scholarly journals Foreign language learning as a factor of the inophone’s sociocultural adaptation

The article describes the features of the inophones’ sociocultural adaptation. One of the factors of the foreigner’s sociocultural adaptation – mastering the Ukrainian (Russian) language has been considered. The forms of work with foreign students to be helpful in their successful sociocultural adaptation have been proposed. The activity of the teacher is to manage the organization of active knowledge of the realities by the foreigners. It is also worth attracting foreigners to certain educational activities, excursions; organizing the concert programs both as observers and participants; arranging visits to various events where you can communicate with native Ukrainian (Russian) speakers. As a result of linguistic education, the students can and should be formed: readiness to comprehend a socio-cultural portrait of the country, the target language, and understanding of the native speakers; ethnic, racial and social tolerance, language tact and socio-cultural politeness; propensities to find non-violent ways to resolve conflicts. So, when learning foreign languages, the enrichment of foreign students’ individual experience of communication with another linguistic culture and the result of foreign language training are positive changes in the overall structure of students’ behavior. The author is convinced that the systematic, purposeful teachers’ work to overcome adaptation difficulties is the key to the successful adaptation of foreign students, the further development of each student as a person and future specialist. The better the Ukrainian (Russian) language is learned, the more adaptive it is, the more students adapt to the new socio-cultural environment, the better and more successful is the process of joining a new educational system and the sphere of interethnic communication with representatives of different countries. Prospects for further research are to find the forms and methods of work that will facilitate the acquisition of a foreign student to a new environment. The teacher must create certain conditions for foreigners to comprehend the linguistic material and learn to participate in the dialogue communication of the society in an active way.

Author(s):  
Susan Hui-yun Yang ◽  
Patricia Haseltine

Teachers of English as a foreign language in Taiwan are challenged to organize multi-dimensional language activities for foreign students coming from ASEAN countries, including Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Vietnam. With different cultural backgrounds, these students have different prior knowledge of Taiwanese culture, and, because of the similarities and differences between Taiwan and these countries, it is meaningful to explore the development of globalization with the students, who are learning both English and Chinese. The different historical backgrounds, various cultural and religious differences, and social conditions, such as gender relationships in working places, are significant topics for class discussions. When teachers serve as discussion facilitators, they encourage students to express their own multi-identities and expectations for the exchange program. Most interesting of all is to find out about their own short-term and long-term career goals. 32 foreign students from the Philippines and Vietnam were recruited for research. Questionnaires were used to assess their foreign language learning motivation and strategies, as well as to discover the learning environment they prefer and their globalization prospects. It was found that multi-lingual language policies for promoting globalization in higher education are very likely to influence the success of foreign student study in Taiwan.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maram S. Almohaimeed ◽  
Huda M. Almurshed

Whether to avoid learners’ first language (L1) or to make use of it in the second language (L2) classes is a controversial issue. Some studies have challenged the effectiveness of the monolingual approach to foreign language learning. This study investigates Saudi university learners’ attitudes and perceptions towards incorporating their L1(Arabic) in English class. This study also sheds light into the relationship between students’ perceptions and proficiency level in the target language. To this end, Gaebler's questionnaire (2014) was administered to 60 female learners studying in the preparatory year at a Saudi university. They were from three different English proficiency levels. The results showed that advanced learners hold a negative attitude towards the use of L1 in their English classes, whereas elementary and intermediate learners generally perceive the judicious use of their L1 positively.


Author(s):  
Alla A. Zhukovska

The article deals with the issue of the language adaptation of foreign students who have left the preparatory faculty and begun their studies in Russian in the first year of the main faculty of the Russian University. The main problem is the lack of knowledge of Russian by foreign students to understand and take notes at lectures, to actively participate in seminars. The article identifies and discusses the main difficulties faced by foreigners while studying in Russia and the reasons of their appearance, analyzes the conditions of training of foreign students at the preparatory faculty and the real results of this training, the main of which is the discrepancy between what foreign students know and are capable of and what they need to know and be able to, becoming the first-year students of a Russian University. Most first-year foreign students find it difficult to study at the same level with Russian students, so they need the support and understanding of not only teachers of Russian as a foreign language, but also teachers of other subjects. It is noted that teachers who don’t specialize in teaching Russian as a foreign language can’t and don’t want to adequately assess the level of knowledge of a foreign student and help them if needed. The article proposes a possible solution to this problem.


Author(s):  
Alberto Hijazo-Gascón ◽  
Reyes Llopis-García

Abstract This introduction provides an overview of the intersection between Applied Cognitive Linguistics and Second/Foreign Language Learning. First, the relevance of Cognitive Linguistics (CL) for Applied Linguistics in general is discussed. The second section explains the main principles of CL and how each relates to the acquisition of second languages: (i) language and human cognition, (ii) language as symbolic, (iii) language as motivated; and (iv) language as usage-based. Section three offers a review of previous literature on CL and L2s that are different from English, as it is one the main aims of this Special Issue to provide state-of-the-art research and scholarship to enhance the bigger picture of the field of Second Language Acquisition beyond English as the target language. Spanish as L2/FL in Applied Cognitive Linguistics is the focus of the next section, which leads to a brief overview of the papers included in the Issue, featuring Spanish as the L2 with L1s such as English, French, German and Italian. Polysemy, Motion Events Typology, Cognitive Grammar and Construction Grammar are the Cognitive Linguistics areas addressed in the contributions here presented.


1983 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 122-149
Author(s):  
Henning Bolte

The article deals with the relationship between verbal communication as a teaching objective and as a medium of teaching/learning. This relationship is of special interest for foreign language teaching/ learning aiming at ccmnunicative competence in spoken language. The article enters into the question in which ways teaching/learning ob-jects are constituted in the course of ongoing interaction, how acti-vities with regard to such objects are stimulated and steered, and what kinds of activities are defined by the participants themselves as LEARNING or count for them as such. Psycholinguistic input-(in-take) output models are being argued against, because classroom learning is not simply characterized by ready-made prestructured in-put and predetermined output, but both have first to be constituted through some strategic form of social interaction. Two examples of foreign language learning in the classroom are pre-sented: first of an EFL lesson, where the distortion of target langu-age function potential is demonstrated and the "staged" production of language prof iciency within a pedagogic interaction pattern is shown; and second of a German FL lesson, where a grammatical item is focussed and exercised. The sequence is an example of rigorous reali-zation of the I(nitiation)-R(esponse)-E(valuation) pattern as the ba-sic pattern of sequential organization in the classroom. It clearly shows how LEARNING is defined/executed as standardized response for-mats and "conditioned" chains of I-R-pairs. Many of the performed linguistic deviations(of the target language)seem due to interaction mechanisms rather than to general principles of language development. Conversational analysis of teaching-learning discourse shows that learning is not merely to be considered as a direct conventionalized consequence of ( initiating ) teaching ( acts ). On the one hand the inter-action pattern is merely a framework wherein "inner" mental processes are evoked and organized, which can manifest themselves in various forms. On the other hand there is a strong tendency for the teacher to control the entire learning process and to make expected outcomes collectively significant and thus for the learner a tendency mainly to adjust to prefabricated response formats, which at the same time serve as evidence for didactically intended cognitions. Hence, the stronger the predetermination and imposing of LEARNING by the teach-er, the more learning tends to become a mere guessing game and pure-ly mechanical. The restrictions of traditional classrooms are obvious from these examples: restrictions with regard to the experience of functional potential of the target language and with regard to the embedding of focussed learning-items into a functional perspective. These re-strictions have to be changed in order to enable learners to parti-cipate in problem-constitution, to bring in own perceptions of con-cepts/problems and to bring in own problem-solving strategies as systematic parts of language development and as systematic parts of official classroom discourse, i.e. as objects of active mutual indication and interpretation. Conversational analysis can be an important tool for the study of such "alternative" structuring of classroom interaction and its con-tribution to a more learner-centered and functionally oriented (foreign)language LEARNING.


Author(s):  
Dongshuo Wang ◽  
Bin Zou ◽  
Minjie Xing

This research investigates the interaction between English students learning Chinese in the UK and Chinese students learning English in China via a wiki platform. Activity theory and legitimate peripheral participation theory were employed as a theoretical framework; wiki was embedded as an interactive learning tool. The findings revealed that Chinese native speakers assisted English students learning Chinese as foreign language (CFL) by means of reorganizing word orders and restructuring sentence patterns. The usages of clarification and elaboration were more frequent than the usages of added and deleted information. Both CFL and English as foreign language (EFL) students interacted with each other in attending to language forms through the essay correction and revision process, and the interaction consequently enhanced their target language learning. The study suggests that wiki provides a dynamic platform, which encourages further integration into the syllabus to support foreign language learning.


2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 837-852 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marília dos Santos Lima

The study reported here forms part of a program of qualitative research focusing on the use of collaborative tasks in learning English as a foreign language in Brazil. The research examines the concept of collaborative dialogue (SWAIN, 2000), understood as dialogue that constructs linguistic knowledge within a sociocultural view of language learning. The results indicated that the learners reflected upon the target language, tested hypotheses and reformulated their production in order to promote mutual comprehension in the learning process. The results also revealed that the interaction established during the production of the collaborative dialogue stimulated foreign language learning as the students noticed linguistic gaps in the target language, and sought solutions together.


Author(s):  
Larisa Ignatjeva

<p><em>The setting of humanistic concept of education demands the revision of the whole lingvodidactic system of foreign language learning. On the modern stage of the development of pedagogy that allows to put theory into the practice of teaching and assessment of students’ achievements the search for educational models is especially actual. The most important area of the realization of humanistic approach is school education as the development of students’ personality takes place particularly at school age. The article analyses a lingvodydactic model of the competence assessment in writing. The main aim of the working out of this model is to overcome the contradiction between a formal way of assessment which is objective and the necessity of the creation of the conditions for students’ full personal self-expression. This system is being approbated in the Russian language learning as a foreign language in Latvian schools.</em></p>


2018 ◽  
Vol 93 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen Mateo Gallego

This paper focuses on the written interlanguage of German college students studying Spanish as a Foreign Language in four different levels (A2-C1). In order to observe the evolution of conceptual fluency, a total number of sixty participants wrote an essay about their Spanish studies without previous instruction on the Theory of Conceptual Metaphor (Lakoff/Johnson 1980). The metaphorical density index was measured with special attention paid to the differences and similarities between the German and Spanish semantic conceptual systems and the metaphors used in each stage of learning. The results show that the L1 plays a fundamental role in the typology of metaphors, while quantitative factors such as the metaphorical density index can also vary depending on the target language and the topics of the essays. Therefore, conventional metaphors play a fundamental role in foreign language learning, as the most significant examples in terms of lack of conceptual fluency have been caused by copying linguistic structures from conventional German metaphors into the target language.


Author(s):  
Osiris Hernández Castro ◽  
Yolanda Samacá Bohórquez

This article explores the relevance of implementing the cultural aspects of both foreign and own countries as a paramount issue in the teaching of a target language. This small scale research project was developed as a component of the seminar on Bilinguism offered by Universidad Distrital in Bogotá as part of its Master ́s program in Applied Linguistics to the Teaching of English. The authors of this research collected data to find out and compare how university students from Tunja and Bogotá –two major Colombian cities– assess the incorporation of cultural aspects of the foreign country into the teaching of the foreign language. Thus, the guiding question of this research is: How do EFL students interpret cultural aspects embedded in foreign language learning?


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