Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Teaching L2 Listening Strategies Works!


The Problem 
Can L2 learners be taught strategies to help them become better at listening comprehension? 

The study 
This study shows that guiding students to engage in recursive listening processes helps them become better listeners. More specifically, the listening strategy instruction was found to help learners direct their attention to main ideas and content details and to enhance their ability to plan, predict, monitor, evaluate, and solve problems for listening tasks. University-level students of French as a second language were given process-based cycles of listening activities. They were instructed to predict main ideas and more detailed information before each passage and to discuss potential difficulties and possible solutions to them. As a result, their listening comprehension improved significantly. 

The Take-Home Message 
Providing instruction on L2 strategies can improve our learners’ ability to comprehend aurally and therefore accelerate their learning in the target language. But before including strategy instruction in your classes, it’s important to consider the range and frequency of strategies your students might already be using and to choose strategies appropriate to their level and to their communicative and/or academic needs. 

Article Citation 
Vandergrift, L., & Tafaghodtari, M. H. (2010). Teaching L2 learners how to listen does make a difference: an empirical study. Language Learning, 60, 470-497. 

Entry by Min Fan

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Pronunciation—To Teach or Not to Teach?


The Problem
As an L2 teacher, do you ever find that your students are frustrated because they feel their accent is different from that of native speakers? For decades, pronunciation has been treated like an “orphan” by L2 curriculum designers, language departments, and textbook writers, leaving teachers with little in the way of resources for teaching this skill. Complicating this problem even further, it’s unclear to many how important it is to have a native-sounding accent and whether non-native adult speakers can acquire native-like pronunciation.

The Study 
In response to these issues and to skepticism over the effectiveness of pronunciation instruction, the number of studies that aim to understand pronunciation instruction and its impact on learners’ intelligibility and perceived comprehensibility has increased in recent years. Mark Tanner and Melissa Landon (2009) conducted a quasi-experimental study to evaluate a self-directed, computer-assisted cued pronunciation reading (CPR) technique with 75 intermediate ESL students. After 11 weeks (10 min per day) of lab treatment, students significantly improved in their perception of pausing and word stress as well as their production of word stress. Although they didn’t show short-term improvement in perceived comprehensibility, the students reported that the lab work helped them a lot with their pronunciation and even gave them more self-confidence when speaking.

The Take-Home Message 
This study differs from most other pronunciation studies in that the teachers did not provide feedback or grade the students but simply reminded them to complete the CPR tasks. This offers an excellent option for those who are not 100% confident/comfortable teaching pronunciation, or in cases when the curricula don’t include pronunciation instruction. Even though it’s hard for adult L2 speakers to have a native-sounding accent, they can still improve in certain aspects. Finally, although CPR tasks like those in the study can be used as a stand-alone component, combining them with explicit instruction and feedback may lead to even greater improvement.

Article Citation 
Tanner, M. W., & Landon, M. M. (2009). The effects of computer-assisted pronunciation readings on ESL learners’ use of pausing, stress, intonation, and overall comprehensibility. Language Learning & Technology, 13, 51-65.

Entry by Yuan (Helen) Zhuang

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Is Teaching L2 Phraseology Worth our Time?

The Problem
Most teachers have been faced with that awkward moment when they have had to tell a student that their grammatically correct utterance is “just not right”.  What can a teacher do to assist students to acquire the phraseological knowledge they need to avoid breakdowns in communication and sound more natural or nativelike in their L2? 

The Study 
In 1993, Michael Lewis suggested that increasing student awareness of phrases would also increase their ability to use L2 phrases.  Putting this theory to the test, Boers, Eyckmans, Kappel, Stengers, and Demecheleer (2006) looked at two groups of similarly proficient students; one group engaged in awareness raising activities and the other did not.  Both groups were later interviewed after given a reading assignment.  The students who had received the extra input more often used the phrases they encountered in the pre-reading during the interview. Also, this group was more frequently perceived as being at a higher proficiency level than the control group.  Another component of the interview required the students to speak freely on an everyday topic. Results of this part of the interview showed no significant difference between the two groups’ use of phrases, suggesting that students had learned to identify and use phrases from their reading, but did not extend this use beyond specific topics. 

The Take-Home Message 
The bottom line here is that students may benefit from spending time engaging in activities that raise phraseological awareness. By doing so, learners might notice and begin to use these forms, which can increase both their fluency and their oral proficiency as perceived by others.

Article Citation
Boers, F., Eyckmans, J., Kappel J., Stengers, H., and Demecheleer, M. (2006). Formulaic sequences and perceived oral proficiency: Putting a Lexical Approach to the test. Language Teaching Research, 10, 245–261.

Entry by Anna M. Gates

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Beliefs, Emotions, and Introspection in the L2 Classroom

The Problem 
Some students’ beliefs and emotions of shyness, embarrassment and low self-esteem may affect how they respond in class while learning a second or foreign language. How can we, as language teachers, help these students? 

The Study 
This article reports the case study of three students who were studying to become English teachers in Brazil. Through several different techniques (interviews, questionnaires, journals, etc.), the researcher collected information on the students’ beliefs, how these affected their emotions, and how they felt about themselves when learning English. The students’ had feelings of shyness, embarrassment, and low self-esteem when speaking in class because of considering themselves as having a lower proficiency level compared to the more advanced students in their class and their teacher. The results showed that simply through the process of reflection and introspection, some beliefs and hence attitudes may be changed for the better. 

The Take-Home Message 
As language teachers we should be aware that our students’ feelings of self-awareness, shyness, embarrassment may interfere with how they act or respond in class, especially when it comes to speaking in a second/foreign language. We can encourage our students to reflect on their feelings and beliefs in order to see if these might be negatively affecting their performance in class as well as to alleviate some of their negative feelings. 

Article Citation
Aragao, R. (2011). Beliefs and emotions in second language learning. System, 39, 302-113.

Entry by María Nelly Gutierrez Arvizu