 |
 |
 | |||||
 | |||||||
 | |||||||
|
Volume 61, No. 3, March 2005
Winner
of the Best Graduate Student Paper Award Elizabeth Gatbonton and Norman
Segalowitz Articles Elizabeth Gatbonton and
Norman Segalowitz Marlise Horst Hélène Knoerr
et Alysse Weinberg Tung-Hsien He Book and Software Reviews David Block. The Social
Turn in Second Language Acquisition M. Hewings. Pronunciation
Practice Activities: A Resource Book for Teaching English Pronunciation C. Maurice Cherry and Lee Bradley.
Assessment Practices in Foreign Language Education W.A. Renandya. Methodology
and Materials Design in Language Teaching: Current Perceptions and
Practices and Their Implications Jean Aitchison and Diana M.
Lewis (eds.). New Media Language M.W. Morris, C. Herron et C.-R.
Estin. Identité, modernité, texte Antonello Borra and Cristina
Pausini. Italian through Film: A Text for Italian Courses John Field. Psycholinguistics:
A resource book for students Calendar of Forthcoming Events A Guide for Authors Abstracts Winner
of the Best Graduate Student Paper Award This qualitative study explores how francophone mothers describe barriers to and supports for maintaining their mother tongue. It focuses on the experiences of women who have the primary responsibility for teaching French to their pre-school-aged children. The findings, based on data collected in semi-structured interviews with women residing in Greater Vancouver, show that, compared to before motherhood, the participants were much more motivated to communicate in French and to participate in the francophone community. However, the women felt that lack of resources in the community, lack of time, and having an English-speaking partner limited their ability to actively improve their French. This study highlights the complexity of preventing further language loss and, consequently, the challenge of promoting inter-generational language transmission, given the minority language status of French in British Columbia. The author underscores the need to advance the equal status of Canada's two official languages. Elizabeth
Gatbonton and Norman Segalowitz Although most teachers claim to practise communicative language teaching (CLT), many do not genuinely do so. In this paper, we examine some of the reasons for teachers' resistance to CLT use. We provide a theoretical analysis that focuses on one of the greatest challenges facing CLT methodology - how to promote automatic fluency within this framework. We meet this challenge by proposing a CLT methodology designed to meet specific criteria that will enhance learners' fluency, while addressing teachers' commonly held reservations about CLT. The assumptions and design criteria of the methodology presented here can be operationalized for research purposes, allowing CLT to be evaluated in systematic outcome testing. Marlise
Horst Many language courses now offer access to simplified materials graded at various levels of proficiency so that learners can read at length in their new language. An assumed benefit is the development of large and rapidly accessed second language (L2) lexicons. Studies of such extensive reading (ER) programs indicate general language gains, but few examine vocabulary growth; none identify the words available for learning in an entire ER program or measure the extent to which participants learn them. This article describes a way of tackling this measurement challenge using electronic scanning, lexical frequency profiling, and individualized checklist testing. The method was pilot tested in an ER program where 21 ESL learners freely chose books that interested them. The innovative methodology proved to be feasible to implement and effective in assessing word knowledge gains. Growth rates were higher than those found in earlier studies. Research applications of the flexible corpus-based approach are discussed. Hélène
Knoerr et Alysse Weinberg This article compares two approaches for teaching pronunciation in an elementary-level French as a second language university course: the traditional approach, using audio cassettes, and a multimedia approach using software on CD-ROM. The goal of this study was to determine whether there was a significant difference between the two approaches in the 1) perception and production of targeted sounds and, 2) user satisfaction. Although our results show that there were no statistically significant differences between the two groups, the multimedia group made slightly greater gains in both the perception and production of certain sounds. Moreover, the multimedia group had a more positive attitude vis-à-vis the multimedia tool. Tung-Hsien
He This study examines the combined
effects of contrasting mastery and performance goals on the use of
composition strategies by adult writers of English as a Foreign Language
(EFL). Thirty-eight Taiwanese English-major college seniors of homogeneous
writing proficiency consented to participate in the study. Based on
responses on a goal scale, 19 participants were assigned to the high-mastery-low-performance
(HMLP) group, and 19 were assigned to the low-mastery-high-performance
(LMHP) group. Participants in the HMLP group were diagnosed as having
stronger mastery but weaker performance goal orientations, whereas
those in the LMHP group demonstrated the opposite tendency. Evidence
from think-aloud protocols indicated that (a) participants used 20
distinctive strategies classified into five categories; (b) the HMLP
group used monitoring/evaluating, revising, and compensating strategies
significantly more often than the LMHP group; and (c) the frequency
of revising strategies and mastery orientations served as two significant
positive predictors for better writing outcomes.
|
CMLR
HOME |
||||||
| |||||||
