Applied Linguistics - recent issues

Editorial: On a Change of Editor

Zuengler, J., Cook, G. — 2009-06-19

Modelling the Role of Inter-Cultural Contact in the Motivation of Learning English as a Foreign Language

Csizer, K., Kormos, J. — 2009-06-19

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.

Practices for Social Interaction in the Language-Learning Classroom: Disengagements from Dyadic Task Interaction

Hellermann, J., Cole, E. — 2009-06-19

Using conversation analysis and situated learning theory, in this paper we analyze the peer dyadic interactions of one adult learner of English in class periods 16 months apart. The analyses in the paper present microgenetic and longitudinal perspectives on the learner's increasing participation in his classroom communities of practice. The focus of the analyses is on the language practices for a social action that is not taught explicitly by the instructors—disengaging from teacher-assigned dyadic task interactions. The tasks from which the learner disengages are serial dyadic interaction tasks. In these tasks, a learner engages with a number of different classmates doing the same task consecutively. The serial dyadic interaction task design is shown to offer students ongoing opportunities to develop interactional routines for social actions and language practices needed to accomplish habitual actions such as opening and disengaging from their dyadic task interactions.

Adult Learners' Perceptions of the Incorporation of their L1 in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning

Brooks-Lewis, K. A. — 2009-06-19

This article challenges the theory and practice of the exclusion of the adult learner's first language (L1) by reporting learners’ overwhelmingly positive perceptions of its incorporation in foreign language teaching and learning. Classroom-based research was undertaken with university students in an English as a foreign language course which included and incorporated the L1. Upon completion of the course the learner-participants were asked for their perceptions of the experience in written form, this being the data collected. Results of the research demonstrate learners’ positive response to the experience in their expressions of how and why they considered that the inclusion of the L1 had been beneficial to their foreign language learning experience. While the focuses of the research were literate Spanish-speaking adults in Mexico and English as the target language, the views of learner-participants expressed in the data concerning the inclusion and incorporation of the L1 in the foreign language learning experience suggest that the practice would be applicable in EFL teaching situations with learners of different backgrounds and/or with different L1s, and in the teaching of other target languages.

Uncovering the Extent of the Phraseological Tendency: Towards a Systematic Analysis of Concgrams

Cheng, W., Greaves, C., Sinclair, J. McH., Warren, M. — 2009-06-19

This paper offers an analytical procedure for identifying phraseological variation within ‘concgrams’ (Cheng et al. 2006), which are sets of words that co-occur regardless of constituency variation (e.g. AB and A * B), positional variation (e.g. AB and BA), or both. It argues that examining concgrams takes us closer to more fully appreciating and understanding the idiom principle (Sinclair 1987) which underpins the claim that phraseology is at the heart of all language use. Central to a description of phraseology is the identification of ‘meaning-shift units’ (MSU) (Sinclair 2007a, 2007b) and the analytical procedure for concgrams described in this paper can lead to their identification. In this paper, the concordance lines of a two-word concgram, PLAY/ROLE, are analysed to identify all of the possible concgram configurations and their frequencies of occurrence. Based on frequency, the canonical form is identified and its meaning described. The canonical form then serves as the benchmark against which all of the other concgram configurations are compared, resulting in a ranking of the concgram configurations relative to their adherence to the canonical form. At the end of the process, a meaning-shift unit is identified and described with all of its potential variations; in other words, a paraphrasable family with a canonical form and patterns of co-selection. Lastly, this paper proposes initial theoretical statements to account for key phraseological patterns so far observed, and explores the implications of a shift in emphasis towards descriptions of phraseological variations for the field of applied linguistics.

Age and Proficiency in L2 Attrition: Data from Two Siblings

Tomiyama, M. — 2009-06-19

This paper investigates whether any difference exists in the degree of second language attrition between two siblings in terms of grammatical complexity, grammatical accuracy, lexical complexity, and lexical productivity based on their storytelling data collected over the period of 31 months. The subjects’ L1 and L2 are Japanese and English, respectively. The siblings (one male, one female) have similar L2 profiles with respect to attained proficiency, including literacy, but differ in age. The ages of returning home were 7;0, an age reported to be more vulnerable to attrition and 10;0, an age reported to be more resistant. The siblings showed similar attrition patterns suggesting that an attained high proficiency level including the acquisition of literacy skills is an important factor in the maintenance of L2. One exception was grammatical accuracy, but the difference surfaced only after the second year, indicating that the period of disuse was differentially affected according to their ages. The younger sibling's data also suggest that maturational factors may play a role in successfully handling grammatical complexity and accuracy simultaneously.

Semantically Redundant Language--A Case Study

Rizza, C. — 2009-06-19

In this article, I discuss the concept of semantically redundant language through a case study of the Te Rauparaha Maori haka. I suggest that current linguistic theories cannot give a full account of ritualized speech events, of which the haka is an example, as these theories are based on a traditional dyadic model of interaction involving a specific addresser and addressee. I describe the speech event from the perspective of Speech Act Theory and show how the existence of the locution, illocution, and perlocution of an utterance in certain social contexts becomes unclear. In ritualized speech events, non-verbal elements of communication are more important than linguistic meaning. Linguistic meaning is downgraded in terms of value, in that what is said and the words of the utterance are less important than the fact that they have been uttered and the manner in which they have been delivered. I call this kind of language ‘semantically redundant language’ and suggest that there are varying degrees of this dependent on the social context within which an utterance is performed. Thus, semantic redundancy is greater in highly formalized, ritual scenarios, and less obvious in ‘normal’ dyadic interaction.

Hanneke Bot: Dialogue Interpreting in Mental Health.

Inghilleri, M. — 2009-06-19

Witold Tulasiewicz and Anthony Adams (eds): Teaching the Mother Tongue in a Multilingual Europe.

Yagmur, K. — 2009-06-19

David Hanauer: Scientific Discourse: Multiliteracy in the Classroom.

Bock, Z. — 2009-06-19

Alastair Pennycook: Global Englishes and Transcultural Flows.

Blackledge, A. — 2009-06-19

Notes on Contributors

2009-06-19

Readers During 2007/2008

2009-06-19

The Effects of Input-Based Tasks on the Development of Learners' Pragmatic Proficiency

Takimoto, M. — 2009-03-10

The present study evaluates the relative effectiveness of three types of input-based approaches for teaching English polite request forms to sixty Japanese learners of English: (a) structured input tasks with explicit information; (b) problem-solving tasks; and (c) structured input tasks without explicit information. Treatment group performance was compared with control group performance on pre-tests, post-tests, and follow-up tests consisting of a discourse completion test, a role-play test, a listening test, and an acceptability judgement test. The results revealed that the three treatment groups performed significantly better than the control group. However, the group that received the structured input tasks with explicit information did not maintain the positive effects of the treatment between the post-test and follow-up test on the listening test component.

Soliciting Teacher Attention in an L2 Classroom: Affect Displays, Classroom Artefacts, and Embodied Action

Cekaite, A. — 2009-03-10

This paper explores L2 novices’ ways of soliciting teacher attention, more specifically, their summonses. The data are based on detailed analyses of video recordings in a Swedish language immersion classroom. The analyses illuminate the lexical shape of summonses in conjunction with prosody, body posture, gestures, and classroom artefacts. As demonstrated, a simple structure of summoning provided a handy method for soliciting and establishing the teacher's attention, and facilitated the novices’ participation in classroom activities from early on. Importantly, however, the local design of the summonses was influenced by the competitive multiparty classroom setting. The analyses illustrate how the novices upgraded their summonses by displaying a range of affective stances. Different aspects of the students’ embodied actions were employed as ways of indexing affective stances, for example ‘tired’, ‘resigned’, or ‘playful’, that in the local educational order created methods that invited the teacher's attention and conversational uptake. These locally available resources allowed children to upgrade their summonses and to indicate their communicative projects, in spite of their limited Swedish (L2) resources. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding participation in L2 classroom interactions as being a matter of delicately calibrated collaborative accomplishments.

'Lego my keego!': An Analysis of Language Play in a Beginning Japanese as a Foreign Language Classroom

Bushnell, C. — 2009-03-10

In this article, I present an analysis of talk-in-interaction from an introductory Japanese as a foreign language classroom at an American university. An examination of the data revealed language play (LP) to be a highly salient feature of the participants’ interactions. LP has come into increasing focus in the second language acquisition research of the last decade. Research in L1 has long shown the prevalence of LP in both the language data available to the learner and learner language production (e.g. Garvey 1984, [1977] 1990), and recent research in L2 has shown that LP is also a prominent characteristic of the language production of both child and adult L2 learners (Kramsch and Sullivan 1996; Cook 1997, 2000, 2001; Lantolf 1997; Sullivan 2000; Tarone 2000; Broner and Tarone 2001; Belz 2002a, 2002b; Bell 2005; Cekaite and Aronsson 2005; Kim and Kellog 2007). Adopting Cook's (2000) definition of LP, I use conversation analysis to examine instances of LP in the participants’ interactions. Analysis focuses specifically on the ways in which LP functions within the context of the language learning classroom to provide ‘affordances’ (van Lier 2000, 2004) for language learning, and to become a resource for sequence-organization. The analysis shows that by and through the fictional world of LP, the participants were able to engage in the teacher-assigned pedagogical activities on their own terms. In the discussion, I argue that LP is potentially of great benefit to the linguistic development of second language learners—echoing Cekaite and Aronsson's argument in favor of a ludic model of language learning, in which they contend that ‘we need to take non-serious language more seriously’ (2005: 169).

A Novel Approach to Creating Disambiguated Multilingual Dictionaries

Boguslavsky, I., Cardenosa, J., Gallardo, C. — 2009-03-10

Multilingual lexicons are needed in various applications, such as cross-lingual information retrieval, machine translation, and some others. Often, these applications suffer from the ambiguity of dictionary items, especially when an intermediate natural language is involved in the process of the dictionary construction, since this language adds its ambiguity to the ambiguity of working languages. This paper aims to propose a new method for producing multilingual dictionaries without the risk of introducing additional ambiguity. As a disambiguated intermediate language we use the so-called Universal Words. A set of more than 200,000 unambiguous Universal Words have been constructed automatically on the basis of the well-known English lexical database WordNet. This approach is being used for the construction of a five language-dictionary in the field of cultural heritage within the framework of the PATRILEX project sponsored by the Spanish Research Council.

Interpreting Inexplicit Language during Courtroom Examination

Lee, J. — 2009-03-10

Court interpreters are required to provide accurate renditions of witnesses’ utterances during courtroom examinations, but the accuracy of interpreting may be compromised for a number of reasons, among which is the effect on interpretation of the limited contextual information available to court interpreters. Based on the analysis of the discourse of Korean–English interpreting in Australian courtrooms, this article examines how inexplicit language used by Korean-speaking witnesses affects the accuracy of court interpreting. Such use of inexplicit language is a consequence of differences between the lexico-grammatical system of the witnesses’ language (Korean) and that of the court (English), as well as being due to the witnesses’ lack of familiarity with the courtroom discourse. This study demonstrates that the way the court interpreters cope with inexplicit language may result in inaccurate rendition of the evidence, and thus have legal implications for court proceedings.

Memorial Article: John Sinclair (1933-2007): The Search for Units of Meaning: Sinclair on Empirical Semantics

Stubbs, M. — 2009-03-10

John McHardy Sinclair has made major contributions to applied linguistics in three related areas: language in education, discourse analysis, and corpus-assisted lexicography. This article discusses the far-reaching implications for language description of this third area. The corpus-assisted search methodology provides empirical evidence for an original and innovative model of phraseological units of meaning. This, in turn, provides new findings about the relation between word-forms, lemmas, grammar, and phraseology. The article gives examples of these points, places Sinclair's work briefly within a tradition of empirical text analysis, and identifies questions which are currently unanswered, but where productive lines of investigation are not difficult to see: (1) linguistic-descriptive (can we provide a comprehensive description of extended phrasal units for a given language?) and explanatory (what explains the high degree of syntagmatic organization in language in use?), and (2) socio-psychological (how can the description of phrasal units of meaning contribute to a theory of social action and to a theory of the ways in which we construe the social world?).

Ideology in Applied Linguistics for Language Teaching

Waters, A. — 2009-03-10

It is contended that much of present-day applied linguistics for language teaching (ALLT) fails to mediate effectively, primarily because an ideological construction, emanating from a critical theory perspective, is too often imposed on everyday pedagogical practices. This has resulted in an exaggerated level of concern about the power imbalances that language teaching involves, leading to the promotion of approaches which attempt to subvert teaching and the teacher role, irrespective of the pedagogical consequences, while simultaneously proscribing others, which, from a practitioner perspective, are widely regarded as axiomatic. Such a stance has taken root, it is also argued, because of insufficient critical questioning of its moral and intellectual underpinnings. As a remedy, more should be done by ALLT to appreciate the rationale for and build on existing pedagogical traditions.

Nikolas Coupland: Style: Language Variation and Identity.

Hall, G. — 2009-03-10

Malcolm Coulthard and Alison Johnson: An Introduction to Forensic Linguistics: Language in Evidence.

Rock, F. — 2009-03-10

D. Block: Second Language Identities.

Ng, S. — 2009-03-10

Alastair McLauchlan: The Negative L2 Climate: Understanding Attrition Among Second Language Students.

Coleman, J. — 2009-03-10

Erratum

2009-03-10

Notes on Contributors

2009-03-10

Contesting 'Language' as 'Heritage': Negotiation of Identities in Late Modernity

2008-11-26

In this paper we question key terms which appear frequently in discussions of language teaching and learning: ‘language’ and ‘heritage’. The paper draws on empirical data from one of four linked case studies in a larger project funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), ‘Investigating Multilingualism in Complementary Schools in Four Communities’ (RES-000-23-1180). In our analysis we argue that the relationships between ‘language’ and ‘heritage’, far from being straightforward, are complex in the way they play out in classroom interactions. The data raise a number of questions in our attempts to understand how the linguistic practices of students and teachers in Bengali schools are used to negotiate young people's multilingual and multicultural identities. First, participants articulate attitudes and values which raise questions about what constitutes ‘language’. Second, participants express views and attitudes, and perform interactional practices, which raise questions about what constitutes ‘heritage’. Our analysis finds that multilingual young people in complementary school classrooms use linguistic resources in sophisticated and creative ways to negotiate subject positions which appear to contest and subvert schools’ attempts to impose upon them ‘heritage’ identities (Creese, A., A. Bhatt, N. Bhojani, and P. Martin. 2006. ‘Multicultural, heritage and learner identities in complementary schools,’ Language and Education 20/1: 23–44).

Routine Trouble: How Preschool Children Participate in Multilingual Instruction

Bjork-Willen, P. — 2008-11-26

This paper examines the turn-by-turn organization of social actions during educational activities at a multilingual preschool in Sweden. Specifically, it focuses on instructional exchanges within two commonplace activities: ‘sharing time’ and ‘Spanish group’. The study builds on earlier research arguing that interactional routines facilitate children's participation in social activities, and therefore promote language learning. Several instances of interactional trouble are identified and discussed in terms of the teachers’ elaboration of some routine features of these activities, resulting in a mismatch between the teachers’ local aims and the children's projections of relevant next actions. The analysis further highlights a range of interactional means through which the participants act to come to terms with the trouble. These findings are discussed in terms of the participants’ local concerns as well as the children's orientations to the routine features of preschool activities. Some educational implications are finally proposed on the basis of these findings.

Symmetries and Asymmetries of Age Effects in Naturalistic and Instructed L2 Learning

Munoz, C. — 2008-11-26

The effects of age on second language acquisition constitute one of the most frequently researched and debated topics in the field of Second Language Acquisition. Two different orientations may be distinguished in age-related research: one which aims to elucidate the existence and characteristics of maturational constraints on the human capacity for learning second languages, and another which purports to identify age-related differences in foreign language learning, often with the aim of informing educational policy decisions. Because of the dominant role of theoretically-oriented ultimate attainment studies, it may be argued that research findings from naturalistic learning contexts have somehow been hastily generalized to formal learning contexts. This paper presents an analysis of the symmetries and asymmetries that exist between a naturalistic learning setting and a foreign language learning setting with respect to those variables that are crucial in the discussion of age effects in second language acquisition. On the basis of the differences observed, it is argued that the amount and quality of the input have a significant bearing on the effects that age of initial learning has on second language learning. It is also claimed that age-related studies in foreign language learning settings have yielded significant findings that contribute to the development of an integrated explanation of age effects on second language acquisition.

Textual Enhancement of Input: Issues and Possibilities

Han, Z., Park, E. S., Combs, C. — 2008-11-26

The input enhancement hypothesis proposed by Sharwood Smith (1991, 1993) has stimulated considerable research over the last 15 years. This article reviews the research on textual enhancement of input (TE), an area where the majority of input enhancement studies have aggregated. Methodological idiosyncrasies are the norm of this body of research. Seven major issues appear to be limiting the generalizability of the findings and holding up further progress in the understanding of the efficacy of TE for learning: (1) noticing and/or acquisition; (2) TE and comprehension; (3) simultaneous or sequential processing; (4) TE and the nature of the enhanced form; (5) TE and prior knowledge; (6) TE and input flood; and (7) TE and overuse. The existing research has nonetheless offered some important insights that future research should seek to build on.

The Cultural Productions of the ESL Student at Tradewinds High: Contingency, Multidirectionality, and Identity in L2 Socialization

Talmy, S. — 2008-11-26

Although the originators of the language socialization (LS) paradigm were careful to cast socialization as a contingent, contested, ‘bidirectional’ process, the focus in much first language LS research on ‘successful’ socialization among children and caregivers may have obscured these themes. Despite this, I suggest the call for a more ‘dynamic model’ of LS (Bayley and Schecter 2003), while compelling, is unnecessary: contingency and multidirectionality are inherent in LS given its orientation to socialization as an interactionally-mediated process. This paper foregrounds the ‘dynamism’ of LS by examining processes comprising ‘unsuccessful’ or ‘unexpected’ socialization. Specifically, it analyses interactions involving ‘oldtimer’ ‘Local ESL’ students and their first-year teachers at a multilingual public high school in Hawai'i. Contingency and multidirectionality are explicated through analysis of two competing ‘cultural productions of the ESL student.’ The first, manifest in ESL program structures and instruction, was school-sanctioned or ‘official.’ Socialization of Local ESL students into this schooled identity was anything but predictable, however, as they consistently subverted the actions, stances, and activities that constituted it. In doing so, these students produced another, oppositional ESL student identity, which came to affect ‘official’ classroom processes in significant ways.

Language Ecology in Multilingual Settings. Towards a Theory of Symbolic Competence

Kramsch, C., Whiteside, A. — 2008-11-26

This paper draws on complexity theory and post-modern sociolinguistics to explore how an ecological approach to language data can illuminate aspects of language use in multilingual environments. We first examine transcripts of exchanges taking place among multilingual individuals in multicultural settings. We briefly review what conversation and discourse analysis can explain about these exchanges. We then build on these analyses, using insights from complexity theory and interactional sociolinguistics. We finally outline the components of a competence in multilingual encounters that has not been sufficiently taken into consideration by applied linguists and that we call ‘symbolic competence’.

A Register Approach to Teaching Conversation: Farewell to Standard English?

Ruhlemann, C. — 2008-11-26

Owing to analyses of large spoken corpora the linguistic knowledge of conversation has grown in recent years exponentially. Up until now little of this knowledge has trickled down to the EFL classroom. One of the reasons, this paper argues, is the failure in the relevant literature to spell out clearly how teaching conversational grammar affects the role of what is the major variety in the EFL classroom, Standard English (SE). My aim in this paper is threefold. First, I briefly discuss some neglected conversational features in relation to SE, concluding that the contrast between the grammars of conversation and SE is so stark that the notion of SE is problematic in talking of the spoken language. Second, I consider what this contrast implies for EFL teaching, arguing that for authentic conversation to be taught effectively it is necessary to reduce the role of SE to ‘a core variety’ that has its place in teaching writing while conversational grammar might serve as the underlying model in teaching speech. I argue that such a redefinition of SE would best be implemented in a ‘register approach’ which shifts the emphasis from a monolithic view of language to a register-sensitive view thus acknowledging the fundamental functional diversity of language use. Third, I discuss some important issues arising from this approach and, finally, outline what may be gained by it.

Form-focused Instruction in Second Language Vocabulary Learning: A Case for Contrastive Analysis and Translation

Laufer, B., Girsai, N. — 2008-11-26

The study investigates the effect of explicit contrastive analysis and translation activities on the incidental acquisition of single words and collocations. We compared three high school groups of learners of the same L1 and comparable L2 (English) proficiency. Each group represented one instructional condition: meaning focused instruction (MFI), non-contrastive form-focused instruction (FFI), and contrastive analysis and translation (CAT). The target items consisted of ten unfamiliar words and ten collocations in L2—English. The MFI group performed content-oriented tasks which did not require attention to the target items. The FFI group performed text-based vocabulary tasks which focused on the target items. The CAT group was assigned text-based translation tasks: from L2 into L1, and from L1 into L2. During the correction stage, the teacher provided a contrastive analysis of the target items and their L1 translation options. Time-on-task was kept constant in the three groups. After completing the tasks, the three groups were tested on the retention of the target items by two tests: active recall and passive recall. A week later, the participants received the same tests. The CAT (contrastive analysis and translation) group significantly outperformed the other two groups on all the tests. These superior results are discussed in light of the ‘noticing’ hypothesis, ‘pushed output’, ‘task-induced involvement load’, and the influence that L1 exerts on the acquisition of L2 vocabulary.

The Significance of First Language Development in Five to Nine Year Old Children for Second and Foreign Language Learning

Vanderplank, R. — 2008-11-26

In this article, the language learning experiences and development of a child (the author's daughter) between the ages of five and nine are drawn on to argue that we should re-focus our comparison of first and second language acquisition away from early L1 acquisition to the early schooling/middle childhood period. In addition to the transforming experiences of formal and informal education in and out of school, it is suggested that children also acquire essential attributes as part of their natural development such as the ‘mind's eye’ and adult-like de-contextualized memory, which ensure that they may eventually become adult L1 users. The article concludes by advocating that we should re-read texts comparing first and second language acquisition and learning using the child in the early years of formal schooling as the basis for comparison with second language learning.

H-Dirksen Bauman, Jennifer Nelson, and Heidi Rose: Signing the Body Poetic. Essays on American Sign Language Literature.

Blondel, M. — 2008-11-26

Ivana Markova, Per Linell, Michele Grossen, and Anne Salazar Orvig: Dialogue in Focus Groups: Exploring Socially Shared Knowledge.

Myers, G. — 2008-11-26

Simon Gieve and Ines Miller: Understanding the Language Classroom.

Slimani-Rolls, A. — 2008-11-26

Sandra Mollin: Euro-English: Assessing Variety Status. * Jennifer Jenkins: English as a Lingua Franca: Attitude and Identity.

Prodromou, L. — 2008-11-26

Notes on Contributors

2008-11-26

Index to Volume 29

2008-11-26