Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2015

Highly interactive social networks (e.g. Twitter or Facebook) offer possibilities to create personal content in virtual space that can be shared with other users. These multifaceted platforms support both formal and informal learning scenarios. Due to their high popularity, educational institutions become more and more interested in integrating them into their teaching practice. In this article, the author shows the payoffs and pitfalls that can arise by implementing social media in the foreign language classroom.

Students’ understanding of their own learning needs can improve, if they can be made more aware of their own learning processes by supporting their metacognitive development. Research has shown that membership of online communities can positively contribute to the social acculturation process of first year students (Wohn, Ellison, Khan, Fewins-Bliss, & Gray, 2013). Moreover, these social networking sites could meet specific learning needs. A group of South African first year medical students doing a second language communication course were invited to become members of a closed Facebook group with the purpose of lowering the threshold of online learning. These students reported that their metacognitive awareness about their own learning processes was raised, which made it possible for them to progress towards and access the online learning experience. Data collected during the course were analysed following the grounded theory method and a framework for raising metacognitive awareness was created.

While over the past decade social network sites have enabled both learners and teachers to set up various forms of online collaborative learning environments, there is an ongoing discussion on how collaboration through these social media platforms can be situated with regard to the development of metacognitive awareness (Li, Pow & Cheung, 2015). This paper presents a study on the development of learners’ metacognitive awareness of first-year English majors collaborating in a closed Facebook group. The theoretical framework for the development of metacognition, proposed by Gunawardena et al. (2009), was used to analyse the students’ metacognitive strategies when working together online. The study shows that students utilise the social network site to complete given learning tasks, and extend their use of the forum by setting new learning goals and socialising with their peers. The students show that, through peer collaboration, they are able to evaluate and plan their learning process online.

This article presents an approach to fostering (oral) communication skills in L2 English using social media. It proposes that social media provide a setting for synchronous and asynchronous oral CMC and can be a motivating environment for communicative tasks in the lingua franca English as adolescent learners are used to participating online, both in written and spoken modes. This can be exploited in complex competency tasks in which learners are exposed to real-life discourse and the associated linguistic challenges. Complex competency tasks can provide a framework for web-based language learning and facilitate the development of oral communicative competencies. Among the implications for teaching discussed are sensible embedding in tasks, potential issues of student participation and motivation, and the authenticity of the environments. The article concludes that social media provide a fruitful platform for combining web-based and task-based language and media learning in (semi-)authentic contexts in complex competency tasks.

Speakers achieve coherence in discourse by alternating between differential lexical forms e.g. noun phrase, pronoun, and null form in accordance with the accessibility of the entities they refer to, i.e. whether they introduce an entity into discourse for the first time or continue referring to an entity they already mentioned before. Moreover, tracking of entities in discourse is a multimodal phenomenon. Studies show that speakers are sensitive to the informational structure of discourse and use fuller forms (e.g. full noun phrases) in speech and gesture more when re-introducing an entity while they use attenuated forms (e.g. pronouns) in speech and gesture less when maintaining a referent. However, those studies focus mainly on non-pro-drop languages (e.g. English, German and French). The present study investigates whether the same pattern holds for pro-drop languages. It draws data from adult native speakers of Turkish using elicited narratives. We find that Turkish speakers mostly use fuller forms to code subject referents in re-introduction context and the null form in maintenance context and they point to gesture space for referents more in re-introduction context compared maintained context. Hence we provide supportive evidence for the reverse correlation between the accessibility of a discourse referent and its coding in speech and gesture. We also find that, as a novel contribution, third person pronoun is used in re-introduction context only when the referent was previously mentioned as the object argument of the immediately preceding clause.

Fear appeals are frequently used in health communication, for example in anti-smoking campaigns. Of the different theoretical models that predict and explain how fear appeals work, the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM; Witte, 1992) is probably used most often. However, most propositions of the EPPM were not explicitly tested, or received mixed empirical support (Popova, 2012). To clarify the relationships between the variables of the EPPM, four of the EPPM’s propositions were tested by performing correlational and mediation analyses. The results (n = 116) show that a large part of the relationships between the concepts of the EPPM and the outcomes of fear appeals differ from what the EPPM claims: threat and intention did not prove to be related, threat did not mediate the effect of fear on intention, and fear did not prove to influence the fear control responses. The findings from this study raise questions regarding the appropriateness of the EPPM.

Language teaching follows trends in theory of second language development (SLD). In recent years, a dynamic, usage-based (DUB) approach to SLD has gotten theoretical foothold. With DUB principles in mind, a teaching program was developed for teaching Dutch as a second language (L2), where authentic input stood central. The program was based on a popular Dutch movie and has been applied in a foreign language context, working with advanced, German learners of L2 Dutch at the University of Münster (Germany). In an exploratory study, we examined what effect the program had on students´ motivation and general language proficiency. Results indicate that students appreciated the method in several ways (learning, motivation) and that they showed a significant increase in language proficiency. The aim of this report is to provide supported ideas for engaging and effective L2 teaching.

This contribution focuses on the spelling of single consonants after a vowel without primary stress — and therefore a short duration — in polysyllabic Dutch words, e.g. kanaal (‘canal’) and dromedaris (‘dromedary’). The single consonant can be explained on the basis of the (Dutch-oriented) standard pronunciation with tense vowels like [a] or [o], but it can also be related to the (mostly Romance) etymology of the words. Only a few textbooks on Dutch spelling go into this matter. All of them are Flemish, possibly because Flemings pronounce and perceive vowels in open syllables without primary stress more frequently as lax (e.g., [ɑ], [ɔ]). For some words, however, the etymology is ignored and the spelling may have been adapted to the pronunciation, e.g. double 〈f〉 after the first vowel of saffraan (< Fr. safran – ‘saffron’) and single 〈n〉 after 〈o〉 in stationeren (< Fr. stationner – ‘to park’). Although this explanation seems plausible, it raises new questions as well. For example, words like kaproen (= type of headwear), patroon (‘pattern’) and Afrikaan (‘African’) also have an [ɑ]-like pronunciation (similar to saffraan), but unlike saffraan these words do not have a double consonant. Interestingly, for words like stationeren — that contain 〈io〉 + [n] + full vowel — the spelling appears to have changed since the end of the 19th century. De Vries and Te Winkel (1898) still wrote stationneeren (with 〈nn〉). To get more grip on our topic, a thorough study of the Dutch vocabulary is needed, since at the moment, it is unknown for which Dutch words the etymologically motivated spelling is replaced by a more phonetic one. This additional study will, for example, show which category is the most frequent one: the saffraan-type (where the consonant has been doubled) or the stationeren-type (where a double consonant has been replaced by a single one).