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Personality and participation in a JapanTaiwan online intercultural exchange
No full textThis article examines personality and participation in an online intercultural exchange (oie) between 57 university students in Japan (n = 28) and Taiwan (n = 29). The two-month oie used Facebook (fb) as the medium of communication. During the online exchange, participants communicated linguistically using English as their common language and para-linguistically through photos, videos, and emoticons. The revised version of the 60-item hexaco personality inventory was used to assess personality traits and to compare those traits with participation as measured by a fb participation rubric created for this study. From the data two themes emerged: 1) overall participation rates were high; 2) participation positively correlated with the personality item Modesty and negatively with the items Sincerity and Organization. These results suggest that a degree of modest-insincerity may be natural for student engagement in online social interaction and that the asynchronous nature of the exchange suits students who favor less structured communication activities. One of the implications of this research is that, with the required coaching and support, students can develop the necessary skills to successfully partake in OIEs
Emotion-involved semantic processing and L2 vocabulary memory: A micro-level emotion manifesto
No full textVocabulary instruction and learning: A commentary on four studies
No full textFour papers were presented by Jenifer Larson-Hall, Noriko Matsuda, Yu Kanazawa, and Phil Bennett. As the discussant, it is my pleasure to comment on these four interesting studies concerning language attrition, the effect of a speaker’s voice on the speed of word recognition, affect and lexical acquisition, and the use of metaphor in teaching academic vocabulary. A unique aspect of these papers is their focus on areas in the fields that have received little attention in the past. This feature makes the studies quite valuable, as they illuminate aspects of lexical acquisition that are yet to be understood in any detail
Initial evaluation of AWSuM: A pilot study
No full textThis article reports on a pilot study to evaluate usability, effectiveness, and impact of Academic Word Suggestion Machine (AWSuM), a webbased, innovative tool, powered by the combination of rhetorical moves and lexical bundles with an auto-complete feature. Eight L2 writers participated in the study. Their open-ended comments after using the tool were qualitatively analyzed and classified in thematic categories. The results showed that the developed tool brought about beneficial effects that genre writing pedagogy explicitly aims to achieve. Implications are discussed in terms of the potential role that a tool like AWSuM could play in the teaching and learning of technology-enhanced genre writing
How accurately can the Google Web Speech API recognize and transcribe Japanese L2 English learners’ oral production?
No full textThe ultimate aim of our research project was to use the Google Web Speech api to automate scoring of elicited imitation (ei) tests. However, in order to achieve this goal, we had to take a number of preparatory steps. We needed to assess how accurate this speech recognition tool is in recognizing native speakers’ production of the test items; we had to assess its accuracy with our Japanese efl learners; and, on the basis of these trials, we needed to evaluate the potential for using the api for our purposes. Through comparing our own assessments of the learners’ pronunciation with the system’s ability to transcribe utterances, we were able to ascertain that the learners’ pronunciation of certain sounds is probably the single biggest reason for a fall in recognition accuracy compared to native speaker input. However, we argue that pronunciation may not be an insurmountable barrier to using this speech recognition system for our efl purposes. By going through this double screening process, we feel we have arrived at a set of items which can be used to assess student’s grammatical ability in an ei test using a custom Google Web Speech system
Investigating the use of a smartphone social networking application on language learning
No full textThis study explored college students’ use of a popular smartphone social networking application, WeChat, in a tandem language learning project. The research questions included (1) How do Chinese-English dyads utilize the WeChat app for weekly language learning?, and (2) What are the perceptions of the Chinese-English dyads on the use of the WeChat app for language learning? In this exploratory study, the participants’ conversations were recorded and excerpts were used to illustrate how the dyads utilized WeChat. In addition, an online survey was distributed to participants after the tandem language learning program ended, which asked questions about how the dyads used WeChat for language learning. The survey results suggested that the participants’ experiences with WeChat were mostly positive with only a few drawbacks. Suggestions for improvements in future WeChat tandem language learning and for future smartphone studies were discussed
Using cognitive linguistic principles to encourage production of metaphorical vocabulary in writing
No full textLearners in academic English environments face considerable demands on their lexical knowledge. The problem is more than just the acquisition of a large vocabulary, they must also develop an awareness of the range of meanings that words can convey. Academic discourse is known to make frequent use of metaphorical vocabulary to express abstract notions. This article reports on a two-semester investigation into learner production of conventional metaphorical vocabulary in an anthropology course. Analysis of written output revealed that control group metaphor use correlated strongly with overall proficiency, but that experimental group learners responded to the treatment in a more complex fashion
Discovering language discovering language properties through corpus-based dictionary data analysis
No full textTo reveal underlying patterns in real language use, linguists have increasingly come to rely on corpus analyses, involving the evaluation of statistical frequencies in generally sizable bodies of natural linguistic data. However, accessing and analyzing large samples of raw language is neither always practical nor even truly necessary, especially in cases pertaining to structural characteristics. In fact, the requisite data can oftentimes be gleaned from a state-of-the-art (i.e., corpus-based) dictionary. Moreover, given the widespread availability of easily searchable electronic dictionaries nowadays, almost any language teacher or learner can use one to answer a number of these types of queries. This paper illustrates this claim with a step-by-step analysis of corpus-based dictionary data for the purpose of formulating the sound-symbol relations in English words with vowels preceding -gh
''I don't know'' use and guessing on the bilingual Japanese vocabulary size test: clarifications and limitations
No full textThis paper offers a response to Hutchinson’s comments on ourpreliminary report of ”I don’t know” use and guessing on the bilingualJapanese Vocabulary Size Test (VST), which was published in VocabularyLearning and Instruction. In particular, it provides greater clarification ofthe English proficiency levels used throughout that paper and areiteration of what we see as its key findings regarding the range ofvocabulary size estimates that were able to be calculated for theparticipants. Finally, it addresses the methodological limitations ofthe original study, which, we believe, reduce any determinations aboutthe participants’ personality types or general test-taking behaviors tomere speculation
Apps and EFL: A case study on the use of smartphone apps to learn English by four Japanese university students
No full textThis study explores, describes and analyzes the utilization of smartphone apps by four Japanese university students to support learning English as a Foreign Language (efl). Findings indicate that intermediate language learners use apps to access content and communicate on sns and are not keen on studying discrete language parts. Participants believe that using apps helped them with their four language skills (listening, reading, speaking, and writing), grammar, vocabulary and spelling. Use of apps (location, frequency and duration) seems to be determined by opportunity, personal preference and desire to use