Foreign Language Annals最新文献

This article examines enrollments in languages other than English in United States higher education from the perspective of geographical distribution. While the overall decline in language enrollments is well known, enrollments are also very unequal across states when accounting for population. By cross-referencing MLA language enrollment data with demographic data, numerous predictors were tested for their efficacy in explaining inequality in Fall 2021 language enrollments. The only predictor found to affect language enrollments in a state was the state's political leanings as defined by voting in the 2020 U.S. presidential election: the more strongly a state voted for the Republican candidate, the lower its rate of language enrollment. An analysis of the changes in enrollment between 2016 and 2021 also showed a non-significant trend whereby states that voted more strongly for the Republican candidate tended to have more enrollment decline than those that voted for the Democratic candidate.

Among the wide applications of digital tools in second language (L2) pragmatics, the utilization of self-access websites as a medium for instructional delivery has promising potential. To further investigate the learning benefits of website-delivered instruction, this study reported on the design, implementation, and effectiveness of an open-access Chinese pragmatics site. It features three everyday speech acts in Chinese and consists of a variety of instructional resources. Thirty participants studying Chinese as a foreign language at a US university were recruited to engage in the web-based study outside of regular class time for 6 weeks. An oral discourse completion task was employed to examine the participants' pragmatic production, and an online survey was utilized to solicit their evaluations of the website. Overall, the findings suggested that the web-based materials were conducive to the participants' appropriate production of speech acts. In addition, the website was perceived as useful and valuable in serving as a tool for delivering pragmatics instruction. On the basis of the results, improvements in the design of the instructional site and directions for future research are discussed.

This study aimed to further understanding of immersion language development by examining in-class freewriting, classroom-assessed reading, and year-end STAMP 4Se proficiency levels in 4th-grade Chinese immersion over an academic year. Specifically, we aimed to understand (1) how learners express themselves in freewriting, (2) growth in freewriting and Chinese reading levels across the year, and (3) relations between classroom-based measures and proficiency measured by year-end standardized tests of Chinese (STAMP 4Se). In freewriting, students used combinations of Chinese characters, Pinyin, homophones, English, and pictures. Writing and reading levels grew over the year, though the range was wide. Student reading levels measured by teachers were the most important predictor of year-end proficiency across the four STAMP 4Se domains, while freewriting predicted reading and writing proficiency. Students who engaged in digital texting activities demonstrated higher speaking proficiency. Pedagogical recommendations include incorporating freewriting, extensive reading, and digital texting to improve partner language proficiency.

Employing the concepts of transnational funds of knowledge and community practice, this ethnographic case study examines the experiences of preservice world language teachers in a year-long teaching methods course. It focuses on an online after-school program where preservice teachers taught languages and cultures to children from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds. The findings illustrate how a teacher candidate from a multilingual and immigrant background drew on her transnational lived experiences and encouraged students to think beyond the boundaries of languages, cultures, and countries. Findings also show how preservice teachers in the program learned from fellow teachers’ practices and built a shared repertoire of resources to engage in transnational ways of teaching language and culture. This study underscores the importance of providing clinical opportunities where preservice teachers can put theory into practice, incorporate transnational funds of knowledge that learners possess, and challenge linguistic, cultural, and geographic boundaries.

Translanguaging has increasingly been embraced in equity-oriented research on foreign language teaching, yet with variable engagement with complex models of culture. In this article, we investigate the nexus of translanguaging and culturally sustaining pedagogies (CSP) as one response to this shortcoming. Extending previous research theoretically and contextually, our comparative case-to-case synthesis examines this nexus in English foreign language (EFL) teaching through ethnographic and participatory methods with students belonging to historically oppressed peoples in Europe, including Indigenous Sámi (Norway) and Roma (Spain) students, respectively. In the Norwegian case, student translanguaging demonstrated possibilities to shift English teaching toward CSP in a setting where such pedagogical practices were largely absent. In the Spanish case, the creativity favored by pedagogical translanguaging became essential for the students to expand their cultural perspectives and grow through English in an extracurricular implementation of CSP. Together, these cases demonstrate the mutual dependence of CSP and translanguaging.

This study compares learner perceptions in a synchronous online versus face-to-face (F2F) learning context about four principles of communicative language teaching (CLT): promoting collaborative learning, using comprehensible input, considering affective factors, and providing corrective feedback. Data were obtained via online surveys from students in F2F language classes (n = 330) and synchronous online language classes (n = 315). The results generally show high levels of agreement between the two groups with statements pertaining to the implementation of all four principles, suggesting that overall, participants perceived the two learning contexts to be similar to one another. However, results reveal that for particular dimensions of these principles, students in the two contexts disagreed (small to medium effect sizes), indicating depressed levels of agreement for learners in the online context. We discuss how these areas of disagreement serve as an opportunity for enhancement of the implementation of specific components of CLT in online synchronous settings.

This paper presents the findings related to culture from an online survey with French as a second language (FSL) teachers (n = 45) about equity and antioppression in the Ontario FSL curriculum. FSL teachers defined culture and reflected on the link between language and culture and the role of students' cultures in FSL. Framed by an anti-biased, antiracist (ABAR) framework, data were thematically analyzed from an intercultural and ABAR perspective. Results show that FSL teachers have a strong, nuanced, and highly diverse understanding of culture, they all believed that language and culture are interrelated (to varying degrees), and most thought that students' cultures should be integrated into FSL classes to improve students' experiences and language learning. FSL teachers' conceptions of language and culture also revealed a need to develop critical orientations in teacher preparation and learning.

Research shows that bilingual learners move naturally between their languages to learn; however, this practice is not welcomed in many second/foreign language classrooms given the belief that first language (L1) use negatively affects second language (L2) development, despite much empirical evidence to the contrary. Moreover, translanguaging practices calling for the use of full linguistic repertories can also benefit L2 learning, especially during collaborative tasks. It is thus important to explore translanguaging practices in classroom contexts. This study investigates code choice and translanguaging within collaborative oral tasks by focusing on the way college-level, Spanish language learners strategically alternate between languages to sustain and enhance their interactions. In particular, the positive role of L1 use during the pretask phase and its relation to L2 use during the task phase are examined.