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This study serves as a follow-up to VanPatten's (2015a) demographic report including the makeup of many university language departments. The present study investigates what some literary and cultural studies experts self-report regarding their training in SLA/language pedagogy, term familiarity, perceptions of Communicative Language Teaching, and classroom practices. Participants included 38 university-level US Spanish and French professors with expertise in literary and cultural studies. Findings revealed a lack of familiarity with some SLA and language teaching constructs, feedback types, and the role of explicit grammar and mechanical drills. As such, we discuss the ramifications of these findings.

This study seeks to further the research on online language learning by examining the level at which intermediate ESL students understand and process sociopragmatic information in their second language (L2) in globally networked environments like Twitter. In this semester-long study, L2 English learners from a variety of first languages (Chinese, Spanish, Arabic) analyzed authentic English-language tweets produced by well-known native speakers, with a focus on abbreviations, hashtags and tweeter mood. Results revealed that high intermediate ESL students relied most heavily on word choice when making sense of English tweets, demonstrating that a majority were able to extract significant meaning from common abbreviations, prosified hashtags, indices of tweeter mood and the tweet's larger context. This investigation highlights Twitter's status as an authentic and dynamic L2 setting that facilitates the cultural enrichment of learners and enhances their socio-pragmatic awareness, while developing their multiliteracy skills in an L2.

Although often neglected in language textbooks and classrooms, sociopragmatic and multiliteracy skills are crucial elements in language learning that language educators should not disregard. This article investigates whether a social networking community (SNC) website such as Facebook can be exploited in the context of an intermediate foreign language class to promote competent, literate L2 learners. Intermediate language learners had to search groups in Facebook that were linked to the course themes and conduct a linguistic analysis focusing on greetings, leave-takings, and vocabulary selection in order to identify the language typically used in this electronic environment. Findings suggest that over the course of a semester, learners honed in on and identified socio-pragmatic elements in this medium and that observation-based awareness-raising tasks are indeed beneficial for the development of socio-pragmatic competence. (Contains 1 table and 2 notes.)

This study serves as a follow-up to VanPatten’s (2015a) demographic report including the makeup of many university language departments. The present study investigates what some literary and cultural studies experts self-report regarding their training in SLA/language pedagogy, term familiarity, perceptions of Communicative Language Teaching, and classroom practices. Participants included 38 university-level US Spanish and French professors with expertise in literary and cultural studies. Findings revealed a lack of familiarity with some SLA and language teaching constructs, feedback types, and the role of explicit grammar and mechanical drills. As such, we discuss the ramifications of these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]