Foreign Language Annals最新文献

The study investigates whether and how mock interviews, an instructional component of business Chinese courses, prepare students for real interviews. The study included 11 American undergraduate students who participated in a 10-week summer study abroad program in China. Participants underwent two rounds of mock interviews with their instructors and received individualized written feedback after each interview. They were then interviewed by hiring managers from the companies of their choice. The results of the study showed that the feedback provided by instructors addressed various performance issues, with a focus on linguistic accuracy rather than interview content. Comparison of the mock interviews with real job interviews showed significant differences in interview content, including workplace-related interactions, language functions, and free chatting. The findings have implications for teaching and research in language for specific purposes.

In recent years, the use of external proficiency-based tests to measure learners' language ability has increased significantly, in part thanks to the Seal of Biliteracy movement. However, there exists very limited research investigating the influence of such tests and their subsequent outcomes data on teachers' practices. As such, this study examines the washback effects of the ACTFL Assessment of Performance toward Proficiency in Languages (AAPPL) on teachers' instruction and planning in an urban Midwest K-12 district. Survey and interview data revealed that teachers increased their use of ACTFL key documents, placed more emphasis on target language usage, and sought to balance their use of the three modes of communication to better meet learners' needs and facilitate their proficiency development. This evidence of positive washback was observed among teachers across languages and levels and was enhanced by the opt-in approach to test implementation and the close link between testing and teaching. For some, the AAPPL served as a catalyst to further align their curricula and instruction. Recommendations are offered for those who may wish to implement a standards-based external language assessment such as the AAPPL as a means by which to foster professional growth and promote teachers' adoption of proficiency-oriented practices.

This conceptual work highlights the history of Black erasure throughout the existence of world languages (WLs) as a field of study in the United States. It outlines the unique challenges faced by African descended learners who have and continue to pursue WL study in US classrooms. These include but are not limited to reduced local funding and programmatic expectations due to the remnants of anti-Black educational policies, monolingual and imperial language ideologies prevalent in texts and pedagogical approaches, and generations of segregation in and outside of schools. Finally, this work proposes WLs serve as a site of Black Linguistic Reparations through, (1) the redistribution of resources in the field, (2) the repair of enacted WL teaching to meet the calls of ACTFL's standards for preparing students for communication in a pluralistic society, and (3) a recreation of the “world” as narrated through a global, rather than a white Western lens.

Surprisingly little is known about the number and frequency level of words that beginner-to-low-intermediate 16-year-old learners of French, German, and Spanish are expected to know when taking high-stakes national exams in England. This study presents exploratory analyses of the lexical content of the listening and reading tests of these exams, a corpus totaling 116,647 running words. Specifically, it seeks to understand the number and frequency level of words that (a) this demographic seems to be expected to know and (b) could be needed for awarding organizations to create exams year-on-year. Key findings include that the proportion of low(er)-frequency words in the corpus of exam papers seemed large, given the stage of the learners and the purpose of the assessments. Critically, these low(er)-frequency words changed at a high rate between papers, likely incurring a heavy reliance on the lexical inferencing abilities of these relatively inexperienced language learners.

Across the United States, students have the opportunity to earn a Seal of Biliteracy (SoBL) when they graduate from high school. Awarded to students who demonstrate proficiency in two or more languages, the SoBL originated to confront English-only ideologies and promote multilingualism. But critics question the impact of the policy on students and whether English-dominant students experience greater impacts than their linguistically-minoritized peers. To that end, this study posed the question, What do recipients report postgraduation as benefits of earning a SoBL? In this qualitative investigation, 33 SoBL earners were interviewed postgraduation to analyze the benefits that they experienced from SoBL attainment. Four themes characterized the findings: increased employability in sales and education, pride and acknowledgment for linguistically-minoritized students, greater confidence and interest in postsecondary education, and difficulty receiving college credit. The article concludes with implications for strengthening the impact of the policy.

Dialogue journals (DJs) are a type of extensive writing assignment, in which students write for the purpose of communication with their instructor. Previous research has shown that DJs can help students develop writing skills; however, few studies have analyzed how DJs compare with traditional prompt-based assignments (TAs). The present study, therefore, presents a quasi-experimental comparison of texts from first- and second-year German classrooms that used either DJs or TAs. Analysis focused on five metrics: (1) word count, (2) sentence count, (3) words per sentence, (4) text-type ratio (TTR), and (5) measure of textual lexical diversity (MTLD). Results for word and sentence count indicated that TA texts were longer. However, DJs resulted in more complex writing, as measured by sentence length, MTLD, and TTR. Taken together, results suggest that journals can promote writing that is both communicatively oriented and linguistically complex. The article concludes by offering suggestions for practical implementation of DJs.

This study investigates the participant experiences and perceived impacts of the Language Initiative for Language Learning (LILL). By exploring the voices of 11 LILL participants through a qualitative case study design, the findings highlight how world language teacher leaders participated in and experienced LILL as a space for leadership growth and perceived the program as having a transformational impact on their leadership identity, mindset, and skill development. While the findings situate LILL as an effective and impactful program, we discuss the need for deeper understandings of world language (WL) teacher leadership in discipline-specific ways and conclude with suggestions for proactive approaches for WL teacher leadership programming.