Dutch Journal of Applied Linguistics - Volume 8, Issue 2, 2019

The current paper explores whether a Dynamic Usage Based (DUB) approach – which takes authentic meaningful language use with repetition and scaffolding for comprehension as its basis – can also be implemented in a CALL environment. The effectiveness of the DUB-CALL program was tested in a semester-long experiment, comparing it with a teacher-fronted DUB program (using the same materials as the CALL program) and a traditional CLT program; 228 university undergraduates in Sri Lanka participated. Language gains were assessed in a pre-post design with an objective General English Proficiency (GEP) test and a writing task. The results show that the students in the DUB-CALL condition performed significantly better on the GEP test than the students in the two teacher-fronted classes. The results of the writing tests show that all groups improved significantly, but here there were no differences among groups.

Linguistic relativity is the influence of language on other realms of cognition. For instance, the way movement is expressed in a person’s native language may influence how they perceive movement. Motion event encoding (MEE) is usually framed as a typological dichotomy. Path-in-verb languages tend to encode path information within the verb (e.g., ‘leave’), whereas manner-in-verb languages encode manner (e.g., ‘jump’). The results of MEE-based linguistic relativity experiments range from no effect to effects on verbal and nonverbal cognition. Seeking a more definitive conclusion, we propose linguistic and experimental enhancements. First, we examine state-of-the-art typology, suggesting how a recent MEE classification across twenty languages (Verkerk, 2014) may enable more powerful analyses. Second, we review procedural challenges such as the influence of verbal thought and second-guessing in experiments. To tackle these challenges, we propose distinguishing verbal and nonverbal subgroups, and having enough filler items. Finally we exemplify this in an experimental design.

The present study examined whether ten motivations to read expository texts moderated the effects of cognitive skills on eighth graders’ expository text comprehension, while accounting for the main effects of cognitive skills. Furthermore, it was examined whether the effect of motivational dimensions on expository text comprehension differed between monolingual and bilingual Dutch students, and between poor and good readers. Hundred fifty-two eighth graders took tests measuring their expository text comprehension, sentence reading fluency, linguistic knowledge, metacognitive knowledge and motivations to read expository texts. None of ten motivational aspects did moderate the effect of cognitive skills on expository text comprehension. Furthermore, there were no differences between monolingual and bilingual Dutch students, or between poor and good readers, in terms of the relationship between motivational dimensions and expository text comprehension. Differences between our findings and results from other studies are interpreted in the context of measurement specificity and the school system.

A common assumption is that children learn a language implicitly and without conscious awareness of form and grammar, but this assumption has virtually never been tested experimentally. We propose a novel experimental method to examine if children’s ability to acquire linguistic regularities relates to awareness of these regularities. Traditional methods investigating awareness often rely on learners’ abilities to verbalize their awareness. For young children, such methods are not adequate because they often cannot reflect explicitly on their acquired knowledge, although they might be aware of it in a way they cannot verbalize. To test this, we adapted a method that is used to investigate awareness in animals, because it does not rely on verbalization for demonstrating awareness. Pilot results with 26 adults and 48 kindergartners show some important procedural prerequisites are met. In future research, this procedure could be used to investigate the development of meta-linguistic awareness in children.

In this study we conducted an experiment aiming to compare the performance of language learners and digital grammar checkers at supplying gender marking in French. A set of test items exhibiting typical gender marking configurations was submitted to three grammar checkers for French (Antidote, Scribens and BonPatron). The outcomes were compared to those of native speakers and second language learners of French at a B1 level.

The results revealed that only Antidote and Scribens outperformed both native speakers and second language learners of French in adjective-noun and fronted noun-past participle agreement constructions. An opposite pattern, however, appeared for clitic-past participle constructions for which native speakers outperformed Antidote and Scribens.

We thus conclude that from the three grammar checkers under investigation, Antidote and Scribens might be effective to improve the native speakers’ and second language learners’ awareness of gender marking errors, but only in adjective-noun and fronted noun-past participle agreement constructions.

Studies on English language learning materials indicate that women are underrepresented and often appear in low-status professions, though gender equality increases within the last decade (Sunderland, 2015). To what degree does this finding apply for textbooks for learners of Dutch as a Second Language (DSL)? To our knowledge, there are no studies into gender and profession in DSL materials. Dutch however, constitutes an interesting case as both female, male and ‘gender neutral’ professional role nouns exist, while their use is not formally regulated. We systematically analyzed textual and pictorial representations of female and male professionals in textbook chapters about work in fifteen DSL textbooks published within the last 50 years. We drew on quantitative (e.g., number of fe/male and ‘gender neutral’ professional names; instances of male generics and firstness; number of depicted wo/men) and qualitative (e.g., nature of the most frequent professional names; categorization of textbook images) methods to do so. Results show that women are not underrepresented in dialogues and pictures, but that dialogue themes are unequally divided over women and men. Moreover, women are backgrounded through male generics and male firstness and female professional names appear less frequently than male names. Women are also described in gender typical roles, whereas men are not. This holds for both older (1974–2009) and recent textbooks (2011–2017). Overall, more ‘gender neutral’ nouns refer to men in the corpus, but they are used more frequently to refer to women within the last decade. Future studies should address the present theme from psycholinguistic and classroom discourse perspectives and consider additional analytical domains (e.g. chapters about family) and foci (e.g. analyses of verbs associated with wo/men). We discuss pedagogical implications (e.g., screen materials for male firstness; describe women in a greater variety of roles; reverse gender roles in class) for those with concern for gender equality in language education.

This study examined the effect of task mode (written vs. spoken) and discourse mode (pair vs. individual) on advanced Iranian EFL learners’ task performance. Participants, four groups of advanced learners, performed a narrative task in four conditions: the first group of participants performed the task individually in a spoken mode, the second group performed the task individually in a written mode, the third group performed the task in pairs in a spoken mode, and the participants in the fourth group performed the task in pairs in a written mode. The results indicated that the participants’ performances, in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency improved greatly among learners who worked in pairs rather than individually, and those who performed written tasks rather than oral ones.

The present study investigates the effect of prosodic feature awareness training on the intelligibility of speech produced by Iranian interpreter trainees. Two groups of student interpreters were formed. All were native speakers of Farsi who studied English translation and interpreting at the BA level. Participants took a pretest of speaking skills before starting the program so that their speech intelligibility level was rated. The control group listened to authentic audio tracks in English and discussed their contents, watched authentic English movies, discussed issues in the movies in pairs in the classroom. The experimental group spent part of the time on theoretical explanation of, and practical exercises with, English prosody. Students then took a posttest in speaking skills so that the effect of treatment on the intelligibility of their speech could be assessed. The results show that the prosody awareness training significantly improved the students’ speech intelligibility.

Orthography is considered to be a major problem in Dutch education, since many pupils don’t seem to be able to master orthographic rules, even after years of education. In educational literature it is argued that the problems related to spelling are caused by approaches that focus more on rules of thumb than on linguistic insights. This is somewhat remarkable, since a good understanding of the Dutch orthographic system requires a fair amount of morphological knowledge. In order to effectively implement this knowledge, the development of a morphological awareness (MA) seems to be required. Therefore, a short intervention was designed for the upper levels of secondary schools (4 havo) which aimed to foster MA and, subsequently, improve orthographic skills. Results of this quasi-experimental study indicate that a short intervention can significantly boost MA, but that students don’t seem to be able to use MA effectively to enhance spelling performance.