Construction Learning by Child Learners of Foreign Language: Input Distribution and Learner Factors

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHIEH–FANG HU ◽  
CHEYENNE MAECHTLE
Author(s):  
Phuong Ngoc Quynh Tran

There are many studies on English Language Teaching materials evaluation, but very few investigate the language input of reading materials though text input is considered a primary factor for successful foreign language learning. This research explored the language input of reading texts in a book series used in teaching reading for first-year English-major students at a foreign language university in central Vietnam. It aimed at investigating text topics, genres, length, language difficulty level and students’ as well as teachers’ perceptions of the studied texts in an attempt to facilitate students’ reading comprehension. Thirty-two reading texts were studied using a descriptive analytical approach. Individual and focus group interviews were implemented with 15 students and 7 lecturers. The findings showed the textbooks incorporated a wide variety of topics which are interesting and familiar to students. Article was the most popular text genre. The text length and language difficulty level proved to be appropriate to students’ levels. The lecturers’ and students’ perceptions of the texts also supported the textbook analysis findings. These findings implicated the selected textbooks should be kept in the curriculum but need further adaptation. Besides, some suggestions were made to help ELT lecturers modify the text input effectively.


2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (3) ◽  
pp. 747-782 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elke Peters ◽  
Ann‐Sophie Noreillie ◽  
Kris Heylen ◽  
Bram Bulté ◽  
Piet Desmet

Author(s):  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Hui Chang ◽  
Yi Liao

A total of 102 English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners participated in the present study, which aimed to test how different types of corrective feedback-recasts and clarification requests-can differentially affect the suprasegment development of English intonation. All participants received 5 treatment sessions designed to encourage them to notice and practice the target feature in meaningful discourse; recasts or clarification requests were provided to the participants’ untargetlike production, except those in the control group (n=34), who received comparable instruction but without corrective feedback. Acoustic analyses were conducted on 7 intonation features including words/IP, pause, anacrusis, lengthing, pitch reset, improper tonicity and tone selection elicited via pretest and posttest measures targeting trained instances and untrained instances. The results showed that 1) recasts are more effective than clarification requests on EFL learners’ suprasegment development of English intonation; 2) recasts may not only lead learners to establish, reinforce and generalize their new phonological knowledge of English intonation that they had practiced during the treatments, but also help them transmit their attention from trained to untrained learning of foreign language input at a suprasegmental level.


1985 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willis J. Edmondson

The paper begins to explore the nature of the cognitive processing involved in foreign language learning. The notion of a “discourse world” as a set of elements against the background of which a unit of talk makes sense is introduced, and the claim is made that several such “discourse worlds” may be seen to coexist in classroom discourse, in part because of participants' “awareness” (on some level) of why they are there. The notion of a discourse world is then given a psychological interpretation in terms of frame-theory, and the view is argued that the simultaneous activation of several such frames is central to the business of understanding language, and to language learning. The classroom, it is argued, offers rich opportunities for the training of such multi-level perception of foreign language input, with consequent gains in learning. From this perspective Krashen's Monitor Theory is found implausible.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. e41723
Author(s):  
Patrícia Flasmo de Oliveira

Many people, even after spending a lifetime studying a foreign language are prone to get stuck in a certain grammatical domain no matter the efforts made and the amount of the target language input offered in the classroom. Unfortunately, the great majority who pursuits their dreams to be the closest possible to a native like speaker, the lack of ability to analyze and synthesize linguistic elements makes them persist in the same errors, establishing a phenomenon known as Fossilization in their learning process. In fact, Fossilization can occur in all learning process levels: phonological, grammatical, lexical and pragmatic and the errors made seem to be similar from individual to individual. In an attempt to avoid this Fossilization process concerning the pragmatically ability to communicate, this article aims to present a suggestion of a role-play activity involving strategies to enhance pragmatic awareness related to politeness theory.


2011 ◽  
Vol 63-64 ◽  
pp. 94-97
Author(s):  
Gao Da He ◽  
Hui Chen

Handheld electronic devices promote M-learning greatly. Foreign language learners favour the learning environment in handheld electronic devices. The authors explore the features of language learning in handheld electronic devices from the prospective of language input theory.The paper discusses the comprehension, nature and authenticity, abundance and varieties in language learning with handheld electronic devices.


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