Foreign Language Annals最新文献

Language program evaluation has the potential for positive program impact by providing an opportunity for program stakeholders to reflect on their goals, examine their outcomes, and determine ways to move forward to maximize a program's effectiveness. However, many stakeholders are either unaware of the affordances of program evaluation or unable to access it for their programs. Moreover, many stakeholders have an incomplete understanding of what program evaluation entails and frequently confuse it with assessment. This paper examines the current capacities and needs of program evaluation for K-12 world language programs, including the extent to which K-12 world language professionals in this study currently utilize evaluation, and provides information on the kinds of language program evaluation workshops and tools that could be helpful for these populations.

The concept of noticing, which emphasizes the role of attention and awareness in language learning, has exerted a strong influence on second language acquisition (SLA) theory and practice. The current research analyzes instances of noticing evident across a 26-week period as the first author, an absolute beginner, was taught Turkish by the second author, a native speaker. All 52 video-conferenced one-to-one lessons were recorded and subsequently thematically analyzed for the learner's noticing of the accusative, dative, locative, and ablative cases at two levels of complexity (single or multiple affix). Six noticing themes were evident and are defined and exemplified with multimodal vignettes and presented as a generalized model. Trends in the occurrence of these noticing themes over the first 6 months of learning are also presented. Discussion focusses on the practical relevance of the types of noticing observed and concludes with directions for future research.

US dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs have a goal to develop students' sociocultural competence, but little is known about how preservice teachers (PSTs) do this. This descriptive study involved quantitative and qualitative analysis of 82 videos of instruction and 76 lesson plans from nine Latinx PSTs placed in Spanish DLBE classrooms across 3 years. PSTs focused more on students' interests or background knowledge than specific family/community and/or cultural practices. Few lessons incorporated culturally relevant/sustaining literature. Findings help teacher educators consider contextual constraints in teacher preparation and ways to better support PSTs in recognizing and developing students' sociocultural competence.

By taking a multidisciplinary, evidence-based approach to modeling video difficulty, this study investigates the impact of multimodal complexity on language learners' self-ratings of video difficulty, while simultaneously accounting for the effects of learner differences and video production styles. A set of 320 instructional videos from the corpus of second language video complexity were analyzed using sophisticated natural language processing and computer vision algorithms to extract and compute a wide range of multimodal complexity indices. The results of a linear mixed-effects model demonstrated that pitch variation and academic spoken formulaic sequences helped to facilitate viewing comprehension, whereas infrequent words, image clutter, the number of visual objects, salient objects, visual texts, shots, and moving objects all impeded viewing comprehension. This study concludes by presenting a number of practical implications that can prove useful for English as a Foreign Language teachers and practitioners alongside a comprehensive agenda for future research in this area.

The popularity of virtual reality (VR) technologies has increased since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, there is a paucity of meta-analytic studies that have investigated the use of VR technologies in language education. This current study addresses this gap by conducting a systematic analysis of 41 randomized controlled studies conducted between 2008 and 2021, examining the effects of VR technologies on language educational outcomes. The findings indicate that VR technologies reduce anxiety levels while enhancing motivation, performance, satisfaction, and self-efficacy in language learning when compared to traditional learning methods. These outcomes are observed regardless of whether learners engage with immersive or nonimmersive environments and whether they use head-mounted displays or nonhead-mounted displays. Future research can investigate the impact of VR on intercultural communicative competence and collaborative problem-solving abilities.

Language immersion programs seek to develop multilingual, multiliterate individuals able to engage with academic content. Studies of immersion students' language development provide details regarding language proficiency and accuracy, yet they generally do not address how features of written, academic language, for example, syntactic and lexical complexity, develop. To this end, this study seeks to understand if and how the syntactic complexity of written texts produced by middle school Spanish immersion students differs across grades. It examines discipline-related, persuasive texts written by 186 Grade 6–8 Spanish immersion students from five programs, analyzing syntactic complexity at the phrasal, clausal, and supraclausal levels and considering both length-based and subordination measures. Findings suggest that syntactic complexity does not change significantly in middle school for immersion students unlike findings with nonimmersion students. Explanations for and implications of the findings are explored.

Louisiana is currently the only state in the United States that requires foreign language (FL) study for some, but not all of their high school students, and these requirements are undergoing seismic changes. Considering that geographic, economic, and integration factors contribute to whether a school can provide FL at all—and biased counseling dissuades minoritized students from taking FL—this study asks: has FL education been equitably accessible to all Louisiana high school students who want to pursue it, regardless of race or economic background? To address this question, this paper presents results from two analyses. First, program-internal equity variables (e.g., [dis]similarity between school-wide and FL student demographics) were clustered to produce “profiles” of FL programs. Next, a multinomial logistic regression using program-external factors (e.g., federal funding status, desegregation orders) was conducted to isolate the factors impacting equity. Federal funding and rurality were both found to be significant, with schools receiving federal Title I funds and rural schools being much more likely to exhibit inequitable access to FL courses. In (a) identifying schools with enrollment inequities and (b) the outside factors associated with greater inequity, this paper aims to provide policymakers with empirically based tools to address (in)equity in Louisiana high school FL education. These findings can be especially helpful in light of the state's recent (2023-2024 school year) expansion of FL requirements to accept computer science courses.

This follow-up study explored the experiences of eight Latina heritage speakers (HSs), who were initially enrolled in world language teacher preparation programs at two educational institutions in the United States and who became in-service Spanish teachers. Using data from interviews, classroom observations, and a focus group, this qualitative multiple-case study investigated their motivation to stay in the profession, professional development needs, challenges they experienced as teachers of Spanish, and how their self-perceptions and attitudes about their use of Spanish evolved from pre- to in-service teacher stages regarding their proficiency, use of code-switching and register, and knowledge of grammar. Findings highlight the importance of supporting HSs as an essential component of teacher education programs and the workforce in world language teaching; the need for coursework that illuminates register differences but always values and legitimizes their own way of speaking; the need for world language education and Spanish language faculty in teacher preparation programs to establish common, coordinated goals for preservice teachers; and academic training for HSs in pedagogy and sociolinguistics, not only at the preservice teacher level, but also as professional development for all members in world language departments, in both K-12 and higher education settings.

Although multilingualism is becoming a more important topic of inquiry, a closer look at intercultural studies on Chinese overseas students reveals that they are inclined to contrast the learning behaviors of these students with Western learning conceptions and practices and interpret their learning ways based on Western assumptions. The study used qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate how this cohort of minoritized learners leveraged a material-centered approach highlighting repetition, reading aloud, rote learning, and translanguaging to increase the salience and processing of the target language input. Additionally, this study performed a comparative analysis of the use frequency and interpretations of learning strategies between self-reported successful and currently less successful students from China. The results indicate that the former cohort was more concerned with self-directed activities in favor of input processing and the model of input-output connection. Lastly, this highlights the importance of legitimization of their approach resource repertoire by foregrounding their interpretations of their own learning behaviors in the new academic environment.

This study investigated how questioning strategies impact language learner performance. Specifically, it explored how questioning strategies influence (i) verb production and subject–verb agreement in the target language, and (ii) learner confidence in completing tasks without translation software. Sixty-eight novice language learners enrolled in a high school Spanish I course participated. The students were divided into two groups. After a pretest, one group completed an activity with divergent (open-ended) questions, while the other group did the same activity with contingent (either/or) questions. Participants then completed a posttest and rated their temptation to use translation software. Writing on the pre- and posttests was evaluated for verb production, verb conjugation, and subject–verb agreement. Results show that as compared with divergent questions, contingent questions (i) help students produce significantly more conjugated verbs and more accurate subject/verb agreement, and (ii) significantly reduce the temptation to rely on translation software.