The premise that idioms are an important feature in second language learning and teaching is what underpinned the present study. The aim is to investigate what teaching method is the most effective for idiom retention; etymological elaboration or context elaboration. It is a small scale study run focusing on two groups of 9th grade students were approximately 80% of the students had Swedish as their mother tongue, whilst the remaining 20% had other languages. One group of 18 students where taught 15 opaque idioms. The idioms were presented with their etymology. The preference group consisted of 19 students and the same idioms were presented to this group in context. A pre-test was given to both groups in order to establish what idioms they already knew. A post-test was run immediately after the ecture, where the idioms were presented either in context or with their etymology, in order to determine the methods’ effect on immediate retention. After three weeks, a second post-test was run in order to discover the degree to which the idioms had reached the students’ longterm memory and compare the two teaching techniques accordingly. A questionnaire was also conducted in order to gauge out the students’ idiom awareness and to what degree they believed that the teaching method helped them to remember the idioms. The results of the study show that both teaching techniques are beneficial on idiom retention. Context elaboration, however, turned out to be most effective on immediate- and long-term retention.

Abstract This study investigates how formative feedback provided from teachers to students in academic writing can enhance students’ writing skills, and what strategies teachers can use to motivate students and provide effective and timely feedback at upper secondary education in English as a Second Language (ESL) context. Many researchers have claimed that giving formative feedback is essential for the improvement of students’ writing skills. Several studies have also shown that English as an L2 students tend to appreciate effective and qualitative feedback. For this study, data were collected through searches from educational databases to examine this area within an ESL context and provide an overview of how formative feedback given from teachers can improve L2 students’ writing skills and what strategies teachers should use to give effective feedback. The overall results indicate that giving formative feedback in writing plays an important role in the improvement of the students’ writing skills and learning. The findings show that there are several strategies that should be used for the formative feedback to be effective and beneficial.  Key terms: formative feedback, writing skills, effective feedback, timely feedback.

<p>This study examines the interpretation and production of inalienable possession among heritage speakers and L2 learners of Spanish. Inalienable possession lies at the syntax-semantics interface and has previously been found to be challenging among bilingual populations (Giancaspro & Sánchez, 2019; Montrul & Ionin, 2010, 2012; Pérez-Leroux et al., 2002). In particular, this study explores the extent to which Spanish heritage speakers and L2 learners exhibit knowledge of Spanish inalienable possession with pronominal verbs requiring the use of the clitic <i>se</i>. Results from an Elicited Production Task and a Contextualized Preference Task administered online showed that the L2 learners followed a distinct pattern of response compared to the native speakers in the production and interpretation of inalienable possession. This pattern was characterized by the preference of possessive determiners over definite determiners. Heritage speakers, on the contrary, were not found to differ from the native speakers of Spanish. They behaved similarly to the control group as they followed the continuum that emerged for inalienable possession. That is, both groups were more accepting of definite determiners, while they showed less preference for structures with possessive determiners. The findings are discussed in terms of current debates on the role of factors involved in language acquisition such as maturational issues, learning experience, patterns of language exposure and usage, cross-linguistic influence, and the grammatical structure itself.</p>

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to understand how context may shapemultiple goal negotiation. Prior research has focused on identifying variables that influence goal pursuit in general, but little attention has been given to how these principles operate in different circumstances. This study adopted the Dynamic Systems Model of Role- Identity and studied context through an identity lens. The context of the L2 teacher was selected as the focus of investigation, specifically the L2 teacher’s pursuit of speaking in the second language for 90% of instructional time while forming meaningful relationships with students. Fifty six L2 teachers participated. The study was carried out over five phases. In the first phase, data were collected in an online survey targeting teachers’ contextual variables, goal commitment, goal expectancy, self-accordance, job satisfaction, and perception of goal conflict. In the second phase, teachers were divided into groups based on their perception of conflict between the two goals: misaligned, no effect, and aligned. Chi-square analysis and Fischer exact tests were conducted and the only significant difference between groups was the amount of L2 spoken. A MANOVA, followed by univariate analysis found that the groups differed significantly regarding their level of commitment to the L2 goal, and their goal expectancy for forming relationships. In the third phase, a content analysis of the open-ended responses found that context influenced the goal navigation process, that the most frequent approach to resolving conflict was abandoning the L2 goal, that multifinality is contingent on one’s role-identity, and that tension may be conscious or unconscious. In the fourth phase, 14 L2 teachers completed semi-structured interviews, which were used to further explore how role-identity informs goal navigation. Analysis of the transcripts revealed that role- identity has a powerful influence on how teachers manage and construal their goals. In the fifth and final phase, all the data were synthesized, resulting in the implications for researchers, administrators, and teachers. / Educational Psychology

Abstract This study investigates the effectiveness of using Oral Corrective Feedback (OCF) as a way of promoting young learners' language acquisition from an EFL (English As a Foreign Language) perspective. Furthermore, this study also looks at learners' and teachers' thoughts about oral corrective feedback and whether it serves its intended purpose in the classroom towards learners' language learning. My method is based on scientific articles and sets out previous studies to investigate how oral corrective feedback may be beneficial for young learners' EFL and L2 language development. Previous experimental research indicates that the use of oral corrective feedback has a positive effect on learners' L2 development and language acquisition. In this current study I provide an overview of the possible advantages and disadvantages of using oral corrective feedback in young learners' L2 development in an educational context which also includes an insight into teachers' attitude. The results show that OCF is beneficial for young learners’ L2 development if the learners are aware of the OCF that is being provided. The results also indicate that OCF is affected by the teachers' attitude towards OCF. Key terms: OCF, EFL, L2, corrective oral feedback, oral feedback types, teacher’s attitude OCF, learners' attitude OCF, teacher OCF and uptake.

Nesta pesquisa do tipo qualitativa será caracterizada a consciência da proficiência linguística dos estudantes da disciplina PORT 321 na Brigham Young University. Os professores do departamento de Espanhol e Português identificaram a limitação dos MRs (missionários retornados) em falar fluentemente para além de temas religiosos. Objetivando discernir os pontos fortes e os fracos do aprendizado, foi investigada a eficácia do conteúdo e da didática em PORT 321, sondando a consciência da proficiência linguística e possíveis meios de promover uma diretriz de ensino para o professor. Os dados coletados deram origem aos temas: (1) a consciência linguística e sociolinguística; (2) as funções linguísticas identificadas no ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines; e (3) as características individuais dos aprendizes de segunda língua e seus subtemas. O resultado, em conformidade com os textos redigidos pelos estudantes, mostra que eles são muito motivados a falar português brasileiro e ambicionam chegar a fluência, pois idealizam trabalhar tendo português-L2 como suporte na rotina do emprego. Essa reflexão mostra, parcamente, a necessidade que o aluno sente de entender mais profundamente o idioma estudado.

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The purpose of this study was to explore how syntactic skill was maintained or lost by L2 Mandarin Chinese learners over time. In addition, this study endeavored to discover how a learner's L1 affects the attrition process of word order in Mandarin Chinese. To find out how certain Chinese syntactic structures were subject to attrition over time and how syntactic errors could be attributed to L1 transfer, five types of Chinese syntax that either resembled English, were very different from English, or had no counterpart in English were selected. They included subject-verb-object sentences, modifiers before modified, time and other adverbial clauses, and object-raising in Chinese specific ba construction. Twenty-four university students of Chinese-as-a-second-language speakers, who intensively learned and used Mandarin Chinese in a host culture setting for 16-22 months, participated in this study. By the time participants were tested a second time, they had discontinued regular usage of the L2 for 12 to 17 years. To find out how L2 syntactic attrition developed over time, participants were divided into three groups according to the year of departure from the L2 environment. They were also grouped into two groups by the length of time in the L2 setting to examine whether exposure time to the L2 affected the maintenance of overall L2 syntactic skill. The results indicated that the subjects retain a fair amount of their language education within the first couple years of discontinued regular L2 usage. In the meantime, it was found that the extra six months exposed to the L2 does not extend the long-term maintenance of overall L2 syntactic skill. The results did not show that the distance of structural properties between the learner's L1 and L2 necessarily predicted patterns of regression towards L1 syntactic ordering. Instead, the frequency of use, how often the structure appears in daily interaction with the target society and how well the syntactic structure was acquired in the first place, played a greater role in predicting whether the structure will likely be forgotten.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether language aptitude and the use of language strategies predict pronunciation gains in second language (L2) acquisition. A second goal was to determine whether these factors differed depending on whether learning occurred in an English as a second language (ESL) or English as a foreign language (EFL) learning context. Eighty-six ESL students in the United States and one hundred EFL students in China were asked to take the Pimsleur language aptitude test. The top 15 or 16 and lowest 15 or 16 scorers on this test from each group were asked to complete a test of pronunciation proficiency and a pronunciation strategies inventory at the beginning and end of a 10-week speaking class in which they were enrolled. The pre and post pronunciation tests were rated and pronunciation proficiency gains in global foreign accent, fluency, comprehensibility and accuracy were compared to both Pimsleur test scores and use of pronunciation strategies before and after training. Results indicated that general language aptitude did not predict pronunciation gains regardless of type of setting (ESL or EFL), but that auditory aptitude may be linked to pronunciation proficiency. Analyses revealed that specific pronunciation strategies were strong predictors of pronunciation gain for comprehensibility and accuracy gains. The findings for this study suggest that pronunciation strategies seem to play a bigger role in pronunciation improvement than language aptitude and are effective in both ESL and EFL settings.

Developing a time- and cost-efficient method for second language (L2) oral proficiency measurement is one of the research topics that has attracted much attention in recent decades. The purpose of this study is to develop a computerized oral testing system for L2 Japanese using automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology. Two testing methods called elicited imitation (EI) and simulated speech (SS) are proposed to quantify L2 accuracy and fluency via ASR processing. This study also suggests systematic EI item creation leveraging corpus technology and discusses the effectiveness of the test items created through analyses of item difficulty. Further, refinement of the EI grading system is described through a series of statistical investigations. For SS, this study reports the five most influential L2 fluency features identified through machine learning and proposes a method to yield individual SS scores with these features based on previous studies. Lastly, several methods to combine the EI and SS scores are presented to estimate L2 oral proficiency of Japanese.