Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research
Volume:1 Issue: 2, Jul 2013

Idiomaticity is central to linguistic theory. Despite the pervasiveness of idioms in language, pedagogical articles in professional journals have yet to pay attention to the benefits of idiom instruction in the second language (SL) classroom. Addressing this concern, this articlereports the results of an exploratory qualitative research study conducted with sixteen SL university instructors and two Language Program Directors (LPDs) at two large universities in the Southwest (United States of America) that explored teachers’ own knowledge and theories about SL idiomaticity. Survey and interview data indicate that university instructors and LPDs share beliefs and assumptions about how best to teach idioms and assess students’ knowledge of SL idiomaticity. It was concluded that both university instructors and LPDs have an important role to play in the development of idiom pedagogy and that such pedagogy can be greatly enhanced through action research. Recommendations are included for further study of the issues surrounding SL idiomaticity, and teaching implications are considered for the development of meaningful pedagogical practices suitable for the promotion of idiomatic learning.

Two studies were carried out in order to create distinct motivational profiles of students, examine the way in which context had an effect on motivational styles, and attempt to collaborate these findings with the L2 Motivational Self-System. The research questions for this study were concerned with ascertaining whether or not it is possible to identify distinct learner types in terms of their motivational profiles; and to what extent different aspects of motivation contribute towards distinguishing different motivational profiles. The participants for the first study were 42 Dutch university students of English; and the participants for the second study were 26 adult learners of English at a language school in Sydney, Australia. In order to construct the motivational profiles, several exploratory statistical procedures were carried out, including principal components analysis and cluster analysis. The results found that the strength of the factors extracted in the principal components stage differed depending on the context of each study. In addition, the motivational profiles that were formed during the cluster analyses revealed distinct subgroups of learners which displayed varying levels of homogeneous characteristics.

At first glance it is surprising that – in remarkable contrast to grammatical or lexical failings which, while certainly not viewed as insignificant, are rarely greeted with outright anger or hostility – inappropriate documentation of scholarly sources so frequently provokes very harsh penalties. Rather than the constructively pedagogical approach that one would expect with regard to other defects in writing, why do we so often witness a rush to negative evaluation of what may, after all, be evidence of nothing more culpable than misinformation, confusion, or oversight? Much has of course been written about possible remedies for ineffective use of scholarly sources and, on the other hand, about available monitoring and punishment for deliberate plagiarism; so, in a sense, the alternatives appear quite simple. However, decisions about when to adopt a more pedagogical or a more disciplinary viewpoint are complicated by difficult and potentially emotional factors that can disrupt calm, confident and well-reasoned judgment. Thus, this paper will focus not on pedagogical or disciplinary strategies, whichever may be considered suitable in a given case, but on a framework for thorough reflection earlier in the thinking process. It will explore multiple perspectives on possible origins for the innocent if maladroit mishandling of scholarly sources, with a view to highlighting a number of informative but potentially neglected reference points – a cognitive psychological perspective on human error and error management, plausible ambiguities in determining what actually constitutes plagiarism, and communication challenges – that may enter into the instructor’s final determination.

In the field of English language teaching, there has been increasing interest in the way literacy development is influenced by institutional and community practices, and the way power is implicated in language learners’ engagement with text. In this paper, I trace the trajectory of my research on identity, literacy, and English language teaching, informed by theories of investment and imagined communities. Data from English language classrooms in Canada, Pakistan, and Uganda suggest that if learners have a sense of ownership over meaning-making, they will have enhanced identities as learners, and participate more actively in literacy practices. The research challenges English teachers to consider what pedagogical practices are both appropriate and desirable in the teaching of literacy, and what practices will help students develop the capacity for imagining a wider range of identities across time and space. Such practices, the research suggests, will necessitate changes in both teacher and student identity.

This paper represents an attempt to search for the implications of Vygotsky’s approach to ‘the genesis of mind’ for second language acquisition (SLA). In so doing, the present author has adopted first a retrospective view - what has already gone in the field of foreign language instruction, and a prospective view - what is contingent on the current speculations on SLA while drawing on Vygostky’s sociocultural theory (SCT) bearing on the methodology of L2 instruction. Hence, the paper consists of two major parts: the first part casts a rapid glance at the theories and practices of L2 teaching which were in vogue in the past. The second part focuses on the implications that Vygotsky’s SCT holds for SLA and, as a sequel, to the training and education of L2 teachers. Vygotsky’s approach to the genesis of mind, indeed, entrusts the educationists with a grave task regarding the amelioration of social systems of the community in general, and improving second language methodology, in particular. After all, the shaping of man’s mind is an indication of the ways the society has historically and culturally developed.

Based on Robinson’s (2005) Cognition Hypothesis and Skehan and Foster’s (2001) Limited Attentional Capacity Model, the current study attempted to investigate the effect of manipulating task complexity on argumentative writing quality in terms of lexical complexity, fluency, grammatical accuracy, and syntactic complexity. Task complexity was manipulated through applying resource dispersing dimensions. All 60 participants who were university students were randomly assigned into one of the three groups: (a) topic; (b) topic + idea; and (c) topic + idea + discourse marker group. A series of oneway ANOVAs was utilized to detect significant differences among the groups. Results showed that increasing task complexity: 1. did not lead to differences in lexical complexity (measured by the ratio of lexical words to function words and lexical density), but it did lead to significant differences when mean segmental type-token ratio was used to measure lexical complexity; 2. produced significantly less fluent language; 3. resulted in more grammatically accurate language in the least complex task; and 4. did demonstrate significant difference in syntactic complexity (when it was measured by the ratio of dependent clauses to total clauses). Further findings and implications are discussed in the paper.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of portfolio assessment as a process-oriented mechanism on the autonomy of Iranian advanced EFL learners. A particular concern was to examine the potential effect of gender on portfolio assessment by taking the learners’ writing ability into account. The participants were 80 male and female advanced EFL learners to whom the Learner Autonomy Questionnaire (Kashefian, 2002) was administered to check their homogeneity prior to the study in terms of autonomy; a truncated form of a TOEFL test was also given to the participants to assess their language proficiency. The participants were then randomly divided into 4 groups: 2 experimental groups (20 females in class A and 20 males in class B) and 2 control groups 20 females in class C and 20 males in class D). The portfolio assessment was integrated into the experimental groups to explore whether and to what extent their autonomy might enhance and also to investigate the possible effect of gender on portfolio assessment in writing ability. The portfolio assessment was based on the classroom portfolio model adopted from Hamp-Lyons and Condon (2000), consisting of 3 procedures: collection, selection, and reflection. In contrast, the control groups received the traditional assessment of writing. The data were analyzed using 2 independent samples t tests, mean, and the effect size. The results showed that the portfolio procedures considerably improved the autonomy of the participants. Also, gender had no impact on portfolio assessment.