language. The study illustrates the use of several useful DST methods and techniques such as min–max graphs and regression analyses to gauge whether different degrees of variability are meaningful, and Monte Carlo analyses to test for significance. Error rates were found to decrease rapidly in most cases except in four notoriously troublesome ones. Both word complexity and sentence complexity, and word complexity and NP complexity develop simultaneously and can be seen as connected growers, but NP complexity and sentence complexity alternate in developing and can be considered competitors. The study clearly shows that the interaction of different complexity measures change over time. Quite surprisingly, no meaningful relationship was found between accuracy and complexity measures over time.
This study examines the linguistic complexity and lexical diversity of both overt and covert L2 output produced during synchronous written computer-mediated communication, also referred to as chat. Video enhanced chatscripts produced by university learners of German (N = 23) engaged in dyadic task-based chat interaction were coded and analyzed for syntactic complexity (ratio of clauses to c-units), productive use of grammatical gender, and lexical diversity (Index of Guiraud). Results show that chat output that exhibits evidence of online planning in the form of post-production monitoring displays significantly greater linguistic complexity and lexical diversity than chat output that does not exhibit similar evidence of online planning. These findings suggest that L2 learners do appear to use the increased online (i.e. moment-by-moment) planning time afforded by chat to engage in careful production and monitoring.
Authenticity has been a part of the intellectual resources of language teaching since the 1890s but its precise meaning and implications are contested. This commentary argues for a view of authenticity which recognizes the limits of the concept as a guide for pedagogic practice and acknowledges the fact that texts are processes rather than products. First, authenticity may help to decide what texts not to use in class but provides no guidance about which authentic texts are, for example, motivating. Secondly, the term authenticity is misleading because it leads us to conceptualize authenticity as the bringing of a text from a communicative event into a classroom. Texts are the result of an interaction between what we might term a proto-text, sound waves, or marks on paper or screen, and a language user. The authenticity of a text in the classroom depends on the similarity between the way it is used in the classroom and the way it was used in its original communicative context.
Given the relatively short history of computerized corpora of spoken language, it is not surprising that few diachronic studies have been done on the grammatical features recently highlighted by the analysis of such corpora. This article, however, does take a diachronic perspective on one such feature: the syntactic feature of ‘tails’ (Dik 1978). The use of tails is analyzed in terms of form, frequency, and function in a 50,000 word corpus of informal conversations which took place in the North of England between 1937 and 1940. This analysis shows that tails were a systematic and quite frequent feature of spoken English at that time. It also shows that there are marked similarities in terms of form and function between tails in this small corpus and those in more widely based contemporary corpora. The article argues that the durability of tails may lie in the fact that the feature has both an important psycholinguistic function and important affective functions and concludes that this kind of diachronic research is of great potential value for spoken language research.
This study uses a language socialization approach to explore the role of Ukrainian language instruction in the revitalization of Ukrainian as the national language. Based on 10 months ethnographic observation and videotaping of classroom interaction in two fifth-grade Ukrainian language and literature classrooms, it focuses on corrective feedback targeting children's use of Russian forms and considers how these practices are shaped by the imperatives of Ukrainian language revitalization and language ideologies that valorize ‘pure language’ as the sole legitimate variety of Ukrainian. The analysis reveals how corrective feedback is socializing children into speaking pure language and into dominant Ukrainian language ideologies that proscribe language mixing as a violation of the natural boundaries between languages, thus preserving a distinct Ukrainian language as an emblem of a distinct Ukrainian nation.
In this article we introduce language acquisition researchers to two broad areas of applied statistics that can improve the way data are analyzed. First we argue that visual summaries of information are as vital as numerical ones, and suggest ways to improve them. Specifically, we recommend choosing boxplots over barplots and adding locally weighted smooth lines (Loess lines) to scatterplots. Second, we introduce the reader to robust statistics, a tool that can provide a way to use the power of parametric statistics without having to rely on the assumption of a normal distribution; robust statistics incorporate advances made in applied statistics in the last 40 years. Such types of analyses have only recently become feasible for the non-statistician practitioner as the methods are computer-intensive. We acquaint the reader with trimmed means and bootstrapping, procedures from the robust statistics arsenal which are used to make data more robust to deviations from normality. We show examples of how analyses can change when robust statistics are used. Robust statistics have been shown to be nearly as powerful and accurate as parametric statistics when data are normally distributed, and many times more powerful and accurate when data are non-normal.
The main purpose of the study was to investigate the distinctness and reliability of analytic (or multi-trait) rating dimensions and their relationships to holistic scores and e-rater® essay feature variables in the context of the TOEFL® computer-based test (TOEFL CBT) writing assessment. Data analyzed in the study were holistic and multi-trait essay scores provided by human raters and essay feature variable scores computed by e-rater® (version 2.0) for two TOEFL CBT writing prompts. It was found that (i) all of the six multi-trait scores were not only correlated among themselves but also correlated with the holistic score, (ii) high correlations obtained among holistic and multi-trait scores were largely attributable to the impact of essay length on both holistic and multi-trait scoring, and (iii) some strong associations were confirmed between several e-rater variables and multi-trait rating dimensions. Implications are discussed for improving the multi-trait scoring of essays, refining e-rater essay feature variables, and validating automated essay scores.
Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) represents an increasingly popular pedagogic approach that has evolved in response to the recognised need for plurilingual competence in Europe. In this article, we present key findings from one of the first large-scale, multidimensional CLIL evaluation projects. We begin by outlining the emergence of European CLIL and by comparing it with other, non-European bilingual education initiatives and then we narrow the scope to Southern Spain, where the research was conducted. We outline the Andalusian Bilingual Sections programme, one of the cornerstones of the government's Plurilingualism Promotion Plan (2005), within which the research was conducted. In presenting results, we focus on specific areas that we believe make significant contributions to some of the key concerns in contemporary CLIL research including the linguistic competence of CLIL learners, the question of starting age, the distribution and functionalities of L2 use in CLIL classrooms, and the ways in which CLIL appears to be impacting on the educational system in general.
While language aptitude has been investigated actively within second language research, there is a current dearth of research on the effects of aptitude in cases of attrition. The aim of the present investigation was to explore the role of language aptitude for L1 proficiency in speakers who experienced a break with their L1 setting prior to puberty. Twenty-five L1 Spanish—L2 Swedish bilinguals residing in Sweden participated in the study, and 15 native speakers of Spanish living in Chile were recruited as controls. The L1 proficiency was measured by means of a grammaticality judgement test (GJT) and language aptitude data were obtained through the Swansea Language Aptitude Test (Meara et al. 2003). Results showed a positive correlation between GJT performance and language aptitude. More specifically, the bilinguals with above-average aptitude were more likely to score within the native range on the GJT than those with below-average aptitude. It was also seen that among the participants with below-average aptitude, GJT scores were related to daily L1 use. In view of these findings, we suggest that language aptitude has a compensatory function in language attrition, helping the attriter to retain a high level of L1 proficiency despite reduced L1 contact.
The term ‘intelligibility’ is widely viewed as denoting an ideologically neutral concept and therefore useful in speculating about the future of the English language, especially in the context of its expansion at the current exponential rate and the danger or otherwise of its breaking up into mutually incomprehensible languages, the way Latin did in the Middle Ages. It has also been bandied about in the context of English language teaching, especially to speakers of other languages. In this piece, I question the status of intelligibility as an ideologically innocent concept and argue that the adjective intelligible is analogous to others such as beautiful, ugly, easy, difficult, primitive, civilized, and so forth, which are also sometimes used with respect to languages, and which we have long learned to regard with suspicion on the grounds that they invariably presuppose the standpoint of someone who furtively manages to remain invisible.
In recent years there has been a striking shift in both academic and popular discourse on the subject of male–female differences. It is increasingly common for biological explanations to be proposed for differences that had previously been treated by most investigators as effects of socio-cultural factors. This article critically examines the arguments as they apply to the specific case of male–female differences in linguistic behaviour. It concludes that the relevant linguistic research evidence does not on balance support the new biologism; that evidence is more adequately accounted for using the socio-cultural approaches which most linguistic researchers favour.
The call for longitudinal evidence on the efficacy of written corrective feedback (WCF) for ESL (English as a second language) writers has been made repeatedly since Truscott (1996) claimed that it is ineffective, harmful, and should therefore be abandoned. This article discusses some of the theoretical issues raised against the practice, outlines the status of recent empirical evidence and presents a 10-month study of the effects of WCF on two functional uses of the English article system given to 52 low-intermediate ESL students in Auckland, New Zealand. Assigned to four groups (direct corrective feedback, written, and oral meta-linguistic explanation; direct corrective feedback and written meta-linguistic explanation; direct corrective feedback only; the control group), the students produced five pieces of writing (pre-test, immediate post-test, and three delayed post-tests). Each of the treatment groups outperformed the control group on all post-tests and no difference in effectiveness was found between the three treatment groups.
The relationship between language and identity has been explored in a number of ways in applied linguistics, and this article focuses on a particular aspect of it: self-representation in the oral history interview. People from a wide range of backgrounds, currently resident in one large city in England, were asked to reflect on their lives as part of a project to celebrate the millennium, resulting in a corpus of 144 transcribed interviews. The article considers the utility of realist social theory and complexity theory in the analysis of patterns—and deviations from those patterns—in both the linguistic features of these interviews and the social categories to which people are routinely ascribed. Corpus linguistic software was used to identify discourse features of the corpus as a whole, and to compare and contrast features produced by different speakers with reference to the conventional social categories used in quantitative research. These categories, with their homogenizing limitations, are challenged with reference to complex causation. The article uses the category of gender to exemplify the multi-method approach advocated.
In the rating scales of major international language tests, as well as in automated evaluation systems (e.g. e-rater), a positive relationship is often claimed between lexical diversity, holistic quality of written or spoken discourses, and language proficiency of candidates. This article reports a posteriori validation study that analysed a sample of the archived data of an international language test to examine empirically to what extent such relationships exist. It is also noted that previous studies on lexical diversity in the field of applied linguistics have focused exclusively on either written or spoken discourses, no study to date has compared lexical diversity of spoken and written discourses produced by the same participants. Therefore, the second aim of this article is to understand the differences in lexical diversity between writing and speaking task performances, and to what extent the topics of the writing prompts may affect lexical diversity of written discourses. Using D as a measure of lexical diversity (Malvern and Richards 1997, 2002; Malvern et al. 2004), it was found that D had a statistically significant and positive correlation with the overall quality ratings of both writing and speaking performances as well as the candidates’ general language proficiency. Nevertheless, the significant relationships were not borne out across the subgroups of the sample in terms of gender, first language background, purpose of taking the test and topics of the writing prompts. The different writing topics also had significant effects on lexical diversity—especially the topics that candidates were highly familiar with—even after controlling for writing ability and overall language proficiency. The lexical diversity of candidates’ writing and speaking performances were approximately at the same level; further, D was found to be a better predictor of speaking than writing performance. The implications of these findings are discussed with specific reference to the use of lexical diversity measures to inform language test validation and the development of lexical diversity parameters in automated evaluation systems.
Discourse particles are ubiquitous in spoken discourse. Yet despite their pervasiveness very few studies attempt to look at their use in the pedagogical setting. Drawing on data from an intercultural corpus of speech and a textbook database, the present study compares the use of discourse particles by expert users of English in Hong Kong with their descriptions and presentations in textbooks designed for learners of English in the same community. Specifically, it investigates the similarities and differences in the use of the discourse particle well between the two datasets in terms of its frequency of occurrence, its positional preference and its discourse function. Results from the analysis show that there are vast differences as regards how the particle well is used in real-world examples and how its use is described and presented in teaching materials. This raises the question to what extent foreign language learners who have minimal exposure to naturally-occurring spoken interactions in English could effectively master the use of discourse particles if they solely rely on these textbooks.
The analysis of narrative data in applied linguistics has focused to varying degrees on their content, form, and context, with content and thematic analyses being the focus in much of the narrative research in language learning and teaching (Pavlenko 2007). The aim of this article is to report on a positioning analysis of a small story about the imagined ‘better life’ of a migrant, pre-service teacher. Positioning analysis operates on three levels, which together require the analyst to examine the content and characters in the story, the interactive performance of the story, and the positions that are agentively taken by the narrator vis-à-vis normative discourses. Positioning analysis thus considers content, form, and context. I propose and demonstrate an extended version of this approach which enables inclusion of data beyond the small story. The analysis reveals how the teacher interactively constructs an answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ in her story.
In accord with the general program of researching factors relating to ultimate attainment and maturational constraints in adult language acquisition, this commentary highlights the importance of input differences in amount, type, and setting between naturalistic and classroom learners of an L2. It is suggested that these variables are often confounded with age factors. Herein, we wish to call attention to the possible deterministic role that the differences in the grammatical quality of classroom input have on development and on competence outcomes. Framing what we see as greater formal complexity of the learning task for classroom learners, we suggest that one might benefit from focusing less on difference and more on how classroom L2 learners, at least some of them, come to acquire all that they do despite crucial qualitative differences in their input.