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Pedagogical Linguistics - Online First
Online First articles are the published Version of Record, made available as soon as they are finalized and formatted. They are in general accessible to current subscribers, until they have been included in an issue, which is accessible to subscribers to the relevant volume
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A course of free voluntary reading on linguistic principles for average to below-average writers in university
Author(s): Geoffrey J. HuckAvailable online: 12 September 2023More LessAbstractThis article describes an experiment in pedagogy for general writing improvement at the university level consisting of a course of Free Voluntary Reading (FVR), which can be offered either independently of or together with standard courses on writing. Evidence so far supporting the efficacy of FVR in helping students to improve their writing skills has largely come from the K-12 grades and university-age foreign language students, so whether it would prove useful for university students in general is open to question. A linguistic perspective is adopted, which entails a methodology for the experiment that differs in major respects from that which is typical in composition studies. The results of the experiment showed that a course of FVR, independently of instruction in writing, may be effective in improving university students’ grammatical fluency in writing.
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Project-based learning in an Eigogaku course
Author(s): Paul RichardsAvailable online: 12 September 2023More LessAbstractThis exploratory study examines the role of project-based learning (PBL) in an Eigogaku (English linguistics) course for preservice English teachers studying at an English medium college in Japan. Three projects were designed to connect the course modules on phonetics/phonology, morphology, and syntax with language teaching applications. At the start and conclusion of the course, students completed a survey that included an open-ended question about the role of linguistics in language teaching and 29 Likert-scale response items targeting their understanding of linguistic concepts, pedagogical applications of linguistics, their beliefs and values about language teaching and learning, and learner autonomy. Responses to the open-ended question showed an increase in explanations of how linguistics can inform pedagogical practices and increase teacher agency. Responses to the Likert-scale items indicated greater understanding of linguistic concepts, pedagogical practices, and learner autonomy, but minimal change regarding beliefs about language learning and teaching. Implications for these findings and recommendations for future research on linguistics education for language teachers are discussed.
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Assessing knowledge of English verb placement and subject-verb agreement among multilingual students in grades 5–7 in Norway
Author(s): Dianna WallaAvailable online: 28 July 2023More LessAbstractThis study investigates knowledge of English verbal morphosyntax among multilingual students and their L1 Norwegian peers in grades 5–7 in Norway. L1 Norwegian speakers have previously shown transfer from Norwegian to verb placement or subject-verb agreement in L2 English, but their multilingual peers may have an advantage in acquiring these properties in L3 English due to their knowledge of other languages. A written test examining verb placement in verb-second (V2) contexts and subject-verb agreement was used to compare L1 Norwegian students with their multilingual peers, who spoke a variety of different L1s in the home. The results showed that the difference in mean scores alone was not significant between the L1 Norwegian group and the multilingual group, but when grade level and academic achievement were controlled for, linguistic group membership did significantly predict better performance by the multilingual group for some, but not all, grammatical conditions examined.
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Impact of global text cohesion on students’ listening comprehension of informational listening texts
Author(s): Anke Schmitz, Hanne Brandt and Björn RothsteinAvailable online: 13 June 2023More LessAbstractListening comprehension serves as a basic means for communication and participation in society. Unfortunately, especially low-performing students have difficulties understanding informational content presented in a listening format, even more so than with the comprehension of printed texts. Based on empirical findings that text features, such as global text cohesion, have proven to be effective for promoting reading comprehension, and cognitive processes of reading and listening to academic texts share commonalities, the question arises as to how much global cohesion can support students’ listening comprehension. 140 ninth-grade students in German secondary schools listened to one of two informational listening texts which differed in their degree of global text cohesion (low vs. high in cohesion). Listening comprehension was assessed with a written test after listening. Regression analyses show that global text cohesion promotes listening comprehension and that the effect of cohesion remains significant and stable when controlling for topic-related prior knowledge and language-related background variables. Low-performing students profited more from the highly cohesive text than high-performing students. Thus, cohesion contributes to the comprehensibility of informational listening texts which can have implications for the construction of listening texts and listening comprehension instruction at school.
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Collostructional transfer effects in Turkish learners of English
Author(s): Tan Arda GedikAvailable online: 30 January 2023More LessAbstractSecond language acquisition studies have mainly considered transfer between two or more languages as a binary setting, it either happens or does not. However, research emerging out of usage-based approaches show that such transfer effects might be more gradient than ever thought before (e.g., Goschler & Stefanowitsch, 2019 ). Investigating a construction that has been reported to pose problems such as overpassivization to L2 English learners, i.e., unaccusatives, this study aims to trace gradient transfer effects between Turkish and English in the intransitive-unaccusative construction in Turkish learners of English. Following Goschler and Stefanowitsch’s (2019) method to analyze, extract experimental items from English and Turkish corpora, and experiment with collostructional transfer effects, the study revealed similar findings. Findings suggest that learners are likely to transfer strongly entrenched L1 items into the L2 even at advanced proficiency levels. Interestingly, when the item is weakly entrenched in L1, speakers attune to the input in L2 with growing proficiency. Furthermore, proficiency or experience helps with preempting non-optimal constructional combinations. Pedagogically, the study suggests that collo-profiles may help teachers and students with mitigating unconventional item-construction combinations at advanced levels.
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Turn design in talk-in-interaction in a foreign language – Collaborative turn constructions and ellipses in casual conversations among German high-school learners of English
Author(s): Alexander HaselowAvailable online: 08 November 2022More LessAbstractThis study explores the ability of advanced adolescent German learners of English to optimize turn design for talk-in-interaction, focusing on collaborative turn constructions and ellipses. Data deriving from recorded conversations conducted in the foreign language among German learners of English are compared to conversations between native speakers of British English and integrated into a diagnostic approach that helps identify deficits in the field of interactional skills. The results show that the two syntactic formats occur less frequently in learner conversations, which indicates that learners are less likely to use syntactic resources to bind their contribution immediately to prior talk or to the situational context. It is argued that this has a negative effect upon the sequential fit of turns and that conversational practice targeted toward a syntax for conversation would help learners achieving a more fluid interplay of conversational moves.
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The efficacy of lexical stress diacritics on the English comprehensibility and accentedness of Korean speakers
Author(s): Keun Kim and John ArchibaldAvailable online: 29 September 2022More LessAbstractThe purpose of the study was to examine the efficacy of lexical stress diacritics on the English comprehensibility and accentedness of Korean speakers. To this end, 30 native Korean participants read aloud 15 English sentences without diacritics in the pretest. Then, they were given explicit instructions on the production of higher pitch and extended duration as a marker of English stress with musical notation provided. In the posttest, the participants read aloud the same sentences as were in the pretest but which had diacritics indicating stress placement. In the delayed posttest, two days after the pretest and the posttest, the participants read 15 sentences without diacritics again to see if the effects of the treatment were retained. Randomized speech samples were rated by three native speakers of English in relation to comprehensibility and accentedness. Findings showed that significant improvements were observed after the treatment in both comprehensibility and accentedness.
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What is in the learner’s mind when trying to verbalize grammatical rules?
Author(s): Vi Thanh Son and Gisela HåkanssonAvailable online: 20 September 2022More LessAbstractThe present study examines the outcome of teaching second language English (L2 English) third-person singular present tense -s for declarative knowledge in two different settings, namely Sweden and Vietnam. Third person -s is one of the most studied grammatical structures in second language acquisition research. Data are collected in two classroom contexts with different teaching traditions. Participants are 76 young learners, 11–12 years old, 32 with Swedish as L1 and 44 with L1 Vietnamese. The results demonstrate differences in learner outcomes in these two groups. The Vietnamese learners outperformed the Swedish learners on the tests of declarative knowledge. The analyses of learner explanations of third-person singular present tense -s reveal that learners tend to decompose this complex rule into several features, which sometimes lead them into misconceptions. This has pedagogical implications about EFL teaching and learning for young learners.
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More evidence that a usage-based, applied cognitive linguistics approach is effective for teaching the Spanish prepositions por and para
Author(s): Elizabeth M. KisslingAvailable online: 08 September 2022More LessAbstractWhile applying cognitive linguistics (CL) to language teaching has been proven effective for teaching polysemous prepositions in English, it has demonstrated less success with the difficult-to-acquire Spanish prepositions por and para. This points to the need for more practical research investigating if and how CL might be effective for this particular target, especially given that conventional instruction has been found to be lacking. The current study compared three instructional conditions in intact intermediate Spanish classes. The first was a traditional approach to teaching por and para that presented learners with lists of disconnected uses in one lesson (n = 32). The second was an applied CL approach that presented Principled Polysemy Networks gradually over time (n = 34), an incremental approach that is usage-based and is a best practice for cognitively demanding instruction. The third was a traditional approach that presented lists of disconnected uses but incrementally over time (n = 26). The usage-based CL approach was found to confer the most advantage for learners on a multiple-choice test, but not a fill-in-the-blank test. The findings are discussed in relation to their pedagogical applications, future directions for applied CL research, and limitations of the study.
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Pedagogical linguistics
Author(s): Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig
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Towards a pedagogical linguistics
Author(s): Richard Hudson
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Editorial
Author(s): Andreas Trotzke and Tom Rankin
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