International Journal of Applied Linguistics最新文献

A considerable body of research has investigated the influence of linguistic variables on comprehensibility and accentedness in L2 speech. However, studies on this topic have overwhelmingly focused on L2 English, with little known about other L2s. This study investigated linguistic influences on accentedness and comprehensibility in L2 Korean. Participants included 198 L2 Korean speakers of varying proficiency levels and L1 and 82 L1 Korean listeners from South Korea. The speakers completed a monologic speaking task and their speech samples were coded for phonological, lexical, grammatical, and fluency variables. Listener ratings indicated speakers were perceived as more comprehensible than they were nativelike, but the correlation between the two was extremely strong (r = 0.90). Regression models using linguistic variables to predict comprehensibility and accentedness yielded R² values of 0.71 and 0.65, respectively. Most linguistic variables had similar influences on comprehensibility and accentedness, with some notable exceptions: intonational phrasing errors and lexical diversity predicted comprehensibility, but not accentedness.

The New Zealand government delivered regular 1 p.m. televised COVID-19 briefings from March 2020. These events had a crucial communicative function and were usually headed by top government and medical officials. This study focuses on technical vocabulary in a corpus made up of these briefings, including single words (grouped into technical word families) and acronyms (e.g., bubble and PPE) as well as the most frequent two to five-word multiword units (MWUs; e.g., case numbers, genomic sequencing, and chains of transmission) containing at least one technical single-word family member. The corpus consists of 20 prepared speeches: 10 each in 2020 and 2021 by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Director-General of Health Dr. Ashley Bloomfield (50,782 tokens). The results showed that 6.02% of the single-word families (e.g., outbreak(-s), contact(-s/-less)) in the texts were technical, which may present a challenge for comprehension. Unsurprisingly, the Director-General of Health used more technical vocabulary than the Prime Minister. The top 20 MWUs containing technical vocabulary were identified in the corpus. Most were two-word collocations (e.g., negative test, testing centre/s, and number of tests). Implications for identifying and dealing with technical vocabulary in both government communications and language education are discussed.

Given that feedback is increasingly digital and multimodal, there is a pressing need to prepare L2 writing teachers to give multimodal feedback. Yet the notion of multimodal feedback appears underrepresented in extant research on teacher feedback literacy and it is often equated as multimedia feedback. To make feedback relevant to multiplicity in feedback-giving modes and technologies, as well as diversity in student backgrounds and composing practices, this paper proposes the construct of multimodal feedback literacy as an important part of teacher feedback literacy. Grounded in social semiotic of multimodality, this paper elucidates the notions of feedback design, feedback affordance, feedback orchestration, and feedback ensemble as essential dimensions of multimodal feedback literacy. We argue that the development of multimodal feedback literacy entails competences in recognizing the affordances of multiple feedback-giving modes, designing coherent feedback ensembles through orchestrating multiple feedback-giving modes with apt intermodal relations, and managing feedback ensemble as motivated and accumulative. A framework for L2 writing teachers to develop multimodal feedback literacy in relation to a complex and recursive process of being, doing, and becoming is also developed. Implications and challenges are then discussed.

In academic writing, exemplification plays a crucial role in contextualizing complex ideational material through instances the readers can understand. In addition to illustrating ideas through concrete instances, the act of providing examples serves the purpose of helping the readers grasp the writer's intentions. However, strategically performing exemplification to elaborate the propositional material seems to be a challenge for many novice student writers. Although some studies have mentioned that students use significantly less frequently the exemplification resources in their writing, fewer studies have probed into EFL student writing to determine the problems they face in elaborating the ideas. Using the marker approach, which examines the discourse functions bottom-up from markers to moves, the learner corpus of essay writing (LCEW) was analyzed for three major forms of exemplification: representation, argumentation, and analogy. The results indicate that the examples are strictly limited to certain patterns like specifying concepts through a subcategory and illustrating the arguments through everyday experiences. Moreover, many examples deviate from the usual patterns of exemplification causing confusion. These findings have pedagogic implications for academic writing courses in the EFL context.

Applying the task-based language teaching (TBLT) approach to L2 writing research has expanded to include learners’ affective factors and their potential impact on L2 production. However, two affective factors, L2 writing anxiety and self-efficacy, have received scant research attention within the TBLT domain despite evidence to suggest that writing anxiety can diminish L2 written production and self-efficacy can promote L2 written production. This exploratory study examined the interactions among L2 writing anxiety, L2 writing self-efficacy, and L2 writing performance in a simple and complex task version. One hundred L2 learners at a university in the United States completed L2 writing anxiety and self-efficacy questionnaires before performing two written argumentative tasks of varying cognitive complexity in a counterbalanced fashion, with a 1-week interval. Correlational results show that L2 writing anxiety is negatively linked to lexical sophistication and fluency in the simple task, but positively linked to syntactic complexity and fluency in the complex task. L2 writing self-efficacy was negatively linked to lexical diversity and fluency in the complex task. Overall, L2 writing anxiety and L2 writing self-efficacy explained only very small amounts of variance in students’ written performance in both complex conditions, except for fluency in the simple task (R² = 9.2%) and complexity in the complex task (R² = 10.7%), which show medium-sized effects. Our findings contradict existing studies and contribute to an enhanced understanding of the role affective individual differences play in L2 written performance.

Understanding a single English accent is becoming insufficient for English language learners because they are likely to encounter both first (L1) and second-language (L2) speakers of English in various contexts. Hence, different English accents have been incorporated into the recordings used for L2 language assessments, specifically listening comprehension (LC) tests. However, the efficacy of tests using various English accents is not definitively established in the English as a foreign language (EFL) literature. Furthermore, there has been limited investigation specifically into how learners perceive the level of difficulty in comprehending various accents during listening assessments. Therefore, this study examined how the LC scores and comprehensibility ratings (ease of understanding) differed depending on accents. Seventy-nine Japanese adult EFL learners took a multiple-choice question-type LC test featuring three different English accents (i.e., American, British, and Japanese) and then rated how difficult it was to understand each accent. The findings showed that, although the LC test scores did not differ significantly by accent, the participants perceived the British and Japanese accents as more difficult to understand than the American accent. The results imply that while sharing L1 with the speakers and familiarity with a certain accent may not affect speech comprehension, greater familiarity with a given accent can ease comprehension. The findings thus can shed light on the inclusion of a variety of accented speech in language tests and pedagogical instruction.

This study aims to compare how lecturers, also being different English as a lingua franca (ELF) users use various vague expressions in academic lectures in a Chinese English-medium instruction (EMI) university. The study adopts the framework of appraisal grounded in systemic functional linguistic theory to classify all vague expressions according to intensity, amount, and categorisation. It is found that vagueness in relation to amount with no gradable features was used most frequently in the 12 academic lectures of the study, followed by those related to no-scaled categorisation and upscaled intensity. The use of vague expressions is further examined from an academic ELF perspective. We discover that native-speaker lecturers may use more vague expressions concerning amount whereas ELF lecturers may prefer those concerning intensity. Finally, we suggest some pedagogical implications of using vagueness in ELF communication for delivering academic lectures in the EMI university context.

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT with their human-like intelligence and language processing capabilities are significantly impacting the way we live, work, and communicate with each other. While scholars have increasingly focused on the use of GenAI in higher education since its inception, little is known about how key higher education stakeholders, particularly students, perceive its impact on teaching and learning within the context of academic communication, an area central to students' development of transferable skills and literacy competencies yet heavily influenced by the technology. This empirical study addresses the gap by investigating students' experiences and attitudes toward GenAI tools for English academic communication, focusing on their overall perceptions, perceived benefits, limitations, and challenges. Drawing on data from a questionnaire survey with 475 students and interviews with 12 at two universities in China, our findings indicate that students generally view GenAI positively, considering them useful for learning academic communication skills, particularly in writing, grammar, vocabulary, and reading. However, limitations are recognized in terms of giving feedback on critical thinking, creativity, and speaking skills. In addition, information reliability, ethical issues, and impact on assessment and academic integrity also emerged as important concerns. Our study argues that universities should embrace and capitalize on the affordances of GenAI and address its challenges to better support students' learning of critical academic literacy.

Technology is constantly changing the language learning environment and online language learning (OLL) has attracted increasing attention. In this study, EFL learners’ perceptions of the OLL environments and the relationships between these perceptions and the learners’ emotions and approaches to online learning technologies were investigated. A sample of 567 Chinese university EFL learners from 18 public higher education institutions across 5 provinces responded to an online questionnaire survey. The data analysis based on structural equation modelling revealed that the EFL learners’ perceptions of task orientation, innovation and individualisation were positively related to the deep approach to online learning technologies. However, unlike previous findings, no significant relationship was found between the factors of the relationship dimension and the students' approaches to online learning technologies (SAOLT). Perceived innovation was found to be negatively related to enjoyment, and perceived personalization was found to be positively related to anxiety. Furthermore, the learners’ emotions, especially anxiety, significantly mediated the relationship between perceived task orientation and the surface approach to online learning technologies. Overall, the findings of this study improve the understanding of EFL learners’ online learning experiences and provide practical insights for enhancing the quality of OLL environments and promoting learning outcomes.

Adopting a comprehensive dual-focus approach to oral fluency development, the present study examined the developmental trajectories of oral fluency in tertiary-level Chinese EFL learners and identified the motivational attractor states helpful for shaping their oral production. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected over two semesters with monologue tasks and semi-structured interviews, respectively. Oral fluency development was examined using moving min–max graphs, change point analysis, and Monte Carlo simulations, while the retrodiction approach was utilized to identify influential motivational attractor states. Results showed that, over the course of the study, the two learners experienced distinct variability and phase shifts in their development of oral fluency, largely attributable to their unique motivational attractor states. By employing such a dual-focus approach, the present study provided a nuanced picture of Chinese EFL learners’ developmental dynamics in terms of both oral fluency and learning motivation and the adaptive interactions between them, thus enriching our understanding of how oral fluency development relates to learner motivation.