Abstract
One of the main goals of Language Teaching Research is to showcase studies that, using sound research methods, have clear pedagogical implications. This is precisely the case with the six articles published in the current issue. Five of the studies report data that have to do with issues such as mediation, metaphor awareness raising, formulaic language, the potential of the continuation task and teachers’ use of the learners’ first language (L1), whereas the last study deals with corpora data on phrasal verbs. Teachers may find thought-provoking ideas for their classroom practice in all these contributions, whose aim is to help improve the learners’ second language (L2) development. The first five articles also share the fact that they have all been carried out in English as a foreign language (EFL) settings, an indication of how important research in this low-input setting is becoming in the field of second language acquisition (SLA).
Poehner and Leontjev examined the construct ‘mediation’ and its implications for how instruction can be approached and argue for a view of learner performance as a mediated process that draws attention to changes of that performance over the course of an activity. Mediation is understood as ‘a range of tutor behaviors intended to signal to learners that an error had been produced and to guide learners toward identification and correction of that error.’ Poehner and Leontjev observe that there is an increasing line of research couched within Vygotsky’s (1987) Sociocultural Theory (SCT) and, more precisely, within the framework of Dynamic Assessment (DA), that has designed pedagogical interventions considering the role of cooperation undertaken with learners rather than correction applied to their performance. The authors’ main goal is to document how mediational processes may help in identifying learner difficulties and tracing their developmental trajectories. They report the findings from two studies. The first one is a small-scale case study following the development of an L1 Russian EFL secondary school learner in Estonia over the course of 18 months. By means of a detailed qualitative analysis of two excerpts of the learner’s interaction with the mediator, the authors show that the mediation process afforded insights into the learner’s knowledge of L2 English derivational affixes and the support he required, beyond a dichotomous (correct vs. incorrect) observation of the learner’s performance. The second study, which integrated a range of mediation options for a computerized dynamic assessment (C-DA) procedure, focused on the ability of L1 Russian EFL learners (n = 25 experimental group, 22 control group) to formulate wh-questions with auxiliaries. Using a pre-post-test design, the quantitative analysis of the data showed that, as a group, learners benefited from mediation during the C-DA procedure, considering both pre- and post-test scores and changes between them that allowed for the identification of learner trajectories. The authors conclude by calling teachers’ attention to a process orientation to learners’ errors, which is also a form of classroom-based assessment, although they also acknowledge the limitation that classroom teachers did not feature in their study.
In the second article of this issue Takimoto also provides an interesting idea to help learners with the understanding of abstract concepts in an EFL setting. Within a cognitive approach to language learning, the author uses the conceptual metaphor theory (CMT; Lakoff & Johnson, 1999) and concept projection to investigate whether comprehending the abstract concept of degrees of certainty in English in terms of the spatial concept of different distances can be used as a means for memory enhancement in developing Japanese learners’ knowledge of the different degrees of sureness attached to certain, probable, and possible items. Moreover, as previous studies had adopted teacher-directed approaches to metaphor awareness, Takimoto also considers the effect of self-directed learning. Thus, his study evaluates the effect of cognitive and non-cognitive approaches (rote learning of a list of target expressions related to degree of certainty) and of self- and teacher-directed approaches in raising metaphor awareness. The participants – 139 intermediate EFL Japanese university students – were divided into five groups: self-directed cognitive approach (SC), teacher-directed cognitive approach (TC), self-directed non-cognitive approach (SN), teacher-directed non-cognitive approach (TN), and a control group. The treatment sessions were carried out once a week for six weeks. The study adopted a pre-test, post-test 1, post-test 2 and post-test 3 design to assess the effectiveness of cognitive and non-cognitive approaches. Each test consisted of a writing test, a comparison test, and a categorization test, and the researcher also collected data via written retrospective evaluation questionnaires and interviews. The findings showed that the cognitive approach outperformed the non-cognitive approach and control groups, and that the self- and teacher-directed approach groups performed similarly with either the cognitive or the non-cognitive approach domains on the online computer program. The study provides interesting ideas for the teaching of difficult concepts using spatial images.
Yeldham examines the influence of formulaic language on L2 listeners’ lower-level processing in terms of their ability to identify the words in texts, as the listening skill is the least studied of the four macro-skills regarding formulas. Specifically, the author wants to assess whether formulaic language aids or impedes the learners as previous research had presented contradictory findings. The study expands and improves a previous one by the same author (Yeldham, 2018) by doubling the number of participants and the number of listening texts besides including a listening comprehension text and reducing the number of words analysed from the paused transcription data. The participants, 126 Mandarin EFL learners at a university in Taipei, were divided into three groups based on the results of a multiple choice listening test. They listened to four texts, which were paused intermittently so that they could transcribe the final stretch of words they had heard prior to each pause. The researcher used corpus analysis to identify sections of the text as formulas on the basis of between-word coherence and co-occurrence. The results of the study showed that the presence of formulaic language (vs. non-formulaic language) in a text facilitated the listeners’ lower-level processing in terms of being able to accurately identify the words in the text. This facilitative effect seemed to override the fact that formulaic sections were more phonologically reduced than the surrounding non-formulaic language. When learner proficiency was considered, formulaic language was shown to provide far less advantage for the less-proficient learners. The author concludes by tentatively informing less-proficient learner instruction with the aim of speeding up such learners’ L2 development.
Peng, Wang and Lu focus on another macro-skill, writing, and the impact of the linguistic complexity of the input text on EFL learners’ alignment, writing fluency, and writing accuracy in a continuation task. Alignment is defined as the process of repeating some linguistic elements when learners have to continue an incomplete text. Research on the learning potential of the continuation task has been informed by the learn-together-use-together principle (Wang, 2009), which claims that the storage, retrieval and use of a linguistic form might be influenced by the contextual variables interacting with it. Previous studies, however, had overlooked the potential effect of the linguistic complexity (lexical and syntactic) of the input text on learners’ alignment and writing performance. Peng et al.’s study examines precisely that variable by assessing two comparable groups of Chinese university EFL learners (n = 20 in each group) who were assigned to read an unsimplified and a simplified input text in a continuation task, respectively. Two questionnaires were used to collect perception, comprehension, and learner background data. The study spanned the first four weeks of class, and all writing tasks and questionnaires were completed on paper. The findings showed that compared to the linguistically more complex unsimplified text, the simplified text whose linguistic complexity matched the learners’ production ability positively affected learners’ alignment, writing fluency and accuracy. As the authors explain, these findings have clear implications for L2 writing pedagogy and L2 writing assessment: input texts whose linguistic complexity matches that of the L2 learners’ production help learners improve their writing fluency and accuracy, this latter aspect being crucial for language learning as without adequate attention to form no input can be turned to intake (Robinson, 2003).
An issue that is always of interest in foreign language contexts is the extent to which L2 learners and teachers use the shared L1 in the classroom. The role of the L1 in SLA research has evolved from being marginalized for most of the previous century to a shift towards examining its potential value to promote L2 learning. As Macaro, Tian and Chu point out, research in the SLA field has focused on the amount of L1 use observed in interaction, the functions of L1 use and teachers’ and learners’ beliefs about L1 use. However, little research has been carried out in the English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) context, where the main pedagogical objective is to teach academic content through English. In order to fill this gap, the authors conducted a study at a university in China. They adopted a mixed method design, with classroom observations of five EMI teachers, all proficient learners of English, and questionnaires and interviews administered to students who attended those classes. The findings showed that the group of teachers studied used very little L1 as compared to previous research in tertiary education and that they switched for a range of functions similar to those in SLA classroom discourse, mainly to render some aspects of the academic content input more comprehensible. In general students wanted their lessons to be predominantly in the L2, with L1 use restricted to breakdowns in communication or lack of understanding. Macaro et al. acknowledge the lack of generalizability of the findings given the unrepresentative nature of the sample and identify lines for further research on the topic. Teachers in EMI contexts, though, may consider these Chinese student’s beliefs about L1 and L2 use in the EMI classroom.
The final study by Liu and Myers deals with one of the topics that presents more learning difficulties both for EFL and for English as a second language (ESL) learners: phrasal verbs (PVs), a large group of highly frequent lexical items in English. The study, an extension of Garnier and Schmitt (2015), examines and identifies the 150 most frequent used PV meanings and their description as well as their percentages in speaking and academic writing. The Spoken and Academic Writing sub-corpora of the Corpus of Contemporary American English were used for identifying the main meaning senses of the most common PVs. The findings show significant cross-register differences in an overwhelming majority of the 150 most common PVs. Although the authors acknowledge some limitations of their study that have to do with the very nature of any corpus, the list of PVs may serve as a reference tool for learners and teachers of spoken and academic English, and it may also aid curriculum designers and material writers to develop sequenced course and textbook series. This meaning-based PV list may also be used for assessment purposes and as a source of examples for teaching upper level EFL/ESL courses.
All the studies in the present issue deal with topics that are highly relevant for classroom instruction and have clear pedagogical implications. As the authors themselves acknowledge, the studies have limitations but these should be seen as avenues for further research with the aim of helping learners’ L2 development.