Language and music share key features such as melody and rhythm and do also develop simultaneously in the childhood. The idea that music and language learning could benefit from each other has been around for a long time and some of the research and studies on the effects of music on language learning and language education are presented in this essay. A survey on the subject was made for modern languages teachers in Sweden to answer, asking about their opinions and experiences of music in the modern languages classroom. It was clear from the results that almost all participants were positive to the use of music in the language education and had experienced positive learning outcomes among students from the use of music. According to the teachers, modern language learning could above all benefit from the motivational properties of music and music can be a help by vocabulary acquisition.

<p> Studies of thinking-for-speaking (Slobin, 1987) and of linguistic relativity (Gumperz &amp; Levinson, 1996) in multilinguals have been attracting more attention (Ortega, 2015). I propose the incorporation of sociocultural theory and linguistic relativity as a novel research approach in second language acquisition (SLA). Japanese learners of English go through a process in which word meaning develops from a single to binary semantic categorization as they learn to express vertical spatial operations in their second language (L2). Japanese has a nonobligatory distinction between contact and noncontact relationships when expressing vertical space (single semantic categorization), whereas English has an obligatory contrast (binary semantic categorization) (Munnich et al., 2001). The expression of vertical spatial relationships in Japanese and English is further influenced by language typology. Japanese, an SOV language, uses postpositions while English, an SVO language, uses prepositions. </p><p> Vygotsky (1987) argues that verbal thinking (the internalization of speech) is tied with word meaning, and thus, as Japanese EFL high school students learn to express the obligatory contact-noncontact feature of vertical spatial configurations in English, moving from a single to a binary semantic categorization, verbal thinking will also develop. Vygotsky (1987) further claims that verbal thinking has sociocultural origins. In this dissertation, I investigate whether gesture can be instrumental in overcoming the constraints imposed by linguistic relativity. Vygotsky (1998) states, &ldquo;Speech becomes the means for thinking mainly because it reflects an objectively occurring intellectual operation. This is a moment of major importance in the development of speech and thinking, which discloses the secret of the development of verbal thinking as a whole&rdquo; (p. 114). I predict that a distinct worldview and the &ldquo;development of cognitive processes&rdquo; (Matyushkin, 1997b, p. 272) arise together when Japanese EFL students learn vertical spatial structure with the Gesture Listening Higher Concept Approach, which leads to &ldquo;a qualitatively new mental formation that develops according to completely special laws and is subject to completely different patterns&rdquo; (Vygotsky 1998, p. 34). </p><p> The purpose of this study: (1) To pursue the new research path regarding incorporating linguistic relativity into SLA in sociocultural theory; (2) to explore whether the concurrent use of iconic co-speech co-thought gesture (ICSCTG) and listening practice can help Japanese high school students learn to express vertical spatial relationships in English more than they would learn from either treatment alone; (3) to investigate whether teaching ICSCTG and listening practice together will help Japanese EFL learners preserve knowledge of how to express vertical spatial relationships in English for a month after the intervention. I employed quantitative methods to accomplish the goals noted above. Results in this study suggest that the Gesture Listening Higher Concept Approach is an effective, evidence-based theoretical and pedagogical framework, which can facilitate L2 learning and conceptual change at the high school level. The effect of the Gesture Listening Higher Concept Approach on long-term foreign language learning would be a valuable avenue for future research. </p><p> Slobin, D. I. (1987). Thinking for Speaking. Proceedings of the Thirteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, 13, pp. 435-445.</p><p>

<p> This quasi-phenomenological study identified the common lived classroom experiences of high school (grades 9-12) teachers who used the Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling (TPRS) method of world language instruction. The study also explained why some teachers who were trained in and had some experience using TPRS abandoned the method, and what they perceived as obstacles to its use. Additionally, the study identified the techniques perceived as effective by traditional teachers for promoting student success in producing and comprehending the target language with the goal of bridging the gap between TPRS and non-TPRS teachers.</p><p> The central phenomenon studied was teachers&rsquo; lived experiences using TPRS, a method of world language teaching for providing a near-immersion classroom learning experience. The TPRS method required no textbook or grammar syllabus and focused on providing students with interesting, repetitive, and comprehensible input of commonly used verb structures and high-frequency vocabulary within the context of a story. For this study, a non-TPRS traditional approach included using a textbook, a grammatical syllabus, and production-based communicative classroom learning activities.</p><p> A purposeful sample of study participants included three groups of ten teachers each. The first two groups constituted the phenomenological part of the study because they had training and experience with TPRS. In the first group, ten participants used TPRS and considered themselves primarily as TPRS teachers. In a second group, ten teachers were selected because they were trained in TPRS and had some experience using the method but discontinued or limited its use when they encountered obstacles and resistance. A third group, not part of the phenomenological portion of the study, consisted of ten teachers who were not trained in TPRS, used a traditional approach, and had no experience using the method. That group provided a perspective outside of TPRS training and experience to discover which teaching techniques they perceived as effective. That input was included in the study to inform the researcher of potential improvements to recommend for the continuously developing TPRS method.</p><p> Data were collected through in depth, face-to-face, in-person, open-ended, semi-structured interviews. The results of the data analysis identified sixteen common lived experiences of TPRS teachers, twelve obstacles encountered by teachers when using or trying out TPRS, and four recommendations to consider incorporating into this changing and evolving method of world language instruction. </p><p>

<p> The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality types and second language acquisition. The study addressed a problem that is inadequately investigated in foreign language acquisition research; specifically, personality traits as predictors of language learning in college students studying Spanish as a foreign language. The researcher conducted one sample t-tests to assess statistically significant differences between mean personality type score and the test value, as well as, a multiple linear regression analysis. A convenient sample of college students (n=52) completed the Neris Personality Type Indicator at the beginning of the course, and took several examinations throughout the semester. Personality traits were correlated with examination grades. The results of the analysis indicated that personality types were not related to second language acquisition. The results of the multiple linear regression analysis were not significant, F (5,46) = 0.39, p = .85, R2 = .04, indicating that the model consisting of the personality types contributed to 4% of the variance in test grade. Because the model was not statistically significant, the researcher did not evaluate the individual predictors.</p><p>

This study investigates the reading and studying of Arabic literature in U.S. collegiate education as a site for engagement with alterity. The purpose is to explore how students in foreign language (FL) literature courses encounter alterity, how they construct the other and reconstruct themselves as they read modern Arabic literary texts, and how the political, historical, geographical, and cultural contexts in which students read shape their reading. Using ethnographic methods, I examine an Arabic literature U.S. collegiate class that I created and taught. Data sources include audio recordings of class discussions, audio recording of out-of-class discussion groups with students, researcher’s memos after classes and out-of-class discussion sessions, in-depth interviews of students, qualitative analysis of students’ written work. Witnessing the growing movement of literacy-based approaches to foreign language education, I use theories of alterity as a framework to illuminate understanding of literacy in foreign language contexts and possibly engender an other-oriented literacy. Notions of alterity that constitutes my theoretical framework are synthesized through analyses of Levinas’s ethics of alterity and post-colonial conceptualization of alterity, supporting my investigation of the consumption of Arabic literature in the Western Academy (Huggan, 2002). The post-colonial lens enables me to interpret the construction of the self and the other through the act of reading within its specific historical, cultural and political contexts (Drabinski, 2011). Building on the works of scholars using Levinas’s ethics to theorize an ethical reading (Attridge, 2004a; Cohen, 2004; Davis, 2010; Tarc, 2015), my theoretical framework envisions an ethical textual engagement with the literary work. Participants of the study encountered different aspects of alterity when reading and studying Arabic literary works, and each aspect posed a different challenge to them. Through the encounter with the alterity of the literary works, the Arabic language and their peers, participants were challenged to rethink their habitual modes of thinking, (Attridge, 2004a), to be open to different interpretation and be uncertain about their own, to embrace their differences (Biesta, 2004), to rely on and be responsible for each other, and learn from each other (Todd, 2003) and to produce knowledge in conversation with an other (Katz, 2013). In their reading, participants encountered cultural distance with the literary works (Attridge, 2011) both close and far and made efforts to account for it. The study demonstrates how alterity as a framework in FL literature class can create opportunities for students to ethically respond to literary works and to each other and engage in learning as a transformative experience of encountering otherness.

The onset of the COVID-19 crisis in March 2020 gave way to a precipitous transition to online learning in colleges and universities across the globe. Learners and teachers alike were forced to adapt to new procedures and norms within a matter of days. Among the many questions regarding the development of rigorous courses that can adequately replace face-to-face learning, there was a need to examine and understand the complex ties between identity and second language (L2) classroom discourse in the ever-expanding sphere of online learning. Thorne et al.’s (2015) study demonstrates that there is a considerable body of work that sheds light on the role of L2 identity in online contexts, with some studies focusing on platforms that are not entirely synchronous but that contain synchronous capabilities (Thorne et al., 2015). Despite this, few studies have focused on the manifestation of learner identity using exclusively synchronous video communication for L2 instructional purposes in educational contexts.The present study aims to fill this gap in the literature on L2 identity in synchronous online courses that utilize video web conferencing platforms using qualitative methodological approaches. This study relied on data from one-on-one interviews with five focal participants, classroom transcripts, and weekly written reflections to demonstrate relationships between recurring themes in their data to theoretical constructs that were relevant to the research questions being examined. The theoretical constructs that were used to interpret the data were activity theory (Engeström, 1987, 2001), Lave and Wenger’s theory of communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wenger, 1998), and Norton’s theories of identity and imagined communities (Norton-Peirce, 1995; Norton, 2000, 2001, 2013; Norton & Toohey, 2011). Activity Theory was used to understand how learners made use of the affordances of the online classroom to accomplish their individual goals of learning about Spanish linguistics. The communities of practice (CoP) framework was used to examine how learners negotiated their identities within this community and how their identity or role within the online classroom community impacted their participation. Regarding investment and imagined communities, this research focused on how learners were able to draw connections between class activities and their personal and professional goals. Theoretical and practical implications for this study outline how instructors can constructively negotiate the use of technological affordances for communication in the online classroom to meet the learning goals of their courses. / Spanish

The primary purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of explicit instruction and feedback on the development of lexis and cohesion in second language writing as well as the extent to which these two measures correlated with overall writing quality scores. The participants were two intact classes of first-year Japanese university students who attended class twice a week for 14 weeks. The classes were randomly assigned to an explicit instruction group (n = 34) and a comparison group (n = 31). The explicit group received instruction and feedback on the use of target vocabulary and cohesion, while the comparison group only submitted drafts. Both groups produced three drafts of a comparison-contrast essay for Task 1 and a problem-solution essay for Task 2 during one academic semester. Based on their writing performance, six participants were selected for interviews about their learning experiences to complement the results of the quantitative analyses. Writing samples from each participant were analyzed with TALLES (Kyle & Crossley, 2015), TAALED 1.41 (Zenker & Kyle, 2021), and TAACO 2.0 (Crossley et al., 2016). Each draft was assessed for the number of target words, three lexical complexity metrics— MATTR 50 content words (MATTR), COCA academic frequency logarithm content words (COCAFrq), and COCA academic trigram MI2 (Trigrams) —two cohesion indices—All connectives and Adjacent overlap between paragraphs content words (AdjacentP)—and overall writing quality produced with a writing rubric. Six raters trained in applied linguistics assessed the participants’ essays, and FACETS 3.80.0 (Linacre, 2017) was used to produce interval measures of student ability and rater severity. Five hypotheses were assessed. Hypothesis 1 predicted that the explicit instruction group would score higher than the comparison group on target word and cohesion use, and overall writing quality. The results supported Hypothesis 1 for both tasks. The explicit instruction group increasingly used target words and cohesion based on descriptive statistics. Both groups significantly improved overall writing quality over time. The explicit instruction group significantly scored higher. The comparison group was slower in learning about writing essays during Task 1. Both groups scored higher in Task 2. Hypothesis 2, which predicted that both groups would improve on the lexical indices and that the explicit instruction group would exceed the comparison group, was partially supported. MATTR and COCAFrq significantly improved, but Trigram did not improve. There were significant group differences in COCAFrq and Trigrams, but not in MATTR. The comparison group scored higher on COCAFrq, and the explicit instruction group scored higher on Trigram. In Task 2, MATTR improved significantly, but COCAFrq and Trigrams did not. There were no group differences. More effects were found in Task 1 than in Task 2. Hypothesis 3, which predicted that cohesion would improve over time for both groups and that the explicit instruction group would exceed the comparison group, was mostly supported. The results of Task 1 showed that All connectives and AdjacentP significantly improved. Although there was no group significant difference in All connectives, there was a group difference in AdjacentP, as the explicit instruction group scored higher. The results of Task 2 showed that All connectives did not significantly improve over time, but AdjacentP did. Global cohesion was affected more than local cohesion. Hypothesis 4, which predicted that lexis would be positively correlated with overall writing quality for both groups, was supported for Task 1 and not supported for Task 2. In Task 1, MATTR was significantly positively correlated with overall writing quality. COCAFrq was significantly negatively correlated. Trigrams were not correlated. In Task 2, none of lexical indices were correlated. Hypothesis 5 predicted that cohesion would be positively correlated with overall writing quality. This hypothesis was partially supported in Task 1 and Task 2. All connectives were not correlated with overall writing quality, but AdjacentP was significantly and positively correlated with overall writing quality in Task 2. The study contributes to the understanding of the development and assessment of lexis and cohesion using computational automated tools. L2 development is a complex phenomenon, so a further examination of assessment indices offers a wealth of research in future studies. / Applied Linguistics

No description available.

Word recognition skill is fundamental for readers to successfully process any given text. Proficiency in the component skills of word recognition, orthographic, phonological, and semantic knowledge, is what readers need to accurately and automatically decode words to apply meaning to what they have read. For second language readers, the challenge of reading is often hindered by a lack of word recognition skills and therefore, they often suffer from low reading rates and consequently poor reading comprehension. This study was a quasi-experimental longitudinal inquiry into the effects of extensive reading, word recognition training, and timed reading on second language reading comprehension. Through word recognition tasks focused on orthographic, phonological, and semantic knowledge development, the aim of this study was to (a) better understand the effects of orthographic, phonological, and semantic skill training on word recognition skills, (b) better understand the effects of word recognition training on reading rate and reading comprehension, (c) understand the effects of long-term word recognition training on reading comprehension, (d) investigate if changes in word recognition components correlate with changes in reading comprehension, and (e) better understand reasons for expected and unexpected outcomes of participants in the study. A total of 248 participants took part in the study. The participants were a combination of first- and second-year economics majors from a private university in western Japan. They were from ten intact classes that were randomly assigned to one of four groups. The first group acted as a comparison group and focused on intensive reading training. The second group did extensive reading and included sustained silent reading. The third group did extensive reading and received word recognition training. The fourth group did extensive reading, word recognition training and timed reading training. All participants took a reading course as part of the required English program that lasted for two 15-week academic terms. The first 30 minutes of each class were used for each group’s respective training, and the remaining 60 minutes were used to teach general reading strategies. Quantitative data were gathered using a variety of instruments that included a lexical decision test, an antonym pairs test, a pronunciation test, a reading comprehension test, and a reading rate test. Additional qualitative data were gathered via selected participant interviews and a post-study survey. The results showed that the participants who received word recognition training in conjunction with extensive reading, produced positive changes in reading comprehension. However, only two of the components of word recognition ability improved with training, semantic knowledge and phonological knowledge. This indicated that more focus on specific components of word recognition might provide better scaffolding to foster reading development. The results also indicated that the three treatment groups all performed significantly better than the comparison group in reading rate gain and those improvements were reflected in reading comprehension gains. With respect to word recognition and its impact on reading comprehension, there was evidence showing that word recognition training did positively impact reading comprehension, but that more time might be required than used in this study to see its full impact. Finally, there were data to indicate that there was a correlation between semantic knowledge and reading comprehension. This study shows that although extensive reading is an effective approach to teaching L2 English reading, the addition of word recognition training and timed reading can benefit readers by improving reading comprehension. The addition of word recognition training can assist lower-proficiency readers to automatize low-level cognitive processes such as orthographic, semantic, and phonological processes, and by doing so, reallocate cognitive resources to higher-level cognitive processes such as inferencing and schemata activation required for reading comprehension. Finally, the addition of timed reading seems to have contributed to overall reading rate and reading fluency development. / Applied Linguistics

Learning a foreign language can be challenging. If the learning environment is compulsory, motivation can also contribute to the struggles. Mindfulness, a psychological construct, is a robust topic in the academic literature. Mindfulness is a mindset that views the world from multiple perspectives, reorganizing what is perceived, focusing on the present moment and keeping open to new ideas (Langer, 1997). Moreover, mindfulness is claimed to increase interest and academic outcomes. Therefore, the construct was employed in this research to validate these claims and to contribute to second language education. This study was designed to fill several gaps in the second language acquisition (SLA) literature. First, the construct of mindfulness has not been explored in SLA as a mindset to engage students in learning. Second, the construct of interest has not been investigated in SLA in tandem with mindfulness. Lastly, mindfulness has never been employed with motivated or unmotivated high school students in the compulsory education system in Japan. The following research hypotheses and research question were investigated: (a) The treatment group receiving the mindful tasks will outperform the comparison group receiving normal foreign language instruction on vocabulary learning and reading comprehension measures; (b) The treatment group receiving mindful tasks would be more engaged, interested, and like English more than before. Increased interest will lead to improvements in language performance; and, (c) To what extent do mindful practices assist low-achieving proficiency high school students in enhancing their abilities? The participants were students attending a private high school in Japan. Both the treatment and comparison groups included 45 female and 34 male students, respectively, for a total of 79 participants. A Rasch analysis was utilized to confirm the validity and reliability of the mindfulness and interest questionnaires and to transform the raw scores into equal interval measures. MANOVA, ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficient data were analyzed to ascertain differences between groups and within groups for all tests and constructs measured. The results indicated that mindfulness was not a significant influence on improved outcomes in language performance for the treatment group, although the descriptive statistics did show small gains in the hypothesized direction. The dependent variables included the mindfulness and interest questionnaires, as well as vocabulary and reading comprehension questions. The independent variable was the mindfulness tasks. The dependent variables were vocabulary and reading comprehension measures. The results of the MANOVA were the treatment effect was not significant, F(2,81) = .397, p &lt; .67, η2 = .01. The results of the ANOVA were the treatment effect was not significant, F(1,82) = .82, p &lt; .77, η2 =. 001. There was also no significant correlation between increased mindfulness and increased interest. Out of the six factors, all except for sensitivity to new contexts, showed negative relationships. The only positive relationship was not significant. Lastly, a one-way repeated measures ANOVA showed no improvement for the low-proficiency treatment group, ∧= .30, F(2,18) = 1.30, p &lt; .30, η2 = .13, over time. The effect of mindfulness on improved language performance outcomes might have been influenced by the following: shallow levels of processing, lack of clear goals for the participants, unclear task design protocols, working memory issues and environmental restraints. A lack of correlation between increases in mindfulness and interest gains might have been attributable by the compulsory nature of the course, time constraints and the lack of perceived utility of the tasks by the part pants. Lastly, the reason for the lack of improvement for the low-achieving proficiency participants might not be an issue of proficiency, because both the low- and high-achieving participants of the treatment condition did not improve. Overall, these findings suggest that mindfulness is more nuanced and more complex than originally expected. / Teaching & Learning