Pedagogical Linguistics - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2023

This article details how introductory linguistics courses can increase student engagement and learning through a project-based approach, whereby the students first study the subfields of linguistics with a view to complete the main project of the course, namely to construct a novel language. I provide information from a semester-long course with specific project-based activities teachers could utilize in their classes. I also thoroughly examine the constructed language projects based on 33 student submissions in an introductory linguistics course in the US. The analysis indicates a high level of engagement and creativity by the students in creating a distinct orthography, phonetic, morphological, and syntactic rules and semantic properties for their constructed languages. The results from a 20-item questionnaire and student exit interviews indicate that the project-based approach adopted in the completion of their constructed languages proved effective in (a) improving student motivation and engagement; (b) helping students apply the knowledge of the material to carry out linguistic analysis; (c) enhancing students’ language learning skills; (d) encouraging them to study additional foreign languages; and finally (e) promoting linguistic diversity. Hence, as an innovative and effective method still in its infancy, project-based learning should be more widely implemented in linguistics instruction.

This study investigates the relationship between (extra)linguistic variables and proficiency in a foreign language. Based on 1,403 secondary school students in Germany (age 12/13 and 14/15), we assess whether proficiency in German, if applicable also Russian or Turkish, cognitive ability, school type, gender, socio-economic status, self-concept, motivation, and self-assessment function differently in predicting English language proficiency when monolingual German learners of English (n = 849) are compared to their bilingual peers (Russian-German: n = 236; Turkish-German: n = 318). Two comprehensive structural equation models capture the multitude of factors influencing foreign language acquisition and contribute to the discussion on multilingual advantages or effects. The results reveal that most variables are statistically significant, but the models function comparably across the three language groups with only minor contrasts regarding effect sizes. We submit that the three language groups are more similar than different and that the heritage languages Russian and Turkish add comparatively little to predicting English language proficiency.

German modal particles (MPs) show semantic, pragmatic, and syntactic peculiarities which make them specifically interesting for research on language processing. However, so far, there are no tests available that reliably elicit MPs in order to study their production in different groups of speakers. This paper presents the Modal Particle Elicitation Test – MoPET. Based on simple contexts and black and white drawings, it is the first test that elicits a wide range of MPs by incorporating the semantic, pragmatic, and syntactic peculiarities of MPs. The goal of this paper is to evaluate whether the test reliably elicits MPs in adult German L1 speakers, in order to use it for research on different speakers (e.g., patients and L1/L2 learners) in the future. Results of a pilot study with 27 adult native speakers of German demonstrate that the test reliably elicits a wide range of nineteen different MPs and a wide range of different sentence types that are strongly interconnected with the use of MPs. Crucially, each of the twelve critical scenes of the test elicited at least one MP, and each participant produced at least one MP, which also makes the test suitable for diagnostic purposes.

Role-play as a bridging and integrating practice in language teaching and development of pragmatic competence in learners is well-established. In an EAP classroom (Van Dyke & Acton, 2021) explored the impact of one fluency protocol, Cooperative Attending Skills Training, by which students were trained to listen attentively to shared personal stories, working toward more sophisticated strategies of conversational interaction. That system included dialogic, pragmatics-focused, spontaneous analysis and instructor-student discussion of interactional discourse features. With that experience, further modeling and conceptual input, participants in this study engaged in six role-plays, each involving a problem requiring pragmatic accommodation. The data from transcribed role-plays were analyzed in terms of pragmatic discourse functions and NVivo-based thematic threads. The generally successful application of the targeted skills and concepts by course end most likely resulted from the engaging meta-pragmatic interactions preceding the role-plays, and the formal and informal instructor feedback related to implicature, prosody, implicit understandings, direct conversation strategies, grammar, and vocabulary.