Decision Making in English as an Additional Language: Surprises and Advantages

Do adult learners of English make different and sometimes better decisions in English than their monolingual peers and teachers? It is likely, possible, and probable. Using evidence from classroom decision making studies, with over 500 participants, we demonstrate that often adult English learners (henceforth adult Active Bilingual Learners/Users of English [ABLE]) make more accurate decisions in English than first language English speakers, when given time and the ability to utilize their whole linguistic repertoire (i.e., translanguaging). We specifically look at differences in decisions that involve 1) common adverbs of frequency (rare, possible, likely, frequently, etc.) and 2) system 1 (implicit) vs. system 2 (analytical) thinking in cognitive reflection tests, such as math story problems. Understanding these surprising differences and advantages in decision making in English as an Additional Language (EAL) has important practical implications for test preparation and daily instruction for adult ABLE students, and potentially as well for ABLE youth in K-12 schools.

Cuba: TEFL off the Grid

The objective of this paper is to share the author’s points of view concerning the teaching and learning process of English as a foreign language in Cuba. The author does not claim to speak on behalf of the Cuban EFL teaching community, and the views expressed in this paper are the result of his personal practice only, and not necessarily those of the Cuban educational institutions. The writer wishes to thank all those who have contributed to his professional formation- whose list would be too long. The author remarks that all shortcomings, errors, and inaccuracies found in this paper are his fault only.

A Cognitive Study on the Semantic Extensions of GOLD in English

Based on the British National Corpus (BNC), this study attempts to analyze the contexts with gold and gold-relevant words. The corpus-based analysis of the contexts shows that the main meaning focuses of GOLD are: Color; Value; Rarity and Stability. The target scopes of GOLD include: Human, Animal, Object, Star, Plant, Place, Sport, Economy, Occupation, Music, Time, Chance, Rules and Ideas. The relationships between the source focuses and the target scopes fall into two levels: types and tendency. The types of relationships are metonymy, metaphor. The tendency shows the application tendency of the source focuses onto the targets. Color tends to describe Stars, Places, Objects, Plants, Animals and Human. Rarity and Value tend to describe Places, Plants, Sports, Economy, Time, Idea and Rules. Stability tends to describe Human, Occupation, Economy and Rules.

Sensory Chunking and the Like: Testing a Pedagogical Treatment Applied to the Strengthening of the Third-Person Singular-s

Research into foreign language acquisition reports that learners of English as a foreign language are inconsistent with the suppliance of verbal morphology and tend to omit morphemes such as the third-person singular -s even at advanced instructional stages. Researchers rely on Generative linguistics and models such as the Minimalist Programme (Chomsky, 2000, 2015/1995) and the Feature Assembly Hypothesis (Lardiere, 2005, 2007, 2009) to account for such variability. The present study attempted to increase the accuracy rates of the -s. The author designed a treatment (©2018, 2019, Verónica Mendoza Fernández) that centered around sensory chunking (teaching with chunked sentences). Sixty-four learners of English as a foreign language from three different rural schools of primary education in Northern Spain participated in a classroom experiment that followed a pretest-postest procedure. Participants from school 1 constituted the control group and participants from schools 2 and 3, the experimental groups. The results of a grammaticality judgement task indicated a statistically significant increase in the accuracy rates of the -s for one of the experimental groups and a trend towards significance for the other experimental group. The treatment could promote the learning of linguistic items contained within blocks of language, as well as the learning of such blocks, and thus foster language automatisation.

A Study of Online Learning Motivation in the COVID-19 Pandemic Situation for Undergraduate Students at Shiraz University According to Their Gender and Field of Study

The present study aims to determine the extent to which online learning (or e-learning) motivation during COVID-19 Pandemic for undergraduate students at Shiraz University in Shiraz, Iran. It also plans to compare students’ level of motivation for online learning, based on their gender and field of study. For these purposes, the researcher adopted a quantitative comparative research design, using a questionnaire which was developed and checked for internal consistency. The questionnaire was administered on 200 undergraduate students of civil engineering and psychology at Shiraz University. After the collected data were split by gender and field of study two independent samples t-tests were conducted to assess the significance of the results and to determine if there was a significant difference in their online learning motivation among the resulting groups for each independent variable. The research findings showed that undergraduate students are rather highly motivated to online learning regardless of their gender or field of study. No significant difference in online learning motivation between male and female university students was derived from the data analysis. However, in relation to field of study, it was found that the overall online learning motivation for civil engineering students was significantly higher than psychology students.

Review of “Let’s Discuss. Second-Language Learners Share Ideas” by Deanna Kuhn (Wessex Press, 2021)

This review critically presents the “Let’s Discuss. Second-language Learners Share Ideas” monograph by Professor Deanna Kuhn as a classroom manual to be used in the Foreign Language (FL) classroom. Connections between critical thinking, global citizenship and critical cultural awareness, as part of a language teaching curriculum, are made. As a conclusion, “Let’s Discuss” is proposed as adequate to complement current FL curricula focusing on critical and global citizenship skills.

Sociolets, Socioaffective Filters and Social Transference: Contextual Considerations For Urban, Immigrant, Language Learners

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Research on Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK): Teachers’ Views on Language

This research aimed to investigate the views on language shown in the practices of six Chinese in-service teachers teaching College English at two universities in the south of China by using a qualitative multiple case study approach. These views on language were used to understand the characteristics of the participant teachers’ Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) so as to make suggestions for in-service College English teacher education and development in mainland China. The study included three rounds of data collection (pre-, in-, and post-class teaching observation), and the college English classroom teaching content analysis approach was applied in the data analysis across the cases. Teachers’ views on language include structural, functional, and interactional views. In this study, most participant teachers showed interactional views on language. Another interesting point in the data was that different views on language could be held by a single teacher in one class. This is not really surprising because teachers’ views on language are reflected in their classroom pedagogical tasks.

udents’ Challenges and Their Professional Development during Online Teaching Process in Albania

Global pandemic situation caused of COVID-19 brought challenges in every aspect of our lives. One of the greatest challenges in our country was educational institutions closure. Aleksandër Moisiu University-Durrës in Albania was one of the first higher education institutions that implemented online teaching through different platforms such as “Google Classroom”, “Google Meet”, and “Zoom”. Even though it was an unusual situation, both lecturers and students had to adapt these new but not easy conditions. The purpose of this research was to gather data from students’ opinions regarding the ability of Aleksandër Moisiu University to provide knowledge in the context of online learning and to examine students’ attitude towards exclusively online learning. This research was conducted using a qualitative methodology collecting data through focus groups held in Google Meet with 45 students studying in Bachelor and Master Degree programme, in the department of foreign languages at Aleksandër Moisiu University. Findings of the research will serve universities and policy makers when predicting improvements in educational system.

Becoming Polyglots through Formal and Non-Formal Language Education

It is not surprising that there are Indonesian people who are able to communicate only in one language, i.e., their native Language (L1). Some Javanese people—the major ethnic group living in East and Central Java -are only able to communicate in Javanese; some Sundanese people—the second major ethnic group living in West Java -are able to communicate only in Sundanese; and some Banjarese—the people living in South Kalimantan province are only able to communicate in Banjarese. This is especially true for those who never experience formal education and live in villages and remote areas for almost of their lives. For those who have ever gone to and attended formal education, they are usually able to communicate at least in two different languages, i.e., their L1 and Indonesian language, their L2. Even, some Indonesian people are not only able to communicate in L1 and L2, but also are able to communicate in more languages. In relation to these phenomena, the following question is raised: “Why do some people be able to communicate only in one language while some others are able to communicate in more, different languages?”