The newly hired teachers at the Missionary Training Center are expected to learn to teach foreign language well enough to prepare students to communicate functionally in that language within 2-3 months. These teachers have very little to no language teaching experience and must tend to the responsibilities of this part-time job while juggling the demands of full-time school work and social lives. This report details the design and development of a prototype training program aimed to initiate young teachers into the culture of methods and tools employed at the MTC by walking them through the process of planning their first language lesson. The Missionary Training Center has a rich culture of language learning practices. While there are specific expectations related to language teaching espoused by MTC administration, there is also a strong community of language teachers who routinely adapt MTC methods and invent practices to best meet the needs of their students. This project is an attempt to balance the request to develop particular competencies with the need for new teachers to be assimilated into the community of language teachers. This is done by infusing an objective training program with constructivist values, including authentic activity, modeling, representing multiple perspectives, generating, and reflecting.

Service learning has been proposed as a way to create a meaningful environment for the language acquisition process (Weldon & Trautmann, 2003). As a pedagogical tool for second language acquisition the greatest benefit of utilizing service learning activities is that it creates connections to the target language community and provides authentic experiences for target language use (Long, 2003; Morris, 2001). However, there is no detailed record of how service learning actually impacts language and culture acquisition (Bloom, 2008). This multiple case study describes the ways in which four advanced Spanish learners engaged with service learning and the influence of this activity on their ability to communicate in the target language. Each case provides triangulated descriptions of what actually occurred when students went onsite to engage in service learning activities, what their personal reflections were on the experience, and how they carried this experience back into their classroom and academic work. Qualitative analysis of onsite and in-class observations, face-to-face interviews, electronic journal entries, and reflective written reports revealed the importance of the nature of interactions and language use in service learning for second-language acquisition. Where the service was more academically aligned and offered repeated interactions in the target language, students were more likely to advance their language skills. However, though the service may provide an important community contribution, all service learning did not prove equal in its ability to instruct and align with desired educational outcomes.

The purpose of this research was to better understand the relationship between L1 and L2 fluency, precisely, whether there is a relationship between L1 and L2 temporal fluency measures and whether this relationship differs across different languages and different proficiency levels. In order to answer these questions, L1 and L2 speech samples of the same speakers were collected and analyzed. Twenty-five native speakers and 45 non-native speakers of Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian were asked to respond to questions and perform picture descriptions in their L1 and L2. The recorded speech samples were then analyzed by means of a Praat script in order to identify mean length of run (MLR), speech rate, and number of pauses. Several different statistical analyses were then performed to compare these L1 and L2 temporal features across different languages and different proficiency levels. The results of this study indicate that there is a strong relationship between L1 and L2 fluency and that this relationship may play a role in L2 production. Furthermore, it was found that native languages differ in their patterns of L1 temporal fluency production and that these differences may affect the production of L2 temporal fluency. It was also found that L1-L2 fluency relationship did not differ at different proficiency levels suggesting that individual factors may play a role in L2 fluency production. Thus, it was found that an Intermediate speaker of Spanish, for instance, did not speak faster than an Intermediate speaker of Russian, suggesting that naturally slower speakers in their L1 will still speak slower in their L2. These results indicate that fluency is as much of a trait as it is a state. However, it was also found that not all of the L1-L2 language combinations demonstrated the same results, indicating that the L1-L2 fluency relationship is affected by the L2. These findings have different implications for both L2 teaching and learning, as well as L2 assessment of fluency and overall language proficiency.

This article reports on a study investigating the effectiveness of positive psychology interventions (PPIs) in an Intensive English Program (IEP) for non-matriculated university students. Interventions based on the PERMA model for wellbeing (positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment) were implemented through weekly 65-minute lessons and short daily activities. Each lesson introduced an aspect of the PERMA model such as positive emotion or achievement. Along with this focused instruction, students concurrently engaged in language learning activities. Teachers also provided short daily activities for reinforcement throughout the week. Six classes received these interventions, while three classes served as a control group and did not receive any treatment. Students' wellbeing, anxiety, and depression were measured pre-, mid-, and post-semester. Language proficiency was also measured pre- and post-semester and compared with the control group. Qualitative data, which were collected through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, were analyzed following an iterative (constant comparative) method where open coding occurred first, followed by axial coding and selective coding (Glaser and Strauss 2017). This facilitated an understanding of patterns indicative of how the PPIs might have affected student engagement and enjoyment. The quantitative analysis did not reveal any significant gains in well-being or any reductions in anxiety or depression. Despite spending 25% of instruction time on PPIs, there were no statistically significant differences in language proficiency gains compared to the control group meaning that the time taken from teaching language did not in any way reduce linguistic gains. However, the qualitative data do suggest a positive impact from the PPIs. Thus, the results of this study confirmed the findings of Seligman et al. (2009) and Gush and Greeff (2018) that PPIs can be implemented without detracting from language instruction and although gains were not statistically significant, qualitative data showed that the participants felt more positive as a result of the interventions.

Translation is an important language skill in multilingual societies and the globalized world. Some scholars even claim that translation skill should be the fifth language skill in addition to the conventional four basic skills of second language competence - listening, speaking, reading, and writing (Newmark, 1991; Naimushin, 2002; Leonardi, 2011). However, the current mainstream communicative teaching approach tries to avoid the use of translation in language classrooms, mainly because of the possible negative transfer of the first language and low priority given to writing. This study aims to identify the pedagogical role of translation in language teaching through the exploration of the relationships between learners’ second language competence and translation ability, in the hope of providing empirical evidence to support the application of translation in language teaching. A total of 48 participants learning Chinese as a second language participated in this study. The participants’ translation ability was measured by a translation task and their language competence was measured by the course final oral and written test. We found that translation can expose learners to their weaknesses in the following aspects including word order, word choice, omission, and featured grammar structures like descriptive complements. The expanding gap between Chinese to English and English to Chinese translation, as well as the gap between accuracy and expression, show that learners’ translation ability cannot be developed in a balanced way without interruption. In addition, we found that participants’ translation ability is positively correlated with their second language competence, which shows that students’ translation ability potentially has a positive effect on second language competence. Moreover, we observed a strong correlation between translation and speaking at the intermediate level, which supports that utilizing translation in second language teaching could be beneficial to second language competence, especially for speaking competence. Moreover, a relatively loose correlation between translation ability and reading and writing competence shows that we cannot expect a person who can read and write to be a natural translator. Therefore, proper training in translation is necessary if we believe translation is an important skill that students need to acquire.

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This study was an exploration of the effects of a pedagogical intervention on the development of Japanese university students’ oral performances. In task-based language teaching (TBLT), developing speaking proficiency is a major learning goal. However, research examining the effect of a focus on linguistic form in TBLT is limited. One way to balance communication and attention to linguistic form in TBLT is to add form-focused instruction to the communicative tasks. This study is an exploration of the longitudinal effects of form-focused instruction in a speaking task on the development of speaking proficiency. The current study was conducted for the following research purposes. The first purpose was to explore the longitudinal development of CALF (complexity, accuracy, lexis, and fluency) through form-focused intervention. A one-semester form-focused intervention was conducted to investigate how L2 learners develop or change their linguistic performance as measured by the CALF variables. The second purpose was to explore proceduralization through the 3/2/1 task. The third purpose was to investigate the relationship between communicative adequacy and CALF in the 3/2/1 task. This purpose was addressed by comparing human raters’ perceptions of communicative adequacy with the CALF analyses. The final purpose was to qualitatively investigate what the participants prioritized during their task performances. The participants were 48 first-year Japanese university students attending a private university in eastern Japan. A shortened version of the 4/3/2 task, the 3/2/1 task, was implemented 10 times for 13 weeks in one academic semester. In the 3/2/1 task, students talk about the same topic for 3 minutes, then 2 minutes, and finally 1 minute. The participants were divided into three groups: the comparison group, the teacher-led group, and the teacher and peer group. Two types of form-focused instruction were implemented, teacher-led planning and a peer-check activity. The participants in the comparison group started the 3/2/1 speaking task immediately, those in the teacher-led group read a teacher-model passage with the target formulaic language underlined prior to beginning the 3/2/1 task, and those in the teacher and peer group received a peer-check treatment while doing the 3/2/1 task in addition to teacher-led planning. Listener partners checked to see if the speakers used the target formulaic language during the 3/2/1 task. The target forms were (a) stating opinions (e.g., In my opinion), (b) giving reasons (e.g., It is mainly because…), (c) giving examples (For example…), and (d) expressing possibilities (If…). Speaking data were collected at Time 1 (Week 2), Time 2 (Week 8), and Time 3 (Week 14), transcribed, and analyzed for syntactic complexity, morphosyntactic accuracy, lexical diversity, fluency and communicative adequacy. This result showed that form-focused instruction with the target formulaic language improved the Japanese university students’ speaking fluency such as mean length of run and phonation time ratio. The participants also improved human raters’ perceptions of communicative adequacy over one academic semester. There was a significant and strong positive relationship between utterance fluency and human raters’ evaluation of communicative adequacy. In addition, the peer-check enhanced the learners’ usage of a wider variety of the target formulaic language. The results indicated that including formulaic language instruction can enhance learners’ mean length of run, which is a measure of speaking fluency, while teacher-led planning can help learners notice target forms. The peer-check can pressure learners to use the target forms during the 3/2/1 task and provide feedback so that speakers know what form should be used in the next 3/2/1 task performance. Suggestions for future studies regarding the use of formulaic language in TBLT tasks are proposed. / Teaching & Learning