THE ROLE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE INSTRUCTION AND PROFICIENCY AS RELATED TO STUDY ABROAD PROGRAMS IN BUSINESS

Author(s):  
Orlando R Kelm
Author(s):  
Saša Podgoršek

This chapter aims to explore the teacher´s role in foreign language instruction (FLI) supported by information and communication technology (ICT). The recent research on the impact of ICT on the teacher´s role in FLI indicates changes in the role of the teacher. However, there has been little empirical evidence on the nature of this change in foreign language classes. To fill this research gap, a multiple-case study of three teachers and 78 students in three secondary school classes in Slovenia was conducted. This chapter presents an in-depth analysis of sections of semi-structured interviews and class observations exploring the five categories of change of the teacher role identified by Podgoršek. The findings confirm these categories in general, but they also show which sub-categories of change are hard to achieve in real school environment.


2001 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 123-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Howard

This article compares the relative effect of study abroad as opposed to foreign language instruction on an aspect of the L2 learner’s grammatical development, namely the expression of past time in target language (TL) French. Based on a cross-sectional quantitative analysis of oral data elicited from Irish advanced learners, a number of differences and similarities emerge between the learners’ development in the TL community and in the foreign language classroom. On the one hand, the more beneficial effect of study abroad is evident insofar as the study abroad learners attain a higher level of accuracy in their use of past time morphology across a more expansive range of aspectual contexts. On the other hand, however, similarities are also evident between the learners in both domains of acquisition. Based on a variationist analysis which controls for the effect of a number of linguistic factors on the learners’ choice of past time marker (grammatical aspect, inherent lexical aspect, and discourse grounding), the learners’ contextual use of past time morphology appears to be relatively similar. The results are firstly dicussed in relation to existing research evidence concerning the L2 learner’s grammatical development during study abroad, and secondly, in relation to the question of the manifestation of grammatical development in the L2 learner.


Author(s):  
Lyudmila A. Khalilova ◽  

A language cannot be a simple template of human activity; a language is the history and culture of the people, their long and thorny road to civilization. The informative nature of a discourse will be insignificant if we only take into consideration the visible data of the text. The single viable way to carry out research on the mentality and behavior of the representatives of different cultures is to dig into the implication and the conceptual framework of the discourse. The author’s idea might be interpreted according to the background knowledge of the reader. Such an approach turns the text into a conglomerate of sense messages that reveal the power of the language and its inextricable link to the history, culture and civilization of the nation whose language the students learn. This notional “intervention” is akin to a chain reaction and the language develops into a means of power over a human being. The conceptual approach to a foreign language material helps improve students’ cognitive and analytical skills, turns the educational process into a particular type of an innovative environment, leads to motivation increase in a foreign language instruction.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomas Kos

Abstract Although foreign language instruction in mixed-age (M-A) is gaining popularity (Heizmann and Ries and Wicki 2015; Lau and Juby-Smith and Desbiens, 2017; Shahid Kazi and Moghal and Aziz 2018; Thurn 2011), the research is scarce. Drawing from multiple data sources, this study investigated to what extent do peer interactions among M-A and same-age (S-A) pairs aid L2 development and how students perceive their interactions. In this study, the same learners (N=24) aged between 10 and 12 interacted with the same and different age partners during common classroom lessons in two EFL classrooms. The results suggest that both S-A and M-A peer interactions aided L2 development. Although S-A pairs outperformed M-A pairs on the post-test, the results are not statistically significant. The analysis of students’ perceptions revealed that the majority of students prefer working in S-A to M-A pairs. In addition to age/proficiency differences, factors such as students’ relationships and perceptions of one’s own and partner’s proficiency greatly impact how they interact with one another.


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