Individual differences in early language learning: a study of English learners of French

The present longitudinal study examines the interaction of learner variables (gender, motivation, self-efficacy and first language literacy) and their influence on second language learning outcomes. The study follows English learners of French from Year 5 in primary school (aged 9-10) to the first year in secondary school (Year 7 aged 11-12). Language outcomes were measured by two oral production tasks; a sentence repetition task and a photo description task both of which were administered at three time points. Longitudinal data on learner attitudes and motivation were collected via questionnaires. Teacher assessment data for general first language literacy attainment were also provided. The results show a great deal of variation in learner attitudes and outcomes and that there is a complex relationship between first language literacy, self-efficacy, gender and attainment. For example, in general, girls held more positive attitudes to boys and were more successful. However, the inclusion of first language ability, which explained 30-40% of variation, shows that gender differences in attitudes and outcomes are likely mediated by first language literacy and prior learning experience.

Innovation and change in English teaching in the western provinces of China: the impact of overseas training

In this article we explore issues around the impact of continuing professional development (CPD) for secondary teachers of English offered by an overseas provider through the lens of participants from the Western provinces of China who completed courses at a UK university between 2003 and 2012. We start by offering an overview of English teaching in China. We then report two complementary studies of the same programme. The first aimed for breadth of understanding and involved the collection and analysis of interviews and focus groups discussions with former participants, their teaching colleagues and senior management, as well as classroom observation. The second aimed for depth and drew on data collected from a cohort of 38 teachers on one of the courses, using pre- and post-course surveys; focus group discussions at the end of the course with the whole cohort; and interviews with five of the participants both before they left the UK and again six months later. Evidence is presented for changes in teachers’ philosophies of education directly attributable to participation in the courses; for improved teacher competencies (linguistic, cultural and pedagogical) in the classroom; and for the ways in which returnees are undertaking new roles and responsibilities that exploit their new understandings. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for both providers and sponsors of CPD for English language teachers.

Teaching Intercultural Communication in Foreign Language Education through Video Conferencing

Since 1980s, Western linguists and specialists on second language acquisition have emphasized the importance of enhancing students’ intercultural communication competence in foreign language education. At the same time, the demand for intercultural communicative competence increased along with the advances of communication technology with its increasingly global reach and the process of globalization itself.In the field of distance language education, these changes have resulted in a shift of focus from the production and distribution of learning materials towards communication and learning as a social process, facilitated by various internet-based platforms. The current focus on learners interacting and communicating synchronously trough videoconferencing is known as the fourth generation of distance language education. Despite the fact that teaching of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) faces the same or even greater challenges as teaching other languages, the intercultural communication perspective is still quite a new trend in CFL and its implementation and evaluation are still under development. Moreover, the advocates of the new trends in CFL have so far focused almost exclusively on classroom-based courses, neglecting the distance mode of CFL and leaving it as an open field for others to explore. In this under-researched context, Dalarna University (Sweden), where I currently work, started to provide web-based courses of the Chinese language in 2007. Since 2010, the Chinese language courses have been available only in the distance form, using the same teaching materials as the previous campus-based courses. The textbooks used in both settings basically followed the functional nationalism approach. However, in order to catch up with the main trend of foreign-language education, we felt a need to implement the cross-cultural dimension into the distance courses as well. Therefore in 2010, a pilot study has been carried out to explore opportunities and challenges for implementing a cross-cultural perspective into existing courses and evaluating the effectiveness of this implementation based on the feedback of the students and on the experience of the teacher/researcher.

A Story of English Language Learning – How Can Children’s Literature be Used in Teaching Vocabulary to Young English Language Learners? : - A Literature Review

This study aims to find research relating to the use of children’s literature to promote vocabulary development in young children, particularly English language learners in Sweden. The main questions address how (methods) children’s literature can be used and why (reasons) children’s literature is often recommended for the teaching of vocabulary to young learners. The study also aims to explore reasons against the use of children’s literature in vocabulary teaching found in previous research. A systematic literature review was carried out, including results from five empirical studies. The studies involved native speakers, second language learners and foreign language learners from various backgrounds. The results suggest that while research has shown children’s literature to be a good tool to use with young learners, careful lesson planning needs to be carried out. Direct instruction and scaffolding using pictures, technology and gestures is recommended. Hence, the teacher plays an important part for the vocabulary development using children’s literature in the classroom.

Authentic Texts in English Language Teaching : An empirical study on the use of and attitudes towards authentic texts in the Swedish EFL upper elementary classroom

International assessments indicate that Swedish students achieve high results in reading, writing and understanding English. However, this does not mean that the students display oral proficiency, despite an emphasis on functional and communicative language skills in the current English Syllabus. While a previous literature study by this researcher has shown that authentic texts are a way to increase these skills, most of the results shown are from an international viewpoint. Thus an empirical study was conducted within Sweden with the aim to examine the use of authentic texts in the Swedish EFL upper elementary classroom. Twelve teachers have answered a questionnaire on how they use authentic texts in their language teaching, as well as their opinions about these as a teaching tool. Additionally, 37 students have answered a questionnaire on their attitudes about authentic texts. Results indicate that all of the teachers surveyed see authentic texts as an effective way to increase students’ communicative competence and English language skills; however, only a few use them with any frequency in language teaching. Furthermore, this seems to affect the students’ attitudes, since many say that they read authentic texts in their free time, but prefer to learn English out of a textbook at school. These findings are based on a small area of Sweden. Therefore, further research is needed to learn if these opinions hold true for the entire country or vary dependent upon region or other factors not taken into consideration in this study.

Assessment of English Language Learners Seeking a Graduate Degree in Speech Language Pathology

A shortage of bilingual/bicultural speech language pathologists may reflect a problem with recruitment and retention of bilingual/bicultural students. The purpose of the present study was to survey graduate training programs in speech language pathology to determine typical policies and practices concerning students who apply and are admitted as ELLs. With a growing number of ELL children needing services from a bilingual SLP, it seems that little is being done to address the issue. The problem may be with the reluctance of programs to not only accept ELL students, but there also seems to be a disinclination for any sort of training program to be established for these ELL students. Clinic directors were asked to complete a survey about ELLs seeking clinical training in speech language pathology. In particular, we were interested in obtaining information about whether clinical training programs a) provided opportunities for ELL to participate in clinic, b) assessed the English skills of these students, and c) provided remediation if these students English skills were judged to be less than proficient.

A new way of teaching different subjects in a foreign language in the Building Engineering Degree at the Universidad Politécnica.

The European Union has been promoting linguistic diversity for many years as one of its main educational goals. This is an element that facilitates student mobility and student exchanges between different universities and countries and enriches the education of young undergraduates. In particular, a higher degree of competence in the English language is becoming essential for engineers, architects and researchers in general, as English has become the lingua franca that opens up horizons to internationalisation and the transfer of knowledge in today’s world. Many experts point to the Integrated Approach to Contents and Foreign Languages System as being an option that has certain benefits over the traditional method of teaching a second language that is exclusively based on specific subjects. This system advocates teaching the different subjects in the syllabus in a language other than one’s mother tongue, without prioritising knowledge of the language over the subject. This was the idea that in the 2009/10 academic year gave rise to the Second Language Integration Programme (SLI Programme) at the Escuela Arquitectura Técnica in the Universidad Politécnica Madrid (EUATM-UPM), just at the beginning of the tuition of the new Building Engineering Degree, which had been adapted to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) model. This programme is an interdisciplinary initiative for the set of subjects taught during the semester and is coordinated through the Assistant Director Office for Educational Innovation. The SLI Programme has a dual goal; to familiarise students with the specific English terminology of the subject being taught, and at the same time improve their communication skills in English. A total of thirty lecturers are taking part in the teaching of eleven first year subjects and twelve in the second year, with around 120 students who have voluntarily enrolled in a special group in each semester. During the 2010/2011 academic year the degree of acceptance and the results of the SLI Programme have been monitored. Tools have been designed to aid interdisciplinary coordination and to analyse satisfaction, such as coordination records and surveys. The results currently available refer to the first and second year and are divided into specific aspects of the different subjects involved and into general aspects of the ongoing experience.

Integrated approach to foreign language in the building engineering degree at the Universidad Politécnica Madrid

The European Union has been promoting linguistic diversity for many years as one of its main educational goals. This is an element that facilitates student mobility and student exchanges between different universities and countries and enriches the education of young undergraduates. In particular,a higher degree of competence in the English language is becoming essential for engineers, architects and researchers in general, as English has become the lingua franca that opens up horizons to internationalisation and the transfer of knowledge in today’s world. Many experts point to the Integrated Approach to Contents and Foreign Languages System as being an option that has certain benefits over the traditional method of teaching a second language that is exclusively based on specific subjects. This system advocates teaching the different subjects in the syllabus in a language other than one’s mother tongue, without prioritising knowledge of the language over the subject. This was the idea that in the 2009/10 academic year gave rise to the Second Language Integration Programme (SLI Programme) at the Escuela Arquitectura Tecnica in the Universidad Politecnica Madrid (EUATM-UPM), just at the beginning of the tuition of the new Building Engineering Degree, which had been adapted to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) model. This programme is an interdisciplinary initiative for the set of subjects taught during the semester and is coordinated through the Assistant Director Office for Educational Innovation. The SLI Programme has a dual goal; to familiarise students with the specific English terminology of the subject being taught, and at the same time improve their communication skills in English. A total of thirty lecturers are taking part in the teaching of eleven first year subjects and twelve in the second year, with around 120 students who have voluntarily enrolled in a special group in each semester. During the 2010/2011 academic year the degree of acceptance and the results of the SLI Programme are being monitored. Tools have been designed to aid interdisciplinary coordination and to analyse satisfaction, such as coordination records and surveys. The results currently available refer to the first semester of the year and are divided into specific aspects of the different subjects involved and into general aspects of the ongoing experience.

When Spanish owns English words

The English language and the Internet, both separately and taken together, are nowadays well-acknowledged as powerful forces which influence and affect the lexico-grammatical characteristics of other languages world-wide. In fact, many authors like Crystal (2004) have pointed out the emergence of the so-called Netspeak, that is, the language used in the Net or World Wide Web; as Crystal himself (2004: 19) puts it, ‘a type of language displaying features that are unique to the Internet […] arising out of its character as a medium which is electronic, global and interactive’. This ‘language’, however, may be differently understood: either as an adaptation of the English language proper to internet requirements and purposes, or as a new and rapidly-changing and developing language as a result of a rapid evolution or adaptation to Internet requirements of almost all world languages, for whom English is a trendsetter. If the second and probably most plausible interpretation is adopted, there are three salient features of ‘Netspeak’: (a) the rapid expansion of all its new linguistic developments thanks to the Internet itself, which may lead to the generalization and widespread acceptance of new words, coinages, or meanings, hundreds of times faster than was the case with the printed media. As said above, (b) the visible influence of English, the most prevalent language on the Internet. Consequently, (c) this new language tends to reduce the ‘distance’ between English and other languages as well as the ignorance of the former by speakers of other languages, since the ‘Netspeak’ version of the latter adopts grammatical, syntactic and lexical features of English. Thus, linguistic differences may even disappear when code-switching and/or borrowing occurs, as whole fragments of English appear in other language contexts. As a consequence of the new situation, an ideal context appears for interlanguage or multilingual word formation to thrive: puns, blends, compounds and word creativity in general find in the web the ideal place to gain rapid acceptance world-wide, as a result of fashion, coincidence, or sheer merit of the new linguistic proposals.

Teaching and testing for academic achievement : the role of language development /

"Spring 1991"--Cover.

Books for adult beginners, grades I to VII.

Mode of access: Internet.

Books for adult beginners,

Mode of access: Internet.

Books for adult beginners, grades I to VII.

Mode of access: Internet.

Little journeys in California; lessons in English for intermediate classes of adults.

"Mrs. Magdalene F. Wanzer, chief of the Bureau of immigrant education, has directed the development of materials which, in addition to the material of state Department of education Bulletin 5-F, Little journeys in California, comprise this bulletin."--Foreword, p. 3.

The language proficiency handbook : a practitioner's guide to instructional assessment.

"This guide is useful for preK-12 educators who work with second language learners, irrespective of which language, who wish to document their students' language development over time"--P. ii.