Interactive Learning Between Chinese Students Learning English and English Students Leaning Chinese on the Platform of Wiki

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.

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):  
Ryuko Kubota

Historically, foreign language education in Japan has been influenced by local and global conditions. Of the two major purposes of learning a language—to gain new knowledge from overseas and to develop practical communication skills—the latter pragmatic orientation became dominant toward the end the 19th century, when access to foreign language learning increased and English became a dominant language to learn. The trend of learning English as an international language for pragmatic purposes has been further strengthened since the 1980s under the discourses of internationalization and neoliberal globalization. An overview of the current status of foreign language education reveals that there are both formal and non-formal learning opportunities for people of all ages; English predominates as a target language although fewer opportunities to learn other languages exist; English is taught at primary and secondary schools and universities with an emphasis on acquiring communicative skills, although the exam-oriented instructional practices contradict the official goal; and adults learn foreign languages, mainly English, for various reasons, including career advancement and hobbyist enjoyment. Such observations include contestations and contradictions. For instance, there have been debates on whether the major aim of learning English should be pragmatic or intellectual. These debates have taken place against the backdrop of the fact that the learning of a foreign language—de facto English—is much more prevalent in society in the early 21st century compared with previous periods in history, when access to learning opportunities was limited to elites. Another contradiction is between the multilingual reality in local and global communities and the exclusive emphasis on teaching English. This gap can be critically analyzed through a critical realist lens, through which multilayers of ideology in discourses and realities in the material world are examined. The predominance of English is driven by a neoliberal ideology that conceptualizes English as a global language with economic benefit, while testing and shadow education enterprises perpetuate the emphasis on English language teaching. The political economy of foreign language education also explains the longstanding socioeconomic disparity in English ability.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-34
Author(s):  
Wuri Syaputri ◽  
Fenny Theresia ◽  
Fatma Yuniarti

Language and culture are two things that are interrelated in human life, especially in learning and langage teaching. The objective of this study is to dercribe the understanding of culture in learning English. This research belongs to qualitative research which applies libraries research to collect the data. The introduction of this culture is especially recommended for foreign language learning which places more emphasis on developing communication skills with the target language. The introduction of culture in learning English process can reduce the potential for misunderstandings to occur during the communication process.


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):  
Suci Farianti

The research focused on the social factors which can influence the students’ achievement in learning English. Social factors are believed as the factors which play a crucial role in language learning and it can give impacts on foreign language learning. In this case, this research was conducted to investigate the impacts of social factors of parents’ economic level, Parents’ education level, parents’ occupation level and the environment on students’ achievement in learning English as a foreign language. The objects of the research were 10 students with special need and their parents at the eighth grade of SLB Negeri Pembina Aceh Tamiang. In conducting the data, the test and the questionnaire were designed. The twenty question items of the test were given to the students and an eighteen item of questionnaire were given to the parents’ to find out the require information on the social factors. In addition, in analyzing the data, all available data were processed by SPSS 17.0 for descriptive, correlation, ANOVA, and predictive analysis. Furthermore, based on the finding and the result of the research, the hypothesis (H0) of the research was rejected. In other word, there was no a significant correlation between social factors namely parents’ economic level, parents’ education level, parent’s  occupation level and environment on students’ achievement in learning English. Therefore, it can be stated that the variety of the students’ scores were not influenced by the social factors discussed on this research in which it was probably influenced by other factors such as the personality of the students, the students’ disability, etc.


Author(s):  
Firooz Sadighi ◽  
Shahrzad Chahardahcherik ◽  
Maryam Delfariyan ◽  
Fariba Feyzbar

In Iran the age of learning English as a foreign language is decreasing yearly. It is obvious that learning English at a very early age is a most appropriate time to start. The investigation in this study is focused on the speech act of request. Instructional effects of learning request strategies are assessed in preschoolers who received instruction to find out whether the exposure to the foreign language learning enhances the development of request strategy use and brings about changes in their first language strategy use features. The data were collected from 10 preschool Iranian learners of English as a foreign language. The participants of the study took a two-semester speaking course in an academic setting in Iran. The study had a pretest and posttest design in which 10 conversations were used including polite request strategies of English to analyze instructional effects on the learners’ first language after the posttest, by comparing and measuring the backward transfer against the pretest results. The oral task was in the form of role plays which were also utilized for communicative practice with the learners. The data were rated for the extent of a foreign language effect on the first language by experienced tutors and linguistic analyses were done to identify the foreign language components of request strategies features in the first language production. Results showed that frequent use of English request strategy features in the first language was an indication of L2 students’ beneficial experience in their L1.


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.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gholam Reza Parvizi ◽  
Yasser Saremi ◽  
Majid Ghazi ◽  
Ali Reza Kargar

<p>At the beginning levels of learning English, one of the difficulties students or children encounter in learning to is making correspondences between spoken and written English. In many cases, children have become acquainted with oral language and have some difficulty learning English conventions. They need hints and explanations about certain English orthographic rules and peculiarities. Students of English even those who have not so far learned to read in their mother tongue, will take advantage from learning to read from the start of connection with a foreign or second language. This conception forms the argumentation that the researcher seeks for throughout this article. The researcher begins with reviewing basic methods of teaching reading, before reporting on and expounding the results of a pilot study of learning by day care center children. The study indicated that the early preview to extensive reading (ER) promotes their progress in understanding and speech of the foreign language. The researcher suggests that text – based programs or instruction (TBI) extracted from text book with correspondent recordings should be developed as a choice both for children and some teachers.</p>


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