International Journal of Applied Linguistics最新文献

In the past few decades, teacher identity has been a popular topic in the field of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching. As a construct that is socially constructed, teacher identity is influenced by situational contexts and is not fixed but multifaceted. While many studies have examined pre-service and novice teachers’ identities, relatively fewer paid attention to experienced language teachers’ identities and the conflicts they may encounter. This study investigates one seasoned EFL teacher's multiple identities and the tensions that existed in her identity in a Chinese university setting. Data included a semi-structured interview, class recordings, a stimulated recall, and artifacts such as the teacher's materials for classroom teaching. Findings demonstrated that the teacher practiced three sub-identities in her teaching, namely, an English language teacher, a guide, and an academic advisor. Additionally, tensions within her identity as an English educator were identified, consisting of the popularity of technology-driven tools in students’ English learning activities and the need to conduct research while not possessing sufficient research skills. The pedagogical insights generated underscored the importance of teachers’ agency and institutional support in resolving the tensions to facilitate experienced language teachers’ ongoing professional development and identity construction.

Learning academic disciplinary knowledge through English as a medium of instruction (EMI) in higher education can be emotionally taxing. However, compared to the bulk of studies investigating the role of emotions in language learning, research that explores students’ emotional experiences in EMI contexts remains scarce. Drawing on a sample of 746 undergraduate students at an EMI university in China, the present study disentangles how two heavily researched emotions (i.e., enjoyment and anxiety) affect students’ learning motivation and willingness to communicate (WTC) inside and outside of EMI classrooms. Students’ motivation is conceptualized through the notion of ideal self to represent their aspired future self-image as competent language users (ideal L2 self) and subject experts in the field (ideal disciplinary self). Results from structural equation modeling analyses highlighted enjoyment as a strong positive predictor for both ideal selves and WTC. In contrast, anxiety failed to predict neither ideal L2 self nor ideal disciplinary self but had a negative effect on WTC. The two types of ideal selves were found to differ in their respective impact on students’ WTC inside of EMI classrooms yet neither predicted WTC outside of classrooms. Pedagogical implications for EMI teaching and learning are provided.

Teacher agency is considered a key driver of teacher professional growth, student improvement, and educational change. This study contributes to the sparse research on language teacher agency in blended learning (BL). Using activity theory to conceptualize teacher agency, this study explores how two English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers exerted agency while implementing BL at a Chinese university. This study also examines the factors that mediate the exercise of agency. Data were collected through classroom observations, interviews with both teachers and their students, and course documents to provide a thorough understanding of teachers’ experiences with blended teaching. The data analysis revealed that successful agentic actions to address contradictions included selecting the appropriate delivery to match learning goals, making good use of online tools for interaction, assigning students active roles, flexibly enacting rules, and building a supportive climate. However, some contradictions within the instructional activity system remain unresolved. Mediating factors such as tools (teachers’ expertise and beliefs), community (students and other professors), and rules (curriculum assessment) were found to shape teacher agency in the BL context. This study contributes to the literature on teacher agency in BL, and provides practical recommendations for teacher professional development and curriculum reform.

In the wake of globalisation and the widespread dominance of English, Southeast Asian countries have experienced significant shifts in their foreign language policies, prioritising English instruction over other languages. While numerous studies have explored teacher agency in response to educational change, understanding the motivations behind their actions warrants further attention. Amidst this evolving educational landscape in culturally nuanced contexts like Southeast Asia, unpacking the influence of Asian sociocultural values on how teachers exert agency during this transition could provide in-depth insights into teacher agency and their decision making. Employing a sociocultural approach and drawing on Bourdieu's theory of practice, this paper examines the sociocultural factors shaping the agency of 20 teachers in a Vietnamese university as they respond to a profound educational change—the transition from teaching modern foreign languages (e.g., French, Chinese, and Russian) to teaching English. Through teacher interviews with 20 transitioned teachers, supplemented by insights from interviews with two faculty and university leaders, the findings reveal the embodiment of Bourdieu's concepts of Habitus and Capital in Vietnamese adaptability, flexibility, family roles, responsibilities, and teachers’ sense of collectivity as influential factors on teacher agency. Additionally, the hierarchical nature of change implementation, as reflected in leaders’ orientations, organisational constraints, and administrative styles, viewed through the lens of Field and social networks, contributes to the intricate dynamics of the transition process. Understanding these findings is crucial for comprehending the factors that constrain and facilitate teachers’ responses to change within the complex interplay of individual dispositions, societal structures, and power distribution within the educational sphere.

Building on a World Englishes perspective, this article revisits foreign language confidence (FLC) and elaborates on the development and validation of a three-factor Foreign Language Confidence Scale (FLCS) including Foreign Language Competence, Sense of Linguistic Security, and Sense of Linguistic Ownership. It first critically examines the existing understanding and measurement of FLC. Then it offers a theoretical and empirical justification for the three-factor proposition in the FLCS. To examine the psychometric quality of the FLCS, two datasets (Sample 1: N = 673, Sample 2: N = 380) were collected from 1053 undergraduate English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners at a top-tier university in China. Results of exploratory factor analysis using Sample 1 demonstrated a stable three-factor structure in the FLCS with sufficient factorial eigenvalues and strong item loadings. The confirmatory factor analysis based on Sample 2 cross-validated the FLCS's underlying factor structure and substantiated the reliability and validity (e.g., convergent and discriminant validity) of the three-factor 16-item FLCS. This article also discusses the psychometric properties of the FLCS and points out its potential use for future teaching and research purposes against the backdrop of decolonizing English language education.

This study discusses the relationship among various factors in English communication, including social presence, international posture (IP), willingness to communicate (WTC), second language learning motivation, and English proficiency. The hypothesis was that IP (having things to communicate to the world) would affect social presence, but WTC would augment its effect on social presence. To confirm this as well as the positioning of social presence in English learning, structural equation modeling was performed on the survey responses of 325 undergraduate students in Japan. The first model revealed that the path from IP to social presence was not significant but the indirect effect of WTC on social presence was. Since the model did not show a good fit, it was improved by eliminating the insignificant path and assuming covariance among the error variables. As a result, the final model showed a good fit. Within the same model, the path from IP to English proficiency via WTC and motivation and the path from IP to social presence via WTC were found to be moderately influential. In other words, the model explains that as IP increases, social presence via WTC and English proficiency via WTC and motivation also increase.

Metacognitive regulation refers to learners’ ability to use a repertoire of metacognitive strategies to guide, observe, and manage thoughts, actions, and emotions in learning activities. It has been widely acknowledged as a significant predictor of language learning success, including writing. However, this line of research has been conducted in a single language context, and the interactions across L1 and L2 contexts have received insufficient scholarly attention. Situated in mainland China, we raise an innovative attempt to investigate metacognitive strategies in writing with a cross-linguistic approach, thus illuminating the conceptualization of metacognitive regulation by testing its trait/state distinction. A group of 502 university students from different disciplinary majors were recruited to report their metacognitive strategy use in L1 and L2 task-situated writing by filling in the assigned post-task questionnaires. Multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) on the two questionnaire datasets provided empirical evidence for the cross-language generalizability of metacognitive regulation in writing with the identified measurement invariance of the factor structure between L1 and L2 contexts, indicating its trait facet. However, the latent mean comparison results revealed that the actual usage frequency of metacognitive strategies scored significantly higher in L1 writing than in L2 writing, suggesting the state facet. These results are discussed extensively in this study to inform relevant theories and pedagogical activities.

Second/foreign language (L2) learners often go through a gamut of conflicting experiences embedded within their emotional system, which can be managed through emotion regulation (ER). Motivated by complex dynamic systems theory (CDST), this qualitative study aimed to explore the signature dynamics of positive and negative emotions among six Iranian adolescent English language learners. Additionally, the study investigated how learners manage their emotions in the L2 classroom. Using the CDST as its main theoretical framework and retrodictive qualitative modeling as its main methodology, the current investigation revealed that the learners’ emotional systems were mediated by internal and external contexts, as well as dynamicity. It was further discovered that ER strategies were driven by multiple simultaneous factors influencing emotional systems and the adaptability of those systems to new situations. In the end, we discuss how policymakers, teachers, and researchers can adopt the findings to provide some well-needed support for classroom-based L2 learners.

The past decades have witnessed a significant increase in the number of global Chinese as a second language (L2) learners. Accompanying the surge is the growing body of research on their motivational factors. This mixed-methods study was primarily informed by Dörnyei's L2 motivational self system (L2MSS), aiming to scrutinize Chinese as a second language (CSL) learners’ motivational factors from the perspectives of selves and contexts. Leveraging the concepts of the ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self from L2MSS, the anti-ought-to-L2 self was incorporated into the framework. The L2 learning experience was reframed into three contextual dimensions, including attitudes toward the L2 community, cultural interest and pedagogical influence. Data were collected from 231 international students from a Chinese comprehensive university. Factor analyses confirmed seven motivational factors. Findings revealed that the ideal L2 self, ought-to L2 self, pedagogical influence and cultural interest were effective in predicting individuals’ intended learning effort. Significant differences were identified in the motivational selves based on demographic variables of employment status, gender and student type. The novelty of this study lies in its focus on the motivations of languages other than English learners and the refinement of the L2MSS framework. It also offers CSL instructors pedagogical implications for developing targeted teaching strategies and promoting motivations among students from distinct educational and socio-economic backgrounds.

Vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs) are one of the key variables that allow researchers to understand learners’ success in second language (L2) learning. Different questionnaires are available to examine L2 learners' use of VLSs, but most of them suffered from problems while gathering sufficient statistical evidence. The present study sought to replicate the construct validity of the VLS questionnaire from a different statistical perspective. Particularly, we conceive of the nine constructs of VLSs as emergent variables (composite) rather than latent variables (common factor). In contrast to latent variables, emergent variables are constructs that are formed by their items. To test this proposition, we make use of the confirmatory composite analysis (CCA), which is akin to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), that was developed for assessing emergent variables. To evaluate the CCA model of VLSs, 216 Saudi university students of English completed an online questionnaire. The results indicated that CCA better fitted our data while CFA appeared to provide a less than acceptable fit. Moreover, we examined the criterion-related validity of the VLSs through the composite model and showed that two constructs, inferencing and self-initiation positively related to self-perception of English proficiency. Overall, the findings seem to suggest that the VLSs are better seen as made of emergent variables, with the items defining the constructs. The findings hold methodological and empirical implications for the L2 research.