Search

Cultivation metaphors that compare teachers and students to gardeners and plants, respectively, have a long presence in the field of education. While such metaphors can be used to represent learner-centered pedagogies in which a teacher fosters the growth of their students, there is a darker side to cultivation metaphors. For instance, Zipory (2020) argues that characteristics of agriculture’s grain economy–like repetitiveness, coercion, and lack of diversity–can be imposed onto education. Following Zipory’s call for the forest to serve as a more apt metaphorical trajectory for education, I propose using the forest garden as a middle ground between the traditional garden and the natural forest. To highlight the potential usefulness of the forest garden metaphor for higher education, I explore its application as related to teacher professional development (PD), specifically content and language integrated learning (CLIL) PD. By reflecting on the design and outcomes of Project SCILLA, a CLIL PD program for Kazakhstani university instructors, as well as CLIL PD more broadly, I demonstrate how the forest garden metaphor can complicate the relationships and power dynamics between and across various stakeholders in higher education in response to global rhetoric, national and local policies, and interpersonal interactions. By emulating the forest garden’s principles of sustainability, interconnectedness, creativity, plurality, security, and well-being, stakeholders can (re)shape how we view multilingual, multicultural, and cross-national education systems and partnerships.

With the growth of the Japanese economy in the 1970s and 1980s and the following rapid business globalization, many Japanese companies started to seek more business opportunities overseas (Kanno, 2003; Tamiya et al., 2014; Yoshida et al., 2009). This tendency was prominent, especially among Japanese major automotive companies, such as Nissan, Toyota, and Mazda. One of the most popular destinations targeted by these automotive companies was South East Michigan, which is the heart of the American automotive industry, particularly in cities such as Detroit, Farmington Hills, and Ann Arbor. Since then, many automotive companies and related manufacturing, machinery, electronics, and chemical companies started to open their American branches in South East Michigan (Consulate-General of Japan in Detroit, 2017). Accordingly, these Japanese companies sent many Japanese employees and their families to this area. According to the survey on the status of market entry of Japanese companies in Michigan, most Japanese populations are concentrated in South East Michigan, such as Novi (3,826), Ann Arbor (1,915), West Bloomfield (1,211), and Farmington Hills (711) (Consulate-General of Japan in Detroit, 2017). Among these cities, Novi has the largest Japanese population and functions as the center of Japanese communities in South East Michigan. Therefore, several Japanese schools and supplemental schools (called hoshuko) are also located in Novi for Japanese expatriate children living in South East Michigan. Responding to the growth of the Japanese population in South East Michigan, one of the crucial issues in these areas is to provide educational support for Japanese expatriate children.

One experimental phenomenon that can cause a threat to the internal validity of L2 teaching research is test-practice effects: the extent to which L2 learners improve by taking the same or similar tests for multiple occasions (e.g., at a pretest and posttests). This article reports a pilot meta-analysis within a larger study that investigated test-practice effects in L2 grammar instruction research. Specifically, I focused on how the test-only control group (i.e., participants who only receive tests without instructional treatments) generally improve from the pretest to the immediate posttest and the delayed posttest. I retrieved and coded 21 primary studies of L2 grammar instruction research, which included 23 independent samples contributing 100 effect sizes in the form of Cohen’s d. Using multilevel random-effects models, I estimated the overall population estimate of the effect sizes and investigated whether two moderator variables, the mode of language use (comprehension or production) and the type of outcome measures (explicit or implicit measures), changed the size of the test-practice effects. Results showed that test-practice effects indeed exist in L2 grammar instruction research, and their sizes lie between small and medium effects (d = 0.116−0.315). The effects also became more prominent when the test drew upon comprehension skills (d = 0.179−0.466) or used implicit measures of L2 knowledge (d = 0.173−0.597).

By correlating the speech act to its implementation within the boundaries of the university environment, this particular study orientates towards the interlinguistic phenotypes produced by students of the Turkish language during the learning process on the course of the curriculum of the Department of Turkish Studies & Modern Asian Studies. In a contemporary, evolving research program, launched on 2013, interlanguage issues of the students integrated into a system of multivariate analysis are being examined. The progress of the intaking capability on morphological and syntactical aspects is investigated, as well as the assimilation levels of the conditions leading to a successful pragmatic interaction between the inputting of the teaching process and the outputting of the language product, in generally. Our aim, within this paper, is to give some raw data received by preliminary reports regarding in an unusual reading comprehension test, the socio-linguistic dimensions and the pragmatic correlations on the B2-C1 learning levels.

Despite substantial efforts to develop foreign language learning pipelines, little is known about students’ experiences moving between levels of education. This is particularly true for less commonly taught languages, where pre-tertiary learning is considered crucial for graduating students at higher levels of proficiency. This qualitative case study examines how four L2 learners of Arabic transition from their high school classrooms to university programs. Adopting a grounded theory approach to analyze survey and focus group data, three key themes emerge: initial (dis)orientation in the tertiary setting, classroom (dis)harmony as students navigate new norms, and retrospective appreciation for their high school learning environments. The results illustrate that university programs seem to lack appropriate measures to accommodate pipeline learners. Likewise, high school programs are not doing enough to familiarize students with the learning opportunities ahead. The findings have implications for programs, teachers, and students on both sides of these periods of transition.

Phrasal verbs, like many types of formulaic language, present a challenge for learners of English to master. While phrasal verbs are pervasive in the English language, many non-native speakers of English, even those with high proficiency, struggle to understand and produce them fluently (Gardner & Davies, 2007; Garnier & Schmitt, 2016; Larsen-Freeman & Celce-Murcia, 2015; Schmitt & Redwood, 2011; Siyanova & Schmitt, 2007; Strong & Boers, 2019). This underuse of phrasal verbs by non-native speakers causes them to sound unnatural, especially in speech (Larsen-Freeman & Celce-Murcia, 2015). Many researchers have investigated phrasal verb knowledge, learning, and use by English learners and a variety of causes have been speculated; however, understanding of the underlying causes of this phenomenon is far from conclusive. Some researchers have shown that learners have trouble mastering the multitude of meanings, especially those that are more idiomatic (Gardner & Davies, 2007; Garnier & Schmitt, 2016; and others). Schmitt and Redwood (2011) argued “the opaque and idiomatic nature of some phrasal verbs presents obvious difficulties for learners and these problems are compounded when we take into account the significant number of phrasal verbs that are also polysemous” (p. 174). These factors are possible key factors in making phrasal verbs difficult for learners to master.

In this paper, we would like to talk about our experiences working with students from the International Teaching Assistant (ITA) Program at Michigan State University over the course of 2019-2020. The main goal of this paper is to both share our experiences and also offer advice and resources for future ITA tutors. This paper is divided into two main sections: segmentals (vowels and consonants) and suprasegmentals (word stress, intonation, etc.). Dmitrii focused on segmentals and Steven focused on suprasegmentals, though there was some overlap based on student needs. We discuss helpful resources for ITA fellows and some of the difficulties that our students had with different pronunciation features in English. Each section has suggestions about lesson planning and examples of activities from our tutoring sessions. Some of the issues that we discuss in this paper include light L/dark L, R, the minimal pair /æ/ and /e/, and different intonation patterns. The paper concludes with the list of resources for ITA students and fellows.

Interview with Dr. Phillip Hamrick Kent State University by MSU Working Papers in SLS editors: Elizabeth Ablan, Kiyo Suga, & Dmitrii Pastushenkov

Nick C. Ellis is Professor of Psychology and Linguistics and a Research Scientist in the English Language Institute at University of Michigan. His research interests include usage-based and cognitive linguistic approaches to second language acquisition, emergentism, and dynamic systems and complex systems approaches to language. His influence has been particularly prominent in advocating usage-based accounts of language acquisition and in explaining explicit and implicit learning/knowledge and their interface. He is the recipient of the Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award of 2019 American Association for Applied Linguistics.

Due to growing access to audiovisual material (e.g., online videos, movies, and television series) through websites such as YouTube and Netflix, audiovisual material has received notable interest recently within the field of second language acquisition (SLA). This interest is particularly due to the multiple affordances this content provides, specifically captions. Captions are the text-overlay that represents the audio input to assist viewers to understand the native language the video is produced in and conveys its message through (Robin, 2007). Scholarly literature focusing around this material and the use of captions to develop an additional language (L2) has primarily been beneficial (Montero Perez, Peters, & Desmet, 2018; Winke, Sydorenko, & Gass, 2013; Yeldham, 2018). However, there has been little investigation focusing on language learners’ beliefs using videos and their supportive features to learn their L2. This lack in understanding is notable due to research indicating that beliefs can inform the varying aspects of learning a language, such as the strategies used to learn an L2 (see, Kalaja & Barcelos, 2013). Therefore, this study aims to understand the language learning beliefs students have using audiovisual material with captions to learn their L2. The study consisted of 16 survey responses from students studying five different languages with 2 group interviews consisting of 4 foreign language learners at a Midwestern research university. The findings suggest that learners have mixed views toward using audiovisual material and captions within and outside of the classroom to learn their L2. Potential implications focus on how audiovisual material could be utilized effectively within and outside of the classroom.

Dr. Kimi Nakatsukasa was born in Kyoto, Japan, and she completed her bachelor’s degree at Sophia University in Japan. In 2006, she completed her Master’s degree at Georgetown University. She joined the Second Language Studies program at Michigan State University in 2006, and completed her doctorate, entitled Efficacy of gestures and recasts on the acquisition of L2 grammar, in 2013 under the supervision of Shawn Loewen; Susan Gass, Debra Hardison and Paula Winke also served on her dissertation committee. Her dissertation was one of the few studies to combine nonverbal behavior with corrective feedback research, and she pushed the boundaries even further by designing a quasi-experimental study that investigated the effectiveness of combining gestures with oral corrective feedback on English past tense and locative preposition.

What does it mean to be human in a profession that requires you to innovate by listening, contemplating, and transforming contemporary and past ideas? How does one define and strive for success in such a demanding profession while maintaining a sense of self? Those new to academia – either as students or emerging professionals – will inevitably encounter these questions in some form. While some have a support system to answer such questions, many others struggle to navigate the labyrinth of academia. Having a mentor to provide advice and support is crucial in helping us avoid this labyrinth’s dead ends and pitfalls, so that the goals we aspire to can be achieved.

In line with recent multifactorial work by Gries and Deshors (Deshors, 2016; Gries & Deshors, 2014), we investigated the effects of various semantic and syntactic factors and their interactions on article misuse in the Russian sub-corpus of the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE). In this paper, we report the results of a pilot study of article omissions that is a common problem for English learners coming from article-less backgrounds. We identified 153 instances of correct use of the zero article and 93 instances of article omissions, annotated them based on the factors from previous research, and analyzed the data using multilevel logistic modeling. The results of univariate logistic mixed effects modelling showed that adjectival pre-modification (OR = 0.31, 95% CIs [0.13, 0.75], p = .009), animacy (OR = 17.61, 95% CIs [2.27, 136.75], p = .006), and number (OR = 0.05, 95% CIs [0.02, 0.17], p < .001) affected omissions in the Russian sub-corpus of ICLE. Much like the results of Garnier and Schmitt (2015), we used these results to develop a pedagogical list.

The purpose of this study is to analyze eye movements of second language learners of Mandarin Chinese during online reading to determine patterns of attention. I intend to replicate and expand part of Stickler and Shi's (2014) original eye tracking experiments on Chinese second language learners completing an online reading activity with Chinese characters and Pinyin transcription scaffolding. Since Chinese uses characters, reading can prove a daunting task for learners, especially those at the beginning levels (Wang, 2014). I have personally experienced this frustration myself and observed similar difficulties for other students. Although, many characters do contain some phonetic information, it is usually easier for students to learn to read with the help of a phonetic transcription system such as Pinyin, which uses the Roman alphabet “to approximate the pronunciation of Chinese characters” (ibid, p. 53). Often textbooks and reading materials will annotate some or all of the included Chinese characters in such a transcription system, at least for beginner levels, for the benefit of first or second language learners (See Figures 1 and 2).

Zu-Yan Chen wrote the textbook Confucius’s Analects: An advanced reader of Chinese language and culture (讀論語學中文) for learners with at least three years of university Chinese language courses (Chen, 2010, p. xiii). The main focus of study is excerpts from the Analects, a collection of Confucius’ aphorisms and teachings, written in Classical Chinese, and widely studied by the Chinese population for around two thousand years. These passages are accompanied with translations in modern Chinese and short texts analyzing the underlying ideas. Because this textbook is only in Chinese, with the exception of the preface, some vocabulary definitions or section titles, and the content does not include grammar explanations, the author assumes that the readers are already generally competent in basic Chinese vocabulary and grammar. Based on the fact that the textbook is mostly written in Chinese and on the reviewer’s personal experience in learning Chinese as a second language, it does indeed appear to be suitable for Chinese language learners with at least three years of consistent Chinese study. However, it may not be necessary for the textbook users to have had university language classes as long as they have comparable language skills.

Inspired by Solovyeva and DeKeyser (2018), I utilized Coefficient of Variation (CV) (Segalowitz & Segalowitz, 1993), a measure traditionally used in detecting automatization and recently extended to index addition of new linguistic representations, to capture the trajectory in processing variability in both intentional and incidental word learning. This paper reports two studies involving (1) an intentional word learning experiment and (2) a reanalysis of published eye-tracking data from an incidental vocabulary learning study (i.e., Elgort et al., 2017). In the word learning experiment, native English speakers (N = 35) studied Swahili-English word pairs (k = 16) before performing ten testing blocks of animacy judgment tasks on the Swahili words. This design differed from that of previous studies which often focused on products of learning (i.e., typically, adopting a pre- / post-test or crosssectional design) (e.g., Leow, 2015). By computing a CV value from the reaction time (RT) data for each participant in each testing block, I captured the learners’ development in processing stability during the process of learning. Results replicated an initial increase in CV as new representations were established, indicating less stable processing of the Swahili word meanings in the beginning. At the same time, CV peaked at about the 6 th block before decreasing, which was then consistent with automatization.

This research proposal of a quasi-experimental study aims at exploring the effects of a textreconstruction output task called Story-Retelling (SR) on Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ implicit knowledge development on three types of English relative clauses (RCs). Thirty university students are randomly assigned to two experimental groups and a control group. Each experimental group receives two different form-focused instruction (FFI): the SR task and explicit grammar explanation of the target-linguistic form. Responding to a measuring issue of previous effect-of-instruction studies, an Oral Elicited Imitation (OEI) test and an untimed fill-in-the-blank test will be administered to accurately measure learners’ implicit and explicit knowledge development respectively. Differential effects of the instructional treatments depending on the degree of typological markedness and processing difficulty of the three RC types are also explored. The findings of the study will provide empirical explanations whether and how an output practice conducted through the SR task contributes to L2 learners’ implicit knowledge development. Considering the relative easiness of the practical application of the SR task in L2 teaching, the findings also provide L2 teachers with pedagogical implications on how to effectively conduct focus on form (FonF) instruction in the L2 classroom.

Andrea Révész is a senior lecturer in applied linguistics and TESOL at Institute of Education, University College London. Her research interests lie in the areas of second language acquisition (SLA) and second language instruction. In particular, she has conducted research on the roles of tasks, implicit/explicit learning and teaching, and individual differences in instructed second language development.

Despite globalization making English a lingua franca, little is known how accent relates to learners’ identity. In this case study, I focus on a second language (L2) English user’s perspective. Specifically, I examine a Chinese speaker’s of English perceptions of the relationship between identity and pronunciation (accent). Drawing on Norton’s (2000) notion of identity, I applied a 6-point Likert scale questionnaire and conducted an in-depth semistructured interview. My findings indicate that accent and identity are closely linked, but my participant was not willing to sacrifice intelligible speech to identify with the American society. For this participant, speaking comprehensibly was more important than developing a new L2 identity. I delineate possible pedagogical implication and suggestions for future research.

Martha Bigelow is a Professor in Second Language Education at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. She has been engaged in community-engaged and school-based research with East African youth for more than ten years on the intersections of literacies, language learning, schooling and (racial, religious, gender) identities. She has published numerous journal articles and two books related to her work with adolescent Somali refugees in the United States: Literacy and Second Language Oracy (2009, Oxford University Press) with Elaine Tarone and Kit Hansen and Mogadishu on the Mississippi: Language, racialized identity and education in a new land (2010, Wiley Blackwell). She is the co-editor with Johanna Ennser-Kananen for the Routledge handbook of educational linguistics (2015) and she is currently working on a book with Doris Warriner entitled Relationships, reciprocity and research with minoritized communities: Methodological meta-reflections on power and equity (Multilingual Matters).

This literature review presents a report on research studies exploring the benefits of music at the cognitive, linguistic, and pedagogical levels. Ten studies that deal with the effects of music for young learners carried out in various contexts and countries were included in this account. Increasing motivation, gaining vocabulary and grammar understanding, and recalling information are the main recurrent themes mentioned as a result of implementing pedagogical interventions using songs, and, in some cases stories. To conclude some ideas for further research were briefly considered.

Anders Gedacht is an intermediate high/advanced level German textbook, appropriate most likely for 3rd or 4th-year students in a 4-year undergraduate German program. This textbook is content-based, written entirely in the target language with an accompanying workbook with supplemental exercises and activities, some of which are tasks. This book seeks to integrate aspects of German, Austrian, and Swiss culture through the use of culturally authentic materials such as stories, works of art, poetry, and film. This textbook offers additional exercises and materials through an online portal. The online component offers the opportunity for a hybrid curriculum as well as flipping the classroom.

Global migration has emerged over the last decade such that countries that have seen relatively few immigration issues have started struggling (as France, the United States, Great Britain, and Australia have) with various and diverse concerns related to immigration. For language teachers, the new reality of global migration is a challenge, especially if the language teachers have not experienced or prepared for classes with culturally and linguistically diverse students and the acculturation issues their families face. In Language and Learning in Multilingual Classrooms: A Practical Approach, Elizabeth Coelho addresses the needs of educators in schools where programs are developing plans for newcomers. She provides plenty of suggestions and advice with this book, which should be required for all school administrators, educational planners, and teachers of multicultural education.

This study investigates the impact of three types of focus-on-form instruction (FFI) on learners’ reading comprehension and their development of the English past unreal conditional. The study also investigates whether the learners’ grammar development is implicit or explicit in nature. Fifty-one intermediate-level ESL learners were distributed into three groups. Each group read passages with different levels of explicitness of the grammar form: in the first input flood (IF) group, a baseline or control group, nothing was added to the text. For the second, textual enhancement (TE) group, the forms were enlarged and in bold. For the third rule presentation (RP) group, metalanguage describing the past unreal conditional was added to the flooded and enhanced forms. After reading, the participants’ form noticing was measured through a selfcircling test; their reading comprehension was measured through a free-recall test. Timed and untimed grammaticality-judgment tests (GJTs) were used to measure form learning. One week later, a second (delayed) GJT test was administered to measure sustained form learning. When compared with the IF group, the RP group showed significantly higher results on the GJTs and significantly lower results on comprehension. The timed GJTs and noticing scores showed a significant inverse correlation with comprehension. These results lead to three suggestions. First, more explicitness leads to better development of implicit grammar knowledge. Second, less explicitness leads to more focus on meaning and concomitantly higher comprehension scores. Third, the effectiveness of FFI should be re-considered in light of this potential inverse (VanPatten, 1990) or trade-off (Barcroft, 2002) relationship between form and meaning.

As the number of Chinese international students at higher education institutions continues to grow, relevant research on this topic is increasingly vital. A number of studies expose academic and social challenges impeding this population’s adjustment to university landscapes in Canada and the United Kingdom, yet few shed light on positive strategies used to successfully navigate students’ sojourns abroad, particularly in the United States. This case study provides an in-depth, detailed account of a Chinese international student’s first year at a large American university. Data collected from regular interviews, classroom observations, and instructor insights are analyzed through the lens of the Positioning theory to explore how a student strategically positions himself on the path toward realizing his goals and imagined community. Implications of this study advocate for a multifaceted, reflective approach to study abroad by students, faculty, and administrators.

In a first or second language (L2), it is thought that in order to accurately produce a sound, one must be able to accurately distinguish that same sound in reception. This intuitive connection, called the perception-production link, also enjoys theoretical support from Flege’s (1995) Speech Learning Model and empirical support from a considerable number of experimental studies. However, reports of perception without production and production without perception present a challenge to the perception-production link. In this brief review, the perception-production link is explained and evidence supporting and challenging the link is summarized. Additionally, empirical research on the link is critically reviewed to highlight issues with research design and interpretation. Finally, the perception-production link’s current status in L2 research is discussed and directions for future research are presented.

Definiteness is visibly expressed by definite articles in English, but some languages such as Korean lack this morphological exponent. However, speakers of such languages still mark definiteness in different ways. In this proposal, we lay out a study that examines the (re)assembly required by L1-English L2-Korean learners where the formal feature of definiteness in the L1 has to be readjusted to indirect expressions in the L2. In particular, we propose to examine how L1-English learners distinctly interpret and produce the feature [definite] that has been coded overtly (demonstrative determiners) and covertly (word order change) in Korean. The participants’ use of demonstrative and word order will be examined by using elicited production tasks and forced-choice selection tasks. We predict that the participants will perform more accurately on the demonstratives. We further hope to gain insights into how much detection, mapping, and reassembly of the linguistic feature have progressed through the experiments.

Real Reading 1 is a beginner-level reading textbook for an adult English language classroom and is the first in a series of four textbooks designed to teach intensive reading skills and develop vocabulary. Each of its twelve units contain two thematically related chapters and target a specific reading skill, vocabulary skill, and vocabulary learning strategy. In addition to the structured units, four reading fluency practice activities are scattered throughout the book, with additional vocabulary practice activities for each unit at the end of the book. Drawing vocabulary from the General Service Word List, the Academic Word List, and the BillurogluNeufeld List, the textbook targets high-frequency words while also aiming for controlled vocabulary such that “95-98 percent of the words are likely to be known by a typical learner at each level” (p. viii). Nation and Cheung (2009) have found that such a degree of familiarity with a given text is the amount of comprehension necessary for unassisted reading. Cumulatively, Real Reading 1 is an accessible, research-based, and level-appropriate textbook to aid in beginner-level reading and vocabulary development, but it is not without its shortcomings.

Research on written corrective feedback (WCF) in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) has been giving its feedback on this practice for more than 30 years now. The topic has been extensively researched and there is a better understanding of the issue than before; however, it continues to be debated (see Evans et al., 2010; Ferris, 2006; Hyland & Hyland, 2006; Goldstein, 2005; Lee, 2004; Montgomery & Baker, 2007; Saito, 1994; Schulz, 1996). One of the main reasons for the controversial findings concerning feedback is the lack of attention to individual differences among learners (Zamel, 1985). Although the effects of written feedback have been investigated on students collectively, taking individual learner differences into account could help in developing a better understanding of the issue. While the relationship between feedback and individual learner differences remains underexplored, Hyland (1998) found that many of the teachers who participated in her qualitative work did, indeed, consider individual students when they gave their feedback. If many teachers give their students individual feedback on their papers, why not consider that in research?

As recent years have brought with them a post-method pedagogy in language teaching where educators are recognizing the need to create a more holistic and context-driven approach to teaching a language in a given environment, so too has the need for a more communicative language teaching approach arisen where learners acquire productivity in the target language to communicate effectively, rather than simply gaining theoretical and abstract knowledge of the language (Duff, 2014; Kumaravadivelu, 2001). While Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), with information exchange, group work, and negotiation of meaning is not a mutually exclusive concept with explicit grammar teaching, teaching grammar in a communicative way, where students move beyond forms and begin to explore and experiment with meaning and use, often proves challenging and does not appear in all of textbooks or classrooms (Larsen-Freeman, 2014). Grammar and Beyond, 3 takes on this challenge and claims to present grammar in a communicative, corpus-based way without eliminating explicit grammar instruction. In doing so, it presents grammatical forms in a contextualized way that facilitates communicative tasks, rather than simply isolated focus on form occurrences (Ellis, 2006). To make it even more applicable to students, the book uses a corpus-based approach to expose students to real world uses of the forms and then engages them in “grammaring” to create productions with the grammar that incorporates structure, semantics, and pragmatics (Larsen-Freeman, 2014).

Dr. Folse is Professor in Modern Languages and Literatures at University of Central Florida. He earned his M.A. in TESOL at University of Southern Mississippi and his Ph.D. in TESOL, Second Language Acquisition & Instructional Technology from University of South Florida. His research interests include ESL grammar, second language vocabulary acquisition, teacher training and best teaching practices. He has authored 55 books on reading, vocabulary, writing, grammar, speaking and listening. Dr. Folse delivered a keynote speech at the 2015 National Geographic Learning Symposium titled Grammar and the Four Skills: Exploration and Integration. For more information about Dr. Folse please visit his personal website: http://www.keithfolse.com/

This research study investigated the learning and use of English by Nepali immigrant women from two theoretical perspectives: investment and translingualism. The research questions addressed what sort of investment the participants were making to learn English and to see how they used different translingual practices to co-construct their identity with both the target language and other transnational communities. Data were collected through questionnaires, observations, interviews, journal writings, and Facebook group chats. The key findings are that the Nepali immigrant women are not only motivated to improve their English but are also highly invested in doing so. They adopt different translingual negotiation strategies for the purpose of meaning-making among linguistically diverse groups of multilingual speakers. The study is significant for those connected to ESL classrooms composed of adult immigrants, as these immigrants constitute a substantial proportion of the US population.

Joe Barcroft (Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) is Professor of Spanish and Second Language Acquisition in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Washington University in St. Louis. He is Language Program Supervisor: Spanish 101-308; Director of Teaching Assistant Training; and Co-Director of the Graduate Certificate in Language Instruction. He is a participating faculty member of the Program in Linguistics and holds affiliate appointments in the Program in Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Psychology, and in the Minor in Applied Linguistics. He teaches courses on language teaching methodology, second language acquisition, grammar and vocabulary acquisition, and Hispanic linguistics. Professor Barcroft’s research interests include second language vocabulary acquisition; input processing; processing resource allocation during lexical acquisition; the role of acoustic variability in language learning and speech processing; the bilingual mental lexicon; and psycholinguistic approaches to other issues in second language acquisition and bilingualism. His articles appear in journals such as Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Language Learning, Applied Psycholinguistics, Second Language Research, and The Modern Language Journal. His inputbased incremental approach to second language vocabulary instruction, which is grounded in research findings on lexical input processing, is described in articles in Foreign Language Annals and Hispania. His current research projects focus on second language partial word form learning; effects of acoustic variability on vocabulary learning and auditory training; and the relationship between second language vocabulary learning and bilingual lexicosemantic representation. Professor Barcroft is also the Director of the Summer Language Institute in Spain. For more information about Dr. Barcroft, please visit his website: http://pages.wustl.edu/barcroft

Dana Ferris is a Professor of and the Associate Director for Second Language Writing at University of California, Davis. Her research over the last twenty years has focused on response to student writing and on written corrective feedback in second language writing. Her work has been published in a range of journals including Across the Disciplines, Assessing Writing, CATESOL Journal, College English, Journal of Second Language Writing, Language Teaching, Research in the Teaching of English, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, TESOL Journal, TESOL Quarterly, and Writing and Pedagogy. She is the Editor in Chief of the newly launched Journal of Response to Writing. The interview was conducted on March 23, 2015 at the AAAL conference in Toronto, Canada after Dr. Ferris’s presentation on Questioning Writing Placement Examinations: What if L2 Writers Could Really Self-Place? For more information about Dr. Ferris, please visit her website: http://writing.ucdavis.edu/faculty-staff/directory/drferris

Patricia (Patsy) Duff is a Professor and Distinguished University Scholar at the Department of Language & Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. Her main research interests are related to language socialization across bilingual and multilingual settings; qualitative research methods in applied linguistics (especially case study and ethnography); issues in the teaching and learning of English, Mandarin, and other international languages; and sociocultural, sociolinguistic, and sociopolitical aspects of language(s) in education. She gave a keynote address at the 2015 Second Language Studies Symposium entitled Examining Agency and Self-directed Socialization in Second Language Research. For more information about Dr. Duff, please visit her website: http://faculty.educ.ubc.ca/pduff/

Over the past 15 years, the percentage of children in the United States who speak a language other than English at home has been increasing. As of 2013, this was almost one in four children (KIDS COUNT Data Center, 2014). With the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001, schools have felt added pressure to ensure that children learn academic content and the language of the disciplines (Koyama & Menken, 2013). With limited hours in the day, the question becomes, how does one teach content and language simultaneously? This is a question for general education classrooms with learners of English and immersion classrooms with learners of an additional language. In this literature review, I will focus most on immersion classrooms because the integration of language and content is a central, defining feature of these programs since they teach students a second language through both content-area instruction in that language and additional language instruction (Lyster, 2007). For immersion programs to be successful, their teachers must be both language and content teachers. In order to explore how this can be accomplished, I will examine the historical and contextual influences on language-content integration in immersion education, the ways in which teachers can integrate language and content, and future directions for research.

LEAP: Learning English for Academic Purposes (Reading and Writing) is one book in Pearson’s series of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) for highintermediate and advanced learners. The book has eight chapters which cover topics in different fields, for example education, psychology, business, and biology. Each chapter deals with both reading and writing skills. A consistent format is adopted throughout all chapters, starting with an overview (that describes the objectives and features of the chapter), followed by a “Gearing –Up” activity (that aims to activate and build learners’ schema), reading (that intends to provide input), and writing (for language production). The book dedicates a separate part “Vocabulary Build” in each chapter to building learners’ awareness and repertoire of words having high usage frequency in the Academic Word List. It also includes other sections such as “Focus on Reading”, “Focus on Writing”, and “Academic Survival Skills” which provide explicit instructions on developing reading and writing skills in academic settings.

Kim McDonough is an Associate Professor in Applied Linguistics at Concordia University. She earned her M.A. in TESOL from Michigan State University and her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from Georgetown University. Her research interests include psycholinguistic approaches to second language acquisition, classroom-based acquisition research, usage-based approaches to acquisition, and task-based language teaching. She delivered a keynote speech at the 2014 Second Language Studies Symposium titled Using structural priming tasks in L2 classrooms, and kindly spared some time for this interview after her keynote address.

For most English learners, a foreign accent has always been a difficulty that they cannot easily overcome. Numerous research studies have examined the reasons for this issue, and have attempted to help learners produce spoken English close to native speakers, if not possible to completely eliminate foreign accents. Among the difficulties learners encounter in acquiring native-like second language (L2) pronunciation, the voiceless interdental fricative (i.e., [θ]) has been considered one of the most difficult sounds to acquire by most English learners. Many studies have identified various substitutions for [θ] in the speaking production of learners with different first language (L1) backgrounds. For example, Rau, Chang, and Tarone (2009) reported that Thai, Russian, and Hungarian learners of English tended to substitute [t] for [θ], while [θ] was usually replaced with [s] by speakers from Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, and China (Lee & Cho, 2002; Rau et al., 2009). In order to explore possible causes of these problematic performances, one plausible way is to seek the relation between learners’ perception and production because it is generally believed that there is a positive correlation between a speaker’s perception and production; accordingly, improvement in one part will facilitate the development of the other. However, perception alone by no means determines production. Yang (1997) indicated that speakers’ attention, an important factor involved in one’s cognitive process of a speaking activity, also influences speaker’s perception and production. The following literature review introduces relevant theories and studies that have contributed to this research topic.

The recent increase in studies using the L2 Motivational Self System (Dörnyei, 2005) to investigate language teachers’ engagement (or lack thereof) in professional development (e.g., Hiver, 2013; Kubanyiova 2009; Kumazava, 2013) shows the increasing interest in bridging the research gap between language teacher education and teacher motivation. With the aim of contributing to this body of motivation research, this interview-based study uses a grounded theory approach to address the issues of how foreign language (FL) teachers in two types of Italian high schools (college preparation schools and vocational schools) experience and respond to changes in their proficiency. Findings show the influence of these pedagogical contexts on teachers’ proficiency and engagement in development as well as the dynamic complexity of motivational processes. When dealing with professional development, FL teachers face two main decision-making moments: 1) deciding whether or not to engage in professional development activities; 2) maintaining their engagement with or without a supportive community. Their decision to engage often depends on the emotional dissonance between teachers’ actual and possible L2 selves. The results have implications for designing in-service professional development courses with a bottom-up approach that take into consideration teachers’ needs according to their school environments and enhance teachers’ L2 selves’ emotional guiding power.

Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis (1990, 1994, 1995, 2001), which proposes that the process of noticing enables the conversion of input to intake, has been hugely influential and is now “regarded as a mainstream SLA construct” (Yoshioka, Frota, & Bergsleithner, 2013, p. 7). Early studies on noticing mainly involved the issue of whether attention or awareness— and what types—were necessary for L2 learning (Gass, 1997; Leow, 1997, 2000; Robinson, 1995; Schmidt, 1990; Tomlin & Vila, 1994). However, researchers have begun to note that it is important to ascertain how to operationalize and measure noticing for empirical testing (Philp, 2012). Given that L2 learners’ internal cognitive activities are neither directly measureable nor observable, the difficulty we face in measuring noticing is not surprising. Moreover, “the terms noticing, attention, and awareness have lacked in precision” (Gass, Behney, & Plonsky, 2013, p. 266) across studies, resulting in inconsistencies in the measures of noticing. To gain access to learners’ cognitive processes of noticing, online/concurrent measures (e.g., think-alouds, underlining) and off-line/non-concurrent measures (e.g., post-task questionnaires, pretest-posttest, stimulated recall) have been widely used in SLA.

According to Barzegar (2013), the way we arrange words in different positions of the clause is essential to communicate in any language. In other words, word order is highly important when creating meaning. Second language learners usually aim to have a clear understanding of how and where to place words, so they can achieve successful communication in the target language. Kessler (2004) found that native speakers and advance language learners of English have a similar level of syntactical knowledge, especially in terms of word order. However, this word-order knowledge does not seem equally applied to different structures and languages. In this regard, Jin (2008) discovered that English speakers have much difficulty in learning marked structures in Chinese. Similarly, Solís Hernández (2006) demonstrated that L2 English learners usually struggle with structures that do not follow the same pattern at all times, especially in relation to adverb placement. She described that most students did not clearly understand the reasons why adverbs in English are placed in different positions of the clause. In my experience, I have noticed that small differences in clause constructions (e.g., “I saw him yesterday” and “Yesterday I saw him”), can be confusing to L2 learners. This is not only because of the syntactic order, but because sometimes it is difficult for learners to understand the reasons that have motivated a speaker or a writer to select a less common word order construction to communicate a specific message.

Luke Plonsky is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at Northern Arizona University. His research interests include instructed second language acquisition, quantitative research methods with a specific focus on study designs, the use of statistics, research synthesis, and meta-analysis. He gave the keynote address at the Second Language Studies Symposium at Michigan State University. This interview was conducted on February 21, 2014. For more information about Dr. Plonsky, please visit his website: http://oak.ucc.nau.edu/ldp3/index.html

Reading Explorer is a six-level series of intensive reading texts and Reading Explorer 2 is one level in that series. It uses articles from National Geographic Magazine to promote reading comprehension and to develop the vocabulary skills of ESL young adults and adult learners. The length of the reading passages, vocabulary presented, level of difficulty of texts, and comprehension questions make Reading Explorer 2 a textbook suitable for learners whose proficiency ranges from upper-basic to low-intermediate. The textbook contains twelve units, and each unit has two reading passages whose topics are related. For instance, in lesson 4A students read about the “Grand Central Terminal” in Manhattan, and in lesson 4B they read about “Mumbai: City of Dreams.”

The goal of this book is to combine data-driven findings in the area of Arabic language acquisition with a focus on the order of acquisition, developmental stages and learning patterns of linguistic structures of Arabic. The author starts with research questions on the variables involved in learning Arabic including the developmental path, the role of transfer, the effect of instruction, and other factors involved. Methodologically, the book draws on a pool of longitudinally collected oral data from 9 learners of Arabic and a cross-sectional sample of 109 learners with different native languages including English, French, Spanish, and Japanese. Data were elicited through information gap activities and picture description tasks. Based on analyses from this data, chapters are systematically developed to address topics in separate chapters for discussing the acquisition of specific target features.

The growing number of international students who come to study at American universities and the over 99,000 students who are specifically enrolled in English language programs (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 2013) has revealed the need for well-developed and carefully tailored resources that prepare English-as-asecond-language (ESL) students for academic success. This handbook and workbook combination is one of the resources that has been developed to prepare ESL students for success both in the writing classroom and in their academic careers.

Dr. Matthew Poehner is Assistant Professor of World Languages Education and Applied Linguistics at The Pennsylvania State University. He delivered a keynote address at the 2013 Second Language Studies Symposium titled Dynamic Assessment: Understanding Mediation. He was kind enough to speak with us after his talk.

The rationale for content-based instruction is that the content is often academic subject matter (Brinton, Snow, & Wesche 2003). Academic Encounters Listening and Speaking: Human Behavior is a contentbased textbook dealing with the topic of human behavior related to psychology and communication. The book contains four units: Health, development through life, nonverbal messages and interpersonal relationships. There are two chapters in each unit. The content of each chapter consists most of interviews, lectures and surveys. The interviews and academic lectures are semi-authentic materials from real college classrooms. The DVD that accompanies the text contains all the lectures from the textbook. In each chapter, students are asked to develop four skills: listening, speaking, vocabulary, and note taking.

Professor Norbert Schmitt is a professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. He started his career in Japan where he taught English as a Foreign Language and pursued his MA degree. He is mainly known for his work in all aspects of second language vocabulary including pedagogy, acquisition, and assessment. His interest in vocabulary extended through his PhD research at Nottingham. His current research interests include phraseology and formulaic sequences, corpus-based research, and the interface between vocabulary knowledge and the ability to read and listen in English. Dr. Schmitt agreed to talk to us during the SLS Spring 2013 symposium.

The goal for this study was to examine participants’ familiarity with specific accents, whether participants were able to identify if a speaker was a native speaker (NS) or a non-native speaker (NNS), and what accent the speaker had. I also examined how the participants rated speakers on four Likert-scales of comprehensibility, intelligibility, accentedness, and acceptability as a teacher (the four dependent variables). I included 38 NS and 94 NNS participants from a range of first-language backgrounds. The participants listened to three NSs (Midwestern U.S., Southern U.S., and British) and two NNSs (Chinese and Albanian) and completed the identification and Likert-scale tasks outlined above. Results showed that NNSs were significantly less able than NSs to identify a speaker’s nativeness and accent. Results revealed that familiarity with an accent correlated with comprehensibility and acceptability as a teacher. For familiar accents, familiarity was a significant predictor of the participant ratings on the four dependent variables, though the predicted changes in ratings were small. Overall, participants had generally positive attitudes toward NNSETs; in relation to acceptability as a teacher, accent was the least influential of the dependent variables. I conclude by arguing that students should be exposed to a range of different accents, as familiarity with an accent facilitates comprehension. These findings also challenge current language center hiring practices that exclude NNSETs from jobs based on a non-native status; this study supports the notion that administrators should hire English language teachers based on professional credentials, and not based on accent.