Foreign Language Annals最新文献

Text chat facilitates L2 use by providing learners with extended time to plan, monitor, and process production during interactional tasks. However, learners may not naturally take advantage of these affordances, especially for providing peer feedback. This study used video-enhanced chat scripts to examine the behavior of beginner L2 Spanish learners (n = 46) completing decision-consensus tasks via text chat, investigating how learners interacted with the medium to self-monitor by deleting text before sending. Learners were also differentially assigned to receive metacognitive instruction (MI) to learn ways to provide corrective feedback to peers or engage in language-related episodes (LREs). Results showed that all learners frequently used text chat's affordances to self-correct and also integrated technology to resolve LREs (creating technology-assisted LREs). However, MI did not have a significant impact on the production of corrective feedback or LREs, potentially due to attentional resources expended during self-correction. These findings suggest that completing task-based activities within text chat may be beneficial for promoting beginner learners' linguistic processing and integrating technology to facilitate discussion of L2 form but less impactful for promoting peer feedback.

An important first step to globalizing and decentralizing foreign language education is to clarify current language teachers' perceptions of language varieties and how these perceptions influence their pedagogy. The present study looked at English and French language classrooms in K-12 and university settings in the United States to compare attitudes around varieties of two dominant global languages with colonial legacies through an anonymous questionnaire completed by 36 language teachers. The study aimed to understand to what extent English and French language teachers drew on the linguistic diversity of the respective languages and if there was a connection between received ideas and attitudes around varieties and approaches taken in language classrooms. Findings suggest that language teachers were influenced by their own language learning histories, leading to a misalignment between teaching beliefs and pedagogical practices. Additionally, language teachers were subject to curricular constraints that influenced their teaching practices around language varieties. Implications for teacher education are discussed.

While discourse markers (DMs) are crucial for coherence and interactional competence, previous research suggests that learners' usage of DMs differs from L1 speakers. Prior research has taken either a discourse-functional or interactional approach, yet combining these two methods may provide greater understanding of the unique learner communicative needs that drive the acquisition and use of DMs. This investigation contributes to research on interlanguage DM use by quantitatively investigating the frequency and functional distribution of the Spanish DM pues by L2 and L1 speakers of Spanish from a discourse-functional perspective and qualitatively examining pues as an interactional resource. Oral interviews with 58 L2 and 14 L1 speakers of Spanish were analyzed, revealing distinct frequency and distributional patterns across groups and unique L2 interactional needs that are supported with the DM pues. Results inform L2 learners and teachers of the importance of DMs for interactions and provide classroom implications.

This study examines the value undergraduate students (n = 4458) place on proficiency in languages other than English (LOTEs) in terms of their personal interests, major(s), and career plans. Combining quantitative and qualitative analyses of large-scale survey data, the study further explores the reasons students outline for (not) enrolling in LOTE courses and what would motivate them to enroll in language courses in the future. Results indicate that students attached most value in relation to personal interests, followed by career plans and major. In addition, students' demographics and prior experience with language can also impact their future enrollment decisions. The results suggest that not only should institutions lead the way by emphasizing the importance of learning languages, but also that language programs need to listen to students' voices and help them establish clear links between their academic majors, their future career and study plans as well as their personal interests.

Language program evaluation is a complicated field of practice, especially for models that are not commonly implemented in higher education. This article features Languages Across the Curriculum (LAC), a lesser-known program model, reporting on a qualitative evaluative program study taking place in a Northeastern university. It identifies challenges associated with common program evaluation approaches (used in LAC and other language models) and advances a holistic framework, informed by multiple learning perspectives, to interpret students' experiences. Drawing on interviews with 16 students of Korean, Mandarin, and Spanish (as primary data) and triangulating interviews with observations in nine classrooms as well as other programmatic artifacts, it explores how participants reflected on their experiences and identifies the learning types that LAC appears to support. Findings indicate that LAC especially supported critical content-based language learning, language maintenance, and peer-to-peer collaboration among learners of mixed abilities. Implications for LAC program evaluation are discussed.