Students reflections on pedagogical translation in Spanish as a foreign language

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The interlanguage development in the spanish learning as foreign language in Teletandem under the View of the Complexity Theory

This article presents, under the perspective of Complexity Theory, the characteristics of the learning process of Spanish as a foreign language in Teletandem. Data were collected from two pairs of Portuguese-Spanish interagents, who were engaged in a systematic and regular interaction, based on the tandem principles. It was found that the learning experience is developed with the peculiarities that arise from the context, agents, members and their nuances, which revealed the presence of a shallow space between the systems of native and foreign languages.

Experimental study of textual development in Spanish students of English as a foreign language in segundo de bachillerato : features of written register in compositions of argumentative genre.

Esta investigación pretende, por un lado, describir y explicar los rasgos orales de las redacciones de los estudiantes españoles de inglés como lengua extranjera; y, por otro, intentar mejorar el estilo escrito de los textos de estos estudiantes a través de una intervención pedagógica.. Se diseña y aplica un tratamiento pedagógico a un grupo de estudiantes de segundo de bachillerato de Madrid. La instrucción se centra en hacerles conscientes de los recursos lingüísticos disponibles en inglés para la redacción de un texto. Se comparan las composiciones escritas por los estudiantes antes del tratamiento experimental con sus producciones posteriores, así como con un grupo de control del mismo instituto que no recibe ninguna instrucción. Se cotejan los textos en inglés con redacciones escritas en español por los estudiantes del grupo experimental. Asimismo, los textos escritos en inglés después del tratamiento experimental se comparan con redacciones de un grupo de estudiantes nativos de secundaria. Se analizan dos variables, para las que el estudio aporta sendos instrumentos de medida, la calidad y el grado de estilo escrito de los textos. La comparación de los textos escritos en español y en inglés de los estudiantes españoles del grupo experimental revela que las redacciones en la lengua materna son superiores en relación a su calidad pero no al grado de estilo escrito. Varios resultados estadísticos apuntan que el tratamiento recibido por el grupo experimental contribuye al desarrollo del grado de estilo escrito de los textos en inglés pero no mejora la calidad global de los mismos. Los resultados revelan que el grupo experimental es similar a los nativos en el grado de estilo escrito, aunque éste último supera a los estudiantes del inglés como lengua extranjera en la 'calidad' de los textos. Este estudio concluye que la impronta oral de las redacciones de los estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera puede deberse a la combinación de varios factores, la competencia discursiva en la lengua materna, la competencia lingüística/discursiva en la lengua objeto de aprendizaje, el conocimiento socio-cultural y lingüístico de adecuación contextual y el tipo de pedagogía en inglés como lengua extranjera.

The Importance of Foreign Language Skills in the Labour Markets of Central and Eastern Europe: An assessment based on data from online job portals. CEPS Special Report No. 129/January 2016

In a globalised world, knowledge of foreign languages is an important skill. Especially in Europe, with its 24 official languages and its countless regional and minority languages, foreign language skills are a key asset in the labour market. Earlier research shows that over half of the EU27 population is able to speak at least one foreign language, but there is substantial national variation. This study is devoted to a group of countries known as the Visegrad Four, which comprises the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Although the supply of foreign language skills in these countries appears to be well-documented, less is known about the demand side. In this study, we therefore examine the demand for foreign language skills on the Visegrad labour markets, using information extracted from online job portals. We find that English is the most requested foreign language in the region, and the demand for English language skills appears to go up as occupations become increasingly complex. Despite the cultural, historical and economic ties with their German-speaking neighbours, German is the second-most-in-demand foreign language in the region. Interestingly, in this case there is no clear link with the complexity of an occupation. Other languages, such as French, Spanish and Russian, are hardly requested. These findings have important policy implications with regards to the education and training offered in schools, universities and job centres.

Syntactic complexity measures and their relation to oral proficiency in Japanese as a foreign language

The study reported in this article is a part of a large-scale study investigating syntactic complexity in second language (L2) oral data in commonly taught foreign languages (English, German, Japanese, and Spanish; Ortega, Iwashita, Rabie, & Norris, in preparation). In this article, preliminary findings of the analysis of the Japanese data are reported. Syntactic complexity, which is referred to as syntactic maturity or the use of a range of forms with degrees of sophistication (Ortega, 2003), has long been of interest to researchers in L2 writing. In L2 speaking, researchers have examined syntactic complexity in learner speech in the context of pedagogic intervention (e.g., task type, planning time) and the validation of rating scales. In these studies complexity is examined using measures commonly employed in L2 writing studies. It is assumed that these measures are valid and reliable, but few studies explain what syntactic complexity measures actually examine. The language studied is predominantly English, and little is known about whether the findings of such studies can be applied to languages that are typologically different from English. This study examines how syntactic complexity measures relate to oral proficiency in Japanese as a foreign language. An in-depth analysis of speech samples from 33 learners of Japanese is presented. The results of the analysis are compared across proficiency levels and cross-referenced with 3 other proficiency measures used in the study. As in past studies, the length of T-units and the number of clauses per T-unit is found to be the best way to predict learner proficiency; the measure also had a significant linear relation with independent oral proficiency measures. These results are discussed in light of the notion of syntactic complexity and the interfaces between second language acquisition and language testing. Adapted from the source document

Foreign Language Education in Colombia: A Qualitative Study of Escuela Nueva

Since 2004 the Colombian Ministry of Education has been implementing the Programa Nacional de Bilingüismo (PNB) with the goal of having bilingual high school graduates in English and Spanish by 2019. However, implementation of the PNB has been criticized by English Language Teaching (ELT) specialists in the country who say, among other things, that the PNB introduced a discourse associated exclusively with bilingualism in English and Spanish. This study analyzed interviews with 15 participants of a public school of the Colombian Escuela Nueva, a successful model of community-based education that has begun a process of internationalization, regarding the participants’ perceptions of foreign language education and the policies of the PNB. Six students, five teachers, and four administrators were each interviewed twice using semi-structured interviews. To offer a critique of the PNB, this study tried to determine to what extent the school implemented the elements of Responsible ELT, a model developed by the researcher incorporating the concepts of hegemony of English, critical language-policy research, and resistance in ELT. Findings included the following: (a) students and teachers saw English as the universal language whereas most administrators saw English imposed due to political and economic reasons; (b) some teachers misinterpreted the 1994 General Law of Education mandating the teaching of a foreign language as a law mandating English; and (c) some teachers and administrators saw the PNB’s adoption of competence standards based on the Common European Framework of Reference for languages as beneficial whereas others saw it as arbitrary. Conclusions derived from this study of this Escuela Nueva school were: (a) most participants found the goal of the PNB unrealistic; (b) most teachers and administrators saw the policies of the PNB as top-down policies without assessment or continuity; and (c) teachers and administrators mentioned a disarticulation between elementary and high school ELT policies that may be discouraging students in public schools from learning English. Thus, this study suggests that the policies of the PNB may be contributing to English becoming a gatekeeper for higher education and employment thereby becoming a tool for sustaining inequality in Colombia.

Hegemonic gender in Japanese as a foreign language education: Australian perspectives

This chapter contests the current practice of Japanese language teaching which perpetuates and reproduces gender stereotyping and gendered language norms. It is the first of its kind which examines this question from both learner's and teacher's perspectives.

Teacher Use of Learners' Native Language in the Foreign Language Classroom

This article reports on an exploratory study into the use of students' native language (NL) by teachers in the foreign language (FL) classroom. The project was undertaken by four teachers of beginner French at the University of Queensland. The teachers' aim was to investigate the use of NL in a context which actively promotes an immersion approach to FL teaching. The audio recordings of the teachers' speech were transcribed to provide data for estimating the amount of NL, and for analyzing the various instances of NL use. The study indicates that the activity type is a significant variable affecting NL amount. It also isolates two strategic uses of NL, translating FL words into NL, and contrasting NL and FL forms, both of which involve intrasentential code switching with NL words embedded in an FL sentence. The study suggests that these strategies may facilitate acquisition during immersion in FL, but experimental research is needed to test the hypothesis that translation and contrast facilitate learning of FL vocabulary and grammar.