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While research on digital multimodal composing (DMC) has been skewed towards the instructional design and affordances of DMC for L2 learners, there is a wider need to develop conceptual models of L2 DMC competence, with which L2 learners can successfully design DMC works and respond to the multimodal reading and writing demands of the digital era. To date, the studies on DMC competence have primarily taken an etic approach to identifying the salient features of effective DMC samples or examining teachers' perceptions of L2 student DMC competence. Few, however, have taken an emic approach to capturing the DMC competence from the perspective of L2 learners who have first-hand participatory experiences in designing DMC works. Therefore, the present study addresses the research gap by taking an emic approach to examining L2 student DMC competence through student focus group interviews with ten groups of students, classroom observations of student self and peer feedback on digital multimodal compositions, and DMC sample analysis. The clarification of L2 DMC competence can guide the measurement and instruction of L2 DMC competence, promote the integration of DMC competence into the L2 curriculum, and drive L2 learners to engage with self-assessment of DMC competence to develop their DMC competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies have shown that raising L2 learners' metaphor awareness contributes to the acquisition of figurative language, which fosters students' development of language skills. However, the instruments measuring metaphor awareness, in the majority of relevant research, did not seem to have undergone proper methodological procedures for checking their validity and reliability, thus compromising the authenticity of the measurement and challenging the interpretation of the results from the measurement. In addition, both theoretical and empirical research tends to frame metaphoric competence within the territory of linguistic and conceptual metaphors, neglecting the communicative functions of metaphor in discourse. As an attempt to fill these research gaps, our study developed three instruments—two tests and a questionnaire—for measuring metaphor awareness in the linguistic, conceptual, and communicative dimensions. Administered to 293 Chinese undergraduates at intermediate to advanced English proficiency levels, the instruments demonstrated good validity and reliability, as checked by Rasch analysis. Results showed that the participants were most aware of the communicative functions of metaphor but found it challenging to identify metaphorical prepositions, adverb, and adjectives, and establish the correspondences between the source domain and target domain of conventional conceptual metaphors. We conclude the paper by discussing pedagogical implications in relation to L2 metaphor awareness measurement and instruction. PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY: Research has shown that metaphor is ubiquitous in English and that knowing and being able to use metaphor relates to higher language proficiency. Meanwhile, learners face challenges in metaphor reception and production. The first step to address these challenges would be measuring to what extent the students can recognise metaphor and are aware of the different dimensions of metaphor. However, instruments for measuring metaphor awareness developed in relevant research did not seem to have been checked for quality, and the functions of metaphor in discourse as an important component of metaphor awareness were neglected. This study thus aimed to develop three instruments for measuring awareness of linguistic forms of metaphor (e.g. flow of information, feeling down), metaphorical concepts commonly used in English and connections between literal and figurative meaning (e.g. spending time is like spending money because time is as precious as money), and communicative functions of metaphor (e.g. to explain abstract concepts). The instruments were administered to 293 Chinese undergraduate English majors at intermediate to advanced English proficiency levels and demonstrated good validity and reliability. The participants had difficulty recognising metaphorical prepositions (e.g. in a bad mood), adverb (waited long), and adjectives (e.g. low credit scores) as metaphorical and establishing connections between the basic meaning and the figurative meaning of conventional metaphors in thought. These could be the areas that language teachers need to focus on in teaching metaphor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Students' psychological wellness is one of the key elements that improve their well-being and shape their academic progress in the realm of language learning. Among various strategies, physical exercise emerges as an effective approach, allowing learners to manage their emotions considerably. Methods: Employing a quasi-experimental research design, this study examines the impact of a three-month physical running exercise intervention on emotional regulation behaviors among L1 (Arabic language) and L2 (English as a foreign language learning) students. Data was collected at three (pre-test, mid-test, and post-test) intervals, focusing cognitive reappraisal (CR) and expressive suppression (ES) the key constructs of emotional regulation. Findings: The results showed that the emotional regulation abilities of both groups were considerably impacted by the physical running exertion and differed significantly, with students' CR skills significantly improving and their ES decreasing over time. However, no significant interaction effect between time and (L1 and L2) groups' CR was observed, suggesting that physical exercise universally benefits cognitive reappraisal regardless of the language learning context. Conversely, a significant interaction effect was observed in students' ES, with L2 students experiencing more reduction compared to their L1 counterparts, highlighting the unique emotional challenges faced by L2 learners and the effectiveness of physical activity in mitigating these challenges. Conclusion: The results highlight the importance of physical exercise in enhancing emotional regulation abilities among students, particularly in a second language learning context. Given this, regular physical activity programs should be incorporated into educational curricula to support students' emotional well-being and academic success. It further offers insightful recommendations for teachers, students, administrators, and policymakers to optimize physical exercise integration in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While iconicity has sometimes been defined as meaning transparency, it is better defined as a subjective phenomenon bound to an individual's perception and influenced by their previous language experience. In this article, I investigate the subjective nature of iconicity through an experiment in which 72 deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing (signing and non-signing) participants rate the iconicity of individual letters of the American Sign Language (ASL) and Swedish Sign Language (STS) manual alphabets. It is shown that L1 signers of ASL and STS rate their own (L1) manual alphabet as more iconic than the foreign one. Hearing L2 signers of ASL and STS exhibit the same pattern as L1 signers, showing an iconic preference for their own (L2) manual alphabet. In comparison, hearing non-signers show no general iconic preference for either manual alphabet. Across all groups, some letters are consistently rated as more iconic in one sign language than the other, illustrating general iconic preferences. Overall, the results align with earlier findings from sign language linguistics that point to language experience affecting iconicity ratings and that one's own signs are rated as more iconic than foreign signs with the same meaning, even if similar iconic mappings are used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Students’ psychological wellness is one of the key elements that improve their well-being and shape their academic progress in the realm of language learning. Among various strategies, physical exercise emerges as an effective approach, allowing learners to manage their emotions considerably. Methods Employing a quasi-experimental research design, this study examines the impact of a three-month physical running exercise intervention on emotional regulation behaviors among L1 (Arabic language) and L2 (English as a foreign language learning) students. Data was collected at three (pre-test, mid-test, and post-test) intervals, focusing cognitive reappraisal (CR) and expressive suppression (ES) the key constructs of emotional regulation. Findings The results showed that the emotional regulation abilities of both groups were considerably impacted by the physical running exertion and differed significantly, with students’ CR skills significantly improving and their ES decreasing over time. However, no significant interaction effect between time and (L1 and L2) groups’ CR was observed, suggesting that physical exercise universally benefits cognitive reappraisal regardless of the language learning context. Conversely, a significant interaction effect was observed in students’ ES, with L2 students experiencing more reduction compared to their L1 counterparts, highlighting the unique emotional challenges faced by L2 learners and the effectiveness of physical activity in mitigating these challenges. Conclusion The results highlight the importance of physical exercise in enhancing emotional regulation abilities among students, particularly in a second language learning context. Given this, regular physical activity programs should be incorporated into educational curricula to support students’ emotional well-being and academic success. It further offers insightful recommendations for teachers, students, administrators, and policymakers to optimize physical exercise integration in higher education.

While iconicity has sometimes been defined as meaning transparency, it is better defined as a subjective phenomenon bound to an individual’s perception and influenced by their previous language experience. In this article, I investigate the subjective nature of iconicity through an experiment in which 72 deaf, hard-of-hearing and hearing (signing and non-signing) participants rate the iconicity of individual letters of the American Sign Language (ASL) and Swedish Sign Language (STS) manual alphabets. It is shown that L1 signers of ASL and STS rate their own (L1) manual alphabet as more iconic than the foreign one. Hearing L2 signers of ASL and STS exhibit the same pattern as L1 signers, showing an iconic preference for their own (L2) manual alphabet. In comparison, hearing non-signers show no general iconic preference for either manual alphabet. Across all groups, some letters are consistently rated as more iconic in one sign language than the other, illustrating general iconic preferences. Overall, the results align with earlier findings from sign language linguistics that point to language experience affecting iconicity ratings and that one’s own signs are rated as more iconic than foreign signs with the same meaning, even if similar iconic mappings are used.

Creativity is an essential prerequisite for teaching, developing, and promoting a foreign language. Pupils show enthusiasm for learning a foreign language in a creative environment. The central goal of this research was, therefore, to inspect the variety between experienced and novice English-as-a-foreign (EFL) instructors regarding the interplay between their creativity and students' academic success. A closed-ended questionnaire was applied to inspect EFL experienced and novice teachers' promotion of creativity. Furthermore, the cumulative grade point average (CGPA) was applied as a substitute for measuring academic accomplishment. The questionnaire was distributed among 100 experienced teachers and 100 novice teachers in some branches of Gooyesh, Jahad Daneshgahi, and Sadr language institutes in Esfahan, Iran. In addition, their students' scores were gathered at the end of intended educational courses to calculate the classes' mean scores. Therefore, the data were analyzed descriptively and inferentially using frequency, percentage, Fisher's Z transformation formula, and mean. Besides, the Pearson correlation was utilized to gauge the connections between experienced and novice teachers' promotion of creativity and their students' academic achievements. The results confirmed the beneficial relationship between the creativity of experienced and novice instructors and students' academic performance. However, there was no significant disparity in the creativity levels of experienced and novice teachers

The current study is a partial replication of Kim and Goodall (2024), who tested competing predictions of two prominent accounts of that-trace effects, which are argued to emerge due to either syntactic constraints or considerations of the production system. To tease apart these possibilities, Kim and Goodall examine L2 sensitivity to that-trace effects, as the two accounts implicitly have different expectations regarding L2 performance. Their results showed a non-native pattern of acceptability judgments for Korean and Spanish learners of English, whose L1s do not display that-trace effects, which are argued to support a production-based account. The current study extends their experiment to Nadji Arabic L2 learners of English, whose L1 critically exhibits that-trace effects, allowing us to probe whether previous findings can be accounted for by processing difficulties or L1 background. Our results indicated that despite L2 learners' native-like sensitivity at the group level, lower proficiency was associated with non-native-like subject extraction effects, in line with Kim and Goodall's results. Overall, findings from an acceptability judgment task suggest that L2 sensitivity to that-trace effects does not involve transfer of a syntactic constraint, but is something that develops with proficiency, more in line with a production-based account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grammatical complexity, a hot topic in grammar research, poses great challenges for second language (L2) learners. This study aims to investigate L2 learners’ emotional reactions to L2 grammar learning, and the epistemic emotional sources related to grammatical complexity. Thirty sophomore English majors aged between 19 and 20 from a natural class were recruited in the present study. Through qualitative research design, the data consisted of 30 written narrative reflections with each containing a self-report on emotional experiences and a recalled summary of learning strategies, along with 10 semi-structured interviews. A deductive content analysis approach and thematic analysis were used for the data analysis. The present study revealed five main findings. First, delight and anxiety are saliently representative achievement-related activity emotions; second, disappointment represents the typical retrospective outcome emotion; third, hope is the typical prospective outcome emotion; fourth, the social aspects of the present context elicit the emotion of gratitude, whereas the cognitive aspects of grammatical complexity cause a more complicated emotional state; fifth, epistemic emotions are mainly evoked by thinking-related factors, syntactic rules, and the practical application of syntactic rules. Pedagogical implications for L2 grammar teaching were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the growing attention to motivation, less is known about international students' motivational beliefs and attitudes about academic writing. In this study, we aimed to explore the motivational factors influencing international students' performance in academic English classes at a large public research university in the western United States. Specifically, we examined students' self-efficacy, goal orientation, beliefs, and affect for writing, along with their malleability, and their contributions to academic achievement in academic English writing classes. The sample comprised 97 students, predominantly from China, enrolled in online academic English courses. Exploratory factor analysis tended to extract more complex models of the motivational constructs than principal component analysis. Students' self-efficacy and enjoyment of writing significantly increased from the beginning to the end of the 10-week term, suggesting motivational factors' malleability. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that students' self-efficacy at the beginning of the term positively predicted their final grades. However, logistic mixed modeling revealed that students who held stronger beliefs about writing as a means of exploring and expressing ideas had lower odds of passing. Our findings contribute to the understanding of international students' motivation in academic English settings in higher education and offers potential pedagogical interventions to enhance their academic success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present study is to investigate the impact of proficiency in the second language (L2) on the neurocognitive processes that support the recognition of spoken words. Chinese native learners of English (N = 34) took part in the picture-word matching task and the AX Continuous Performance Test (AX-CPT). In the picture-word matching task, the component amplitudes for P50, N120, and P200 were found to be lower in the low proficiency group compared to the high proficiency group. Regarding the AX-CPT, the high-proficiency group exhibited a more balanced utilisation of proactive and reactive control, whereas the low-proficiency group displayed a greater reliance on proactive control. Additionally, a correlation was observed between various ERP components from the picture-word matching task and behavioural indicators obtained from the AX-CPT, suggesting different strategies of cognitive control may reflect the influence of language proficiency on neurocognitive mechanisms in spoken word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the extent to which second language (L2) learners' syntactic prediction resembles or differs from native speakers' and the role of L2 proficiency in this process. An experimental group of 135 Chinese learners of English and a control group of 58 English native speakers participated in a phrase-by-phrase self-paced reading task where the experimental sentences were contrastive in whether the DP disjunction was preceded by either or not. To ensure that the participants had sufficient knowledge about the target stimuli, they were asked to additionally judge the acceptability of the experimental sentences. The results showed that like native speakers, L2 learners read the critical region consisting of "or" and a DP disjunct faster when it was preceded by either compared to when either was absent. In addition, this effect of the presence versus absence of either spilled over to the post-critical region. Moreover, L2 proficiency was not found to robustly modulate this process. It is concluded that L2 learners, like native speakers, can make predictions at the level of syntax. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issues of depth vocabulary knowledge and Willingness to Communicate (henceforth, WTC) are among the most important issues in second language learning. The present study set out to empirically look into the contribution of WTC to depth of vocabulary knowledge in L2 learning. To this end, 88 English L2 learners, divided into two groups in terms of their WTC, were given two depth vocabulary tests. The Word Association Test (WAT) was first administered to make a comparison between the depth vocabulary knowledge of the two WTC groups. Then, to triangulate the results, the Word Part Levels Test (WPLT) was administered to check whether the obtained results confirmed those of WAT. Analyzing data through independent t-test and MANOVA indicated that learners with higher levels of WTC had deeper vocabulary knowledge than those with lower levels of WTC on the WAT. Further, the triangulation results evinced that although the two groups did not differ significantly on the form-section and meaning-section of the WPLT, they significantly differed on the use-section of the test. The relevant pedagogical implications of the study are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effect of task demands on the predictive processing of morphosyntactic cues (word class, noun/adjective gender, case, and number) in reading among Heritage Speakers of Russian (N = 29), comparing them with Russian language learners (N = 29) and monolingual Russian speakers (N = 63). Following the utility account of bilingual prediction, we hypothesized that the predictive use of morphosyntactic cues would be more evident in a less-demanding reading cloze task (Experiment 1) than in a more-challenging eye-tracking reading task (Experiment 2), and for cues that RHSs regard as more reliable (word class and number vs. gender and case cues). The results confirmed our predictions: In Experiment 1, Heritage Speakers (and L2 learners) used all cues predictively to generate the upcoming lexical item, with higher accuracy for word class and number cues compared to gender and case cues. In Experiment 2, in contrast to monolingual readers, neither Heritage Speakers nor L2 learners used gender cues on adjectives to anticipate the gender of the upcoming noun. The results are discussed in respect to the interplay between task demands, cue weight, oral fluency, and Russian literacy experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding and enhancing wellbeing are at the heart of positive psychology. Both ELT teachers and researchers have recently been urged to prioritize wellbeing in their teaching and research. However, far too little attention has been paid to wellbeing among ELT learners, especially from their own perspective. Accordingly, this study aimed at developing an understanding of ELT learners' perceptions of their stressors in class and recommendations to improve their wellbeing. Out of eighty survey participants, we selected nine participants with the highest and nine participants with the lowest scores on a wellbeing measure. Then, we conducted oral survey interviews with each of these participants, and the data were analysed using qualitative content analysis. The findings indicated four main stressors for ELT learners: lack of preparation, assessment, speaking English, and lack of understanding. Participants also made several recommendations to teachers, the university, and for themselves which they believe would help enhance their wellbeing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching materials hold a vital position in English language learning and teaching, and have gained a great deal of attention from many EFL teachers and material designers. It has been recognised that authentic materials (AMs) can be used as a potential source of material for language learning and teaching. However, there has been ongoing controversy when it comes to choosing them for reading comprehension. This study aims at investigating L2 learners' perceptions of the benefits of AM use for reading comprehension in IELTS preparation courses at a Ho Chi Minh City-based language centre in Vietnam. Data were collected from 150 learners who completed a questionnaire. Ten of them participated in semi-structured interviews. The results indicated that L2 learners believed that the use of AMs was beneficial as it could enhance their English language, cultural awareness, learning motivation, and reading strategies. The finding-based implications are presented to teachers, learners, and material designers in an attempt to enhance the quality of English language teaching in general and the use of AMs specifically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a model for the automatic classification of writing proficiency in Italian as a second language (L2) according to the Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR). The proposed method integrates lexical and morphosyntactic quantitative analysis with phraseological dimensions. Phraseological aspects include the ability to use and understand fixed expressions, idioms, and other multi-word units that are common in a language and reflect the depth of language comprehension typically manifested by native speakers. Specific techniques for encoding phraseological features have been introduced, and basic phraseological statistics, previously unavailable for Italy, have been extracted from an Italian corpus. The proposed model was experimentally compared with widely used machine learning models on a dataset of written texts produced by non-native speakers for the official Italian CEFR certification exams. The experimental results outperformed previous work on the CEFR classification of Italian L2 proficiency in terms of accuracy and all relevant prediction metrics, demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed approach, which integrates morphosyntactic and phraseological features.

Learning to write involves integrating motor production and visual perception to develop orthographic representations. This study tries to test the effect of hand movement training as a pathway to neural correlates for L2 Chinese and L2 English readers. Twenty L2 Chinese and 20 L2 English (n = 20) adults participated in both behavioral and electroencephalogram (EEG) experiments. We designed six learning conditions: Hand Writing Chinese (HC), Viewing Chinese (VC), Drawing followed by Character Recognition in Chinese (DC), Hand Writing English (HE), Viewing English (VE), and Drawing followed by Word Recognition in English (DE). Behavioral and EEG results demonstrated that drawing facilitated visual word recognition in Chinese compared to viewing. The findings imply that hand movement could strengthen the neural processing and improve behavioral performance in Chinese character recognition for L2 Chinese learners and English word recognition for L2 Chinese learners. Furthermore, N170 amplitude at the drawing condition was positively correlated with N400 amplitudes. Thus, the early visual word recognition neural indicator (e.g., N170) was predictive of the late neural indicator of semantic processing (e.g., N400), suggesting that hand movement facilitates the neural correlates between early word recognition and later comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While existing cross-language studies on the perception of non-native tones primarily focus on naïve listeners, this study addresses an obvious gap by investigating learners from diverse language backgrounds. Specifically, it investigates Mandarin tone perception in two groups of learners from Nordic languages, Swedish (a pitch-accent language), and Danish (a non-tonal language), as well as in a group of native Chinese speakers. Analysis of their performance in tone identification task revealed a slight advantage for Swedish learners, implying the influence of their pitch accent background in learning Mandarin tones. However, both Swedish and Danish learners who excelled in the tone identification task exhibited similar perception of within-category tonal variations but differed from native Chinese speakers. Additionally, the study found that the presence of length contrast, a prosodic feature in the learners' native languages, significantly influences their perception of Mandarin tones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the role of emotion regulation strategies on achievement emotions among tertiary-level English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students. It also explores the strategies employed by students to regulate these emotions. Employing a mixed-method sequential explanatory design, data was collected from forty-nine language learners attending prep-classes at the Department of Foreign Languages in a state university in Türkiye. The participants were categorized based on their utilization of cognitive reappraisal (CR), expressive suppression (ES), or a combination of both emotion regulation strategies (ERSs). They completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and the Academic Emotions Questionnaire-Foreign Language Classroom to assess differences in achievement emotions among groups. Subsequently, the participants provided narratives regarding their perceptions and regulation of emotions. Thematic analysis using MAXQDA (Version 2020) was conducted. Results revealed significant variations in emotions among groups, with the ES group reporting lower levels of positive emotions and higher levels of negative emotions compared to others. The study underscores the importance of evaluating emotion regulation strategies to foster sustainable and enjoyable language learning environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Young Intellectuals / Genç Mütefekkirler Dergisi is the property of Journal of Young Intellectuals and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A recent trend in corpus-based genre analysis emphasizes the relationship between syntactic complexity and rhetorical units, with a primary focus on English texts for research and publication purposes. The present study extends this trend into research on argumentative writing, a genre that L2 learners have to write and master, by examining the syntactic features of rhetorical stages and their variation across these stages through a comparative analysis. Based on a corpus of argumentative texts (written by 162 native English speakers and 148 Chinese English learners), analyzed for rhetorical structures and assessed for syntactic complexity, this analysis reveals robust differences between the two writing groups in the syntactic features of specific rhetorical stages. It also shows some consistency but more variation between the two groups in their patterns of syntactic variation across these stages. The findings reveal a strong relationship between syntactic complexity and the rhetorical stages of argumentative texts, thus demonstrating the feasibility and necessity of studying the function-form relationship in L2 learner writing. The authors suggest that genre-based L2 writing teachers should focus on the syntactic features of rhetorical stages and increase students' awareness of the function-form relationship. • The function-form relationship exists in English argumentative texts. • Syntactic complexity varies across different rhetorical stages of argumentative essays. • L2 learners differ from L1 writers in the syntactic complexity of specific stages. • The two writer groups differ in cross-rhetorical-stage variation patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Second language (L2) learners are taught to speak English to be able to communicate effectively like when debating a topic and conversing about everyday topics. However, studies suggest that L2 students feel unmotivated, unconfident, and anxious speaking English in and out of classroom environments, which then creates an impact on the development of their language proficiency and efficiency. This paper primarily aimed to determine the affective filter’s extent of influence on oral communication based on the perception of senior high school ESL students in a southern Philippine private school. Using the descriptive-quantitative design, data were gathered via a survey questionnaire from a total of 258 senior high school students. Results reveal that students’ affective filters generally influence their oral communication to a moderate extent. Among Krashen’s identified affective filters (self-motivation, self-confidence, and anxiety), three indicators of self-motivation garnered the highest mean ratings and standard deviation scores. The results show that students’ oral communication is most influenced by their motivation to learn the target language, which in turn makes the learning process fun and gives them real-world opportunities to use the language. The study’s pedagogical implications for the future of language education include a call for teachers to maintain high levels of student motivation, assist their students in building self-confidence, and devise strategies to boost their students’ linguistic competence in the classroom. In order to strengthen students’ capacity for effective oral communication, it is imperative that school officials give more weight to students’ affective development.

Abstract Achieving a sufficient IELTS band score for academic purposes has been a major goal of many L2 learners around the world, especially those in Asia. However, IELTS writing scores were consistently reported to be the lowest when compared to the scores in speaking, reading, and listening. Despite a growing body of research in IELTS writing, little focused on the role of model essays and noticing hypotheses. The present study aimed to fill in this gap by examining whether or not the implementation of both noticing hypothesis and model essays had a discernible influence on learners’ IELTS task 2 writing. To reach this goal, a quasi-experimental design including a pretest and a posttest was conducted with the voluntary participation of 52 undergraduates. These participants were divided into two groups: control group (CG, n = 25), learning in the conventional method (peer feedback and teacher feedback), and experimental group (EG, n = 27), using the noticing-model essays method. Following this, semi-structured interviews were performed to gain insights into the quantitative data. The results from this mixed-methods approach showed that there were significant gains in the overall performance and in the lexical resources subscale in the EG while no considerable changes were observed in the CG. Additionally, the other subscales (task response, grammatical range and accuracy, and cohesion-coherence) did not witness any significant differences between the two groups. Several pedagogical implications and recommendations for future research, especially in the Asian context, were also discussed.

This study investigates the representation and processing of written Chinese sentences subject to a semantic condition (i.e., “direction of change”) attached to the sentence-final particle (SFP) le in Mandarin Chinese. Three groups of bilingual speakers of Chinese and English who differ in their onset age of bilingualism and proficiency of English were studied. It was anticipated that there would be a positive cross-linguistic influence (CLI) from English due to similarities between the SFP le and the English adverb already in terms of direct semantic transfer. An acceptability judgment (AJ) task and a self-paced reading (SPR) task were conducted to elicit judgment and processing difficulty with and without semantic violations. The participants included English-dominant second language (L2) learners (n  =  18) and heritage learners (n  =  19) who had advanced proficiency in Chinese, as well as monolingually raised Mandarin speakers from China as a baseline control group (n  =  18). The results indicated that sensitivity to violations of the semantic condition varied depending on factors such as the specific structure (noun vs. verb phrase), the task type (offline vs. online), and the type of bilingual speaker (early vs. late). Among the three groups of bilinguals, the heritage learners demonstrated a representation of the semantic condition that resembled the target language across different sentence structures, whereas the L2 learners did not. Furthermore, the heritage learners exhibited earlier sensitivity to violations during online processing compared to the baseline control group. These exceptional results can be attributed to the heritage learners’ early exposure to and positive CLI between the SFP le in Mandarin and the English adverb already. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of GIST: Education & Learning Research Journal is the property of Institucion Universitaria Colombo Americana (UNICA) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Writing presents considerable challenges to students’ motivation. Yet there is a dearth of studies assessing the role of affect and motivation in writing performance for students with migration backgrounds (MB), who often underachieve in writing. Our study addressed this research gap by investigating the interplay between writing self-efficacy, writing anxiety, and text quality in 208 secondary students with and without MB using Response Surface Analyses. The data showed comparable levels of self-efficacy and, notably, lower writing anxiety levels among students with MB despite lower writing achievements. In the full sample, we observed positive correlations between self-efficacy and text quality and negative correlations between writing anxiety and text quality. When modeling efficacy and anxiety measures and their interplay to predict text quality, self-efficacy measures continued to account for statistically detectable unique variance in text quality, whereas writing anxiety did not. However, students with MB demonstrated differing interplay patterns, with less efficacious students with MB showing positive relations between writing anxiety and text quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the effect of task demands on the predictive processing of morphosyntactic cues (word class, noun/adjective gender, case, and number) in reading among Heritage Speakers of Russian (N = 29), comparing them with Russian language learners (N = 29) and monolingual Russian speakers (N = 63). Following the utility account of bilingual prediction, we hypothesized that the predictive use of morphosyntactic cues would be more evident in a less-demanding reading cloze task (Experiment 1) than in a more-challenging eye-tracking reading task (Experiment 2), and for cues that RHSs regard as more reliable (word class and number vs. gender and case cues). The results confirmed our predictions: In Experiment 1, Heritage Speakers (and L2 learners) used all cues predictively to generate the upcoming lexical item, with higher accuracy for word class and number cues compared to gender and case cues. In Experiment 2, in contrast to monolingual readers, neither Heritage Speakers nor L2 learners used gender cues on adjectives to anticipate the gender of the upcoming noun. The results are discussed in respect to the interplay between task demands, cue weight, oral fluency, and Russian literacy experience.

Copyright of Högre Utbildning is the property of Cappelen Damm Akademisk and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Many students, both at tertiary and secondary level, consider writing for academic purposes as a challenging task. It is of prime importance that students have sufficient content knowledge and basic understanding of different writing strategies to write coherent and cohesive texts. This study unveils the impact of writing strategy instruction on writing strategy use and performance of 40 undergraduates enrolled in an Academic and Professional Writing course. The design of the current study was experimental and data were collected using a questionnaire and students’ essays. The results of the t-test present that writing strategies training could be imparted to the students to improve their overall writing. The treatment group showed a significant improvement in their writing performance and writing strategy use after receiving strategy instructions. The study recommends explicit writing strategy instruction be incorporated into English writing courses and learners be encouraged to use them in their writing tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined the nature of the linguistic difficulties observed in the production of Korean relative clauses (RC) by 37 English-dominant beginning second language and heritage learners. Despite the difference in the age and mode of acquisition, native-like attainment of the target/heritage grammar is lacking in both groups (Montrul 2008). The overall results of a written production task showed that the heritage group produced errors more frequently than the L2 group. Yet, an individual error analysis of the low accuracy level revealed a rather complex nature of the linguistic difficulties experienced by the two groups. They produced the same type of error reflecting negative influence from English, but a main difference was found in the low-accuracy heritage group's (n=8) heavy reliance on head-internal RCs in producing head-external RCs, compared to their L2 counterpart (n=11). Lastly, the study explores plausible explanations for the heritage group's preference for head-internal RCs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a personal research note, this paper presents the summary and review of the course material "Assessment of English Language Learners" from the author's participation in the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) program offered by the U.S. Department of State as the Online Professional English Network (OPEN). This article is suitable for practical tests for ESL/EFL teachers in classes where students learn English as a second language. It aims to fill the lack of literature on assessing English Language Learners, especially regarding meaningful and purposeful assessment studies in L2 language classes. This paper serves the information as a contribution to 1) determine a meaningful assessment; 2) collect and use data to use the right assessment; 3) select the types of alternative assessment; 4) foster students' motivation and engagement through assessment; and 5) making assessment fun. This paper's contributions will supplement teachers in determining the most appropriate assessment in line with their students' needs. In addition, assessment should act as an evaluation tool and be turned into something fun in the classroom so that students can get many benefits at once, namely learning experiences and learning outcomes. This article is recommended for practical assessments for EFL teachers in English second language learning classes.

While existing cross-language studies on the perception of non-native tones primarily focus on naïve listeners, this study addresses an obvious gap by investigating learners from diverse language backgrounds. Specifically, it investigates Mandarin tone perception in two groups of learners from Nordic languages, Swedish (a pitch-accent language), and Danish (a non-tonal language), as well as in a group of native Chinese speakers. Analysis of their performance in tone identification task revealed a slight advantage for Swedish learners, implying the influence of their pitch accent background in learning Mandarin tones. However, both Swedish and Danish learners who excelled in the tone identification task exhibited similar perception of within-category tonal variations but differed from native Chinese speakers. Additionally, the study found that the presence of length contrast, a prosodic feature in the learners’ native languages, significantly influences their perception of Mandarin tones.

Writing presents considerable challenges to students’ motivation. Yet there is a dearth of studies assessing the role of affect and motivation in writing performance for students with migration backgrounds (MB), who often underachieve in writing. Our study addressed this research gap by investigating the interplay between writing self-efficacy, writing anxiety, and text quality in 208 secondary students with and without MB using Response Surface Analyses. The data showed comparable levels of self-efficacy and, notably, lower writing anxiety levels among students with MB despite lower writing achievements. In the full sample, we observed positive correlations between self-efficacy and text quality and negative correlations between writing anxiety and text quality. When modeling efficacy and anxiety measures and their interplay to predict text quality, self-efficacy measures continued to account for statistically detectable unique variance in text quality, whereas writing anxiety did not. However, students with MB demonstrated differing interplay patterns, with less efficacious students with MB showing positive relations between writing anxiety and text quality.

This study explores the effects of participation in short-term summer study abroad (SA) programmes in Spain on second language (L2) learners’ attitudes towards Spanish. Both quantitative and qualitative findings indicate that participants’ international experience improved their attitudes with regard to L2 learning. More importantly, participant comments provide insights into the aspects of SA context that played a key role in shaping their attitudes. Interaction in the L2 while abroad helped SA participants appraise their skills and improve them, thus leading to an increase in confidence and an interest in further language study. These findings have implications for L2 learners, faculty members that lead SA programmes, and departments or institutions that offer or consider offering international programmes. An in-depth understanding of SA experiences and their effects on student participants informs programme building, revision, and promotion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the salience of monitoring in self-regulated learning (SRL) and foreign and/or second language (L2) speech production in non-testing conditions, little is known about the metacognitive construct in testing contexts and its effects on learner performance. Given the reciprocal effects between L2 testing and L2 learning, a research effort in monitoring working in speaking tests, in particular computerdelivered integrated speaking tests, a testing format that has been advocated as an internal part of L2 classroom instruction and represents the future direction of L2 testing, is warranted. This study, therefore, serves as such an effort through investigating the use of monitoring by 95 Chinese English as foreign language (EFL) learners on a self-reported questionnaire after they performed three computerdelivered integrated speaking test tasks. Descriptive analysis followed by Hierarchical Linear Modelling (HLM) testing reveals that monitoring was used in a high-frequency manner, but it exerted no substantial effects on learner performance. Primarily, the results are expected to provide pedagogical implications for SRL: while fostering self-regulating learners, especially self-monitoring L2 speakers, it is necessary for L2 teachers to purposefully reduplicate testing conditions in their classroom instructions for helping the self-regulating learners be equally self-regulating test-takers. Moreover, the results are hoped to offer some insights into L2 testing through the perspective of self-monitoring, one proposed component of strategic competence, a construct that has been extensively acknowledged to reflect the essence of L2 testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate whether second language (L2) learners of English rely on first language (L1) transfer and atomicity in the acquisition of the count/mass distinction by examining L1-French and L1-Chinese learners of English. Atomicity encodes whether a noun contains 'atoms' or minimal elements that retain the property of the noun. As a semantic universal, atomicity holds across languages. However, the count/mass status of nouns may differ cross-linguistically. Our results, which show difficulty on atomic mass nouns in both learner groups, support an argument that atomicity is used as a semantic universal in the L2. Our results also suggest that both count/mass status in the L1 and word frequency in the L2 impact performance, suggesting roles for both L1 lexical transfer and lexical frequency. In addition, learners had better performance on abstract as opposed to concrete atomic mass nouns, providing evidence consistent with a theory of the accessibility of atoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports a teaching project for the purpose of improving the citation ability of second language (L2) graduate students in academic writing through concept‐based language instruction (C‐BLI). "Citation" here refers to writers' use of external sources in their own writing, which is an important and unique feature of academic writing. However, developing the ability to use citation appropriately and effectively is a difficult process for many L2 novice writers of English. This study attempts to apply C‐BLI in the teaching of citation in order to observe whether it is effective in bringing about changes in the perception and performance of novice academic writers in terms of their use of citation forms and functions. The teaching focused on citation types and functions with creatively designed SCOBAs (schema for complete orienting basis of an action) and activities. To examine the pedagogical impact of C‐BLI, we administered four measurements: questionnaire, interview, test, and revision of previously written research proposals. The four types of data were collected before and after the teaching sessions. Comparative analyses identified positive evidence that indicates the occurrence of changes in the students' understanding of the complexity of the citation concept as well as their improved practice in the use of citations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR), widely recognized as one of the most important documents in foreign language teaching, defines the levels of communicative language proficiency. The common points of reference are primarily meant to assist foreign language teachers and test developers striving to adhere to a unified understanding of CEFR levels. Yet it is not uncommon among practitioners to claim a particular level of a task, text or sample of learner performance drawing merely on their individual experience and intuition, with only limited knowledge of the original descriptor scales. The main purpose of this paper is to describe general procedures for relating foreign language tests and learner performances to the CEFR as they are prescribed by the Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE). The five stages of the linking process are familiarisation, specification, standardisation training and benchmarking, standard setting and validation. While the full implementaion of the linking process is a complex undertaking mostly applied in the context of high stakes examinations, certain stages of the linking process could be implemented by individual language schools and programmes. Benchmarking is one of such stages. It involves identification of illustrative learner performances for different proficiency levels. This is a stage which also has its relevance in daily teaching practice and could be easily incorporated in routine assessment procedures thus increasing foreign language teachers' awareness of CEFR levels. Therefore the discussion of the formal linking procedures in this paper is followed by a demonstration of an exercise in benchmarking. It is meant to acquaint the Lithuanian readers with the complexity of the linking process and encourage a more principled approach to level allocations. The exercise in alignment with CEFR level decribed here involves L2 spoken Lithuanian produced by five foreign learners of young age. Sample performances were taken from a corpus of L2 Lithuanian compiled within the XXX project. Since the subjects are children of 11–12 years, another important challenge in the alignment with the CEFR is children's maturity and the necessary adaptation of CEFR descriptors for young learners. Qualitative analysis of five learner samples offers a number of insights into practicalities of linking procedures and discusses ways to ensure reliability and objectivity.

Podcasts have become a pervasive and easy‐to‐access input for language learning that may improve both form and meaning aspects of language. This study attempted to investigate some unknown impacts of the autonomous use of podcasts through a metacognitive intervention on 12 adult language learners' listening comprehension with an exploratory approach and using a questionnaire, learners' journals, and semi‐structured interviews. The results suggest that autonomous language learners may benefit from multiple advantages of utilizing extensive listening input such as podcasts. Moreover, the learners have a positive attitude toward learning listening with metacognitive strategies and asserted that they aided them to be independent listeners. This study underscores the effectiveness of applying technology‐based listening learning in an EFL context where many learners are devoid of sufficient authentic and comprehensible input. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined the relationships between second language (L2) English learners’ mindfulness and their memorization/learning of figurative meaning senses of L2 phrasal verbs (PVs). One hundred and twenty Chinese university students participated in the study. The research instruments were the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), a receptive and productive PV tests, and focus group interviews. The results showed that there were strong and significant correlations between the FFMQ and the tests. In addition, mindfulness levels correlated almost equally to receptive and productive gains. Further, differences among three groups of the students formed according to scores on the PV tests were significant in terms of scores on the FFMQ. Among facets of the FFMQ, ‘Non-reactivity’ was revealed to be the strongest predictor for the students’ performance in the PV tests. Based on the findings of the study, research and pedagogical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have witnessed the influence of the complex dynamic systems theory (CDST) in the field of second language acquisition (SLA). Thus, new research methods have also been introduced to meet the requirements of investigating the dynamic nature of learner-related factors including L2 affective variables. Among the innovative quantitative research methods which is compatible with the CDST is the idiodynamic method, the application of which is on the rise in SLA research. In this paper, an overall introduction to the idiodynamic method is presented first, followed by a review of the existing literature in SLA studies. Then, it is discussed why this innovative research method is suitable to investigate the dynamic nature of L2 learners' affective variables in the complex network of classroom learning. Also, several relevant research questions that can potentially be formulated and answered using the idiodynamic method are discussed. The paper ends with conclusive remarks on the need for more extensive use of innovative CDST-compatible research methods such as the idiodynamic method in the prospective SLA line of inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions: Irony comprehension can be more demanding than literal comprehension in L1. This study aimed to seek an answer to how bilinguals perform in L2 in irony comprehension. Design/methodology/approach: Totally, 85 Uighur College students participated in a self-paced reading task in Chinese, with 81 Chinese native speakers as the controls. In Experiment 1, a scenario was followed by a commentary statement in which the critical word either was literally congruent with the context in meaning or could only be ironically understood. In Experiment 2, the same statement was preceded by three sentences which were either literally consistent with the critical word or created a context for the critical word to be understood ironically. Data and analysis: ANOVAs were conducted on participants reading times (RTs) to the critical words and commentary statement endings in the 14 pairs of discourses. They did not have different RTs for the critical words across the ironic and non-ironic conditions in L1, but had significantly longer RTs in the ironic condition than in the non-ironic condition in L2. Their RTs for the commentary statement endings were significantly longer in the ironic condition than in the non-ironic condition in both experiments, regardless of whether the materials were presented in L1 or L2. Findings/conclusions: Irony comprehension is similar in L2 to how it is in L1. However, salient meaning retrieval (in Experiment 1) and inference-making (in Experiment 2) in irony comprehension, as assumed by the Graded Salience Hypothesis, were more likely to be revealed in L2 than in L1. Originality: This seems to be the first study in the native and non-native domain of irony processing in the procedure of discourse reading. Significance/implications: L2 learners should do as many practices as possible to improve their reading proficiency in the target language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing L2 learners' emotional balance through adaptive regulation is a significant determinant of successful learning. Despite the recent surge of interest in emotion regulation (ER) programs, research on L2 learners' ER strategies is surprisingly underdeveloped. To address this gap, the current qualitative study explored ten L2 learners' understanding of achievement emotions and ER strategies throughout a longitudinal ER-oriented training course. Data were collected from four rounds of semi-structured interviews and diaries at different junctures of time. Data analysis revealed that the most frequent ER strategies in the pre-training phase were distraction and suppression, which showed a gradual decrease in the post-training phases. However, the use of self-regulated learning strategies and reassurance had the lowest frequency, showing a great improvement during the post-training phases. Additionally, the students grew in regulating their emotions across four major areas: (a) sufficient perceived control over negative emotions in high-stakes situations, (b) use of explicit ER strategies, (c) efficient use of competency-oriented strategies, and (d) decreased distraction as a function of negative simulators. The study provides implications for employing ER-based training to transform students' negative emotional experiences into positive emotions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Learning to write involves integrating motor production and visual perception to develop orthographic representations. This study tries to test the effect of hand movement training as a pathway to neural correlates for L2 Chinese and L2 English readers. Twenty L2 Chinese and 20 L2 English (n = 20) adults participated in both behavioral and electroencephalogram (EEG) experiments. We designed six learning conditions: Hand Writing Chinese (HC), Viewing Chinese (VC), Drawing followed by Character Recognition in Chinese (DC), Hand Writing English (HE), Viewing English (VE), and Drawing followed by Word Recognition in English (DE). Behavioral and EEG results demonstrated that drawing facilitated visual word recognition in Chinese compared to viewing. The findings imply that hand movement could strengthen the neural processing and improve behavioral performance in Chinese character recognition for L2 Chinese learners and English word recognition for L2 Chinese learners. Furthermore, N170 amplitude at the drawing condition was positively correlated with N400 amplitudes. Thus, the early visual word recognition neural indicator (e.g., N170) was predictive of the late neural indicator of semantic processing (e.g., N400), suggesting that hand movement facilitates the neural correlates between early word recognition and later comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language alignment occurs when interlocutors mimic each other's language. Language alignment can happen as a result of priming, but may also be mediated by speakers' beliefs about their interlocutor, including how language-proficient they believe the interlocutor to be. However, it is unknown whether bilingual speakers also show such effects. In this study, the participant and interlocutor took turns labelling pictured objects. These had alternative labels—one preferred, one dispreferred – with the latter used by the interlocutor. Participants were native Mandarin speakers who rated themselves as higher- or lower-intermediate L2 English learners. They were told their interlocutor was either a native English speaker, or another L2 English-learner. In a series of three experiments, the results showed that participants aligned with the interlocutor by using the dispreferred label. Rates of alignment varied, depending on the perceived proficiency of the interlocutor, and to a lesser extent, the L2 speaker' self-rated proficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Idiomatic expressions like hit the road or turn the tables are known to be problematic for L2 learners, but research indicates that learning L2 idiomatic language is important. Relatively few studies, most of them focusing on English idioms, have investigated how L2 idioms are actually acquired and how this process is affected by important idiom properties like transparency (the degree to which the figurative meaning of an idiom can be inferred from its literal analysis) and cross-language overlap (the degree to which L2 idioms correspond to L1 idioms). The present study employed a specially designed CALL system to investigate the effects of intensity of practice and the reading modality on learning Dutch L2 idioms, as well as the impact of idiom transparency and cross-language overlap. The results show that CALL practice with a focus on meaning and form is effective for learning L2 idioms and that the degree of practice needed depends on the properties of the idioms. L2 learners can achieve or even exceed native-like performance. Practicing reading idioms aloud does not lead to significantly higher performance than reading idioms silently.These findings have theoretical implications as they show that differences between native speakers and L2 learners are due to differences in exposure, rather than to different underlying acquisition mechanisms. For teaching practice, this study indicates that a properly designed CALL system is an effective and an ecologically sound environment for learning L2 idioms, a generally unattended area in L2 classes, and that teaching priorities should be based on degree of transparency and cross-language overlap of L2 idioms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]