scholarly journals Investigating Syntactic Complexity in EFL Learners' Writing across Common European Framework of Reference Levels A1, A2, and B1

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 506-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ghulam Abbas Khushik ◽  
Ari Huhta
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Reference Levels ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
First Languages ◽  
Density Indices ◽  
Linguistic Basis

Abstract The study investigates the linguistic basis of Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) levels in English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ writing. Specifically, it examines whether CEFR levels can be distinguished with reference to syntactic complexity (SC) and whether the results differ between two groups of EFL learners with different first languages (Sindhi and Finnish). This sheds light on the linguistic comparability of the CEFR levels across L1 groups. Informants were teenagers from Pakistan (N = 868) and Finland (N = 287) who wrote the same argumentative essay that was rated on a CEFR-based scale. The essays were analysed for 28 SC indices with the L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer and Coh-Metrix. Most indices were found to distinguish CEFR levels A1, A2, and B1 in both language groups: the clearest separators were the length of production units, subordination, and phrasal density indices. The learner groups differed most in the length measures and phrasal density when their CEFR level was controlled for. However, some indices remained the same, and the A1 level was more similar than A2 and B2 in terms of SC across the two groups.

scholarly journals Exploring syntactic complexity and its relationship with writing quality in EFL argumentative essays

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-81
Author(s):  
Farzaneh Shadloo ◽  
Hesamoddin Shahriari Ahmadi ◽  
Behzad Ghonsooly
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Writing Quality ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Syntactic Features ◽  
Development Scheme ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Argumentative Essays ◽  
Different Levels

Abstract To predict syntactic complexity in second/foreign language writing, some studies have advocated the use of T-unit and clausal subordination measures while others have argued for the use of phrase-based measures. This study seeks to identify syntactic features that can be regarded as discriminators among different levels of writing quality. For this purpose, a corpus of argumentative essays by EFL learners was compiled and then the essays were rated and placed into three groups of high-rated, mid-rated, and low-rated essays. The corpus was then coded and analysed for both phrasal and clausal features. The phrasal features were manually coded based on the development scheme hypothesized by Biber, Gray and Poonpon (2011) for academic writing, and the clausal features were analysed using the online L2 Syntactic Complexity Analyzer developed by Lu (2010). A separate ANOVA test was used to compare the three groups of essays for each of the phrasal and clausal features. The findings of the current study demonstrated that subordination and dependent clauses were not good indicators of different writing qualities in our corpus. Also, the pattern of noun phrase complexity predicted by Biber et al. (2011) was not observed across argumentative essays from three different levels of writing quality.

Attainment of Syntactic and Morphological Accuracy by Advanced Language Learners

1989 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig ◽  
Theodora Bofman
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Design Feature ◽  
Relative Strength ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Specific System ◽  
Foreign Language Learners ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
Syntactic Development ◽  
The Relationship

The present study examines the relationship between syntactic development, or complexity, and overall accuracy evidenced in the written English of advanced adult foreign language learners. Similar acquisition profiles were found to exist for 30 learners across five language groups: Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Malay, and Spanish. Syntactic complexity, measured in number of clauses per T-unit, is found to be similar in all five groups. These advanced foreign language learners, who show similar patterns of error distribution, all show relative strength in syntax, what Newport, Gleitman, and Gleitman (1977) call a universal design feature of language, but relative weakness in morphology, which is always a language-specific system.

scholarly journals Vlog-Based Multimodal Composing: Enhancing EFL Learners’ Writing Performance

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (20) ◽  
pp. 9655
Author(s):  
Qiuzhu Xie ◽  
Xiaobin Liu ◽  
Nanyan Zhang ◽  
Qianqian Zhang ◽  
Xijuan Jiang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Syntactic Complexity ◽  
Writing Performance ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Plain Text ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Multimodal Composing ◽  
Audio Video ◽  
Writing Competence

For most learners of English as a foreign language (EFL), there has long been a lack of effective opportunities to practice English writing skills. However, the recent development of social networking services (SNS) provides new possibilities for these learners to practice writing English in a meaningful way. Meanwhile, with the popularity of social media in language learning, writing is unnecessarily in the form of plain text, and multimodal composing based on text and additional modes such as audio, video or images has been a new form of writing activity instead. This study integrated SNS-based multimodal composing activities into secondary and higher education, with the aim of determining its effects on learners’ writing performance. Two classes in senior high school Grade 10 and four in college were recruited, three as the control groups without using SNS-based multimodal composing, and others as the experimental groups. While all classes’ writing performance improved between pretest and posttest, the gains in overall writing competence by experimental groups and the gains in three detailed aspects (readability, lexical complexity and syntactic complexity) by college students were significantly larger. Progress in detailed aspects, on the other hand, was different across different groups. These findings are discussed in relation to specific characteristics of multimodal composing and SNS-based learning that enables learners to improve writing performance.

Study of Consonant Pronunciations Errors Committed by EFL Learners

2019 ◽  
pp. 48-56
Author(s):  
Ali Akbar Khansir ◽  
Afsaneh Salehabadi
Keyword(s):  
English Language Learners ◽  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
English Language ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Listening Skill ◽  
English Pronunciation ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Knowledge Of Language

As the topic suggests, the research paper presents Study of Consonant Pronunciations Errors Committed by EFL Learners. Error analysis always tries to resolve language learners’ problems in acquiring second or foreign language setting. Learning to English pronunciation is perhaps as important as learning listening skill, speaking, and spelling. Errors in English pronunciation create several problems for English language learners in their works. In other words, most of the English language errors of pronunciation are due to the lack of knowledge of language learners. However, all the students in our sample are of age group (16-25) at Bushehr language institute and they are all Iranian nationals. In addition, all of them were female learners. An English pronunciation (consonant) test was used to get information about the knowledge of the learners in English pronunciation. Findings of this article indicated that the first and second hypotheses of this article were accepted, but the third hypothesis was rejected. However, the findings of this paper showed that the Iranian EFL students have problem to pronounce English sounds correctly.

INVESTIGATING ENGLISH DEPARTMENT STUDENTS’ FOREIGN LANGUAGE SPEAKING ANXIETY: A CASE STUDY IN UNIVERSITAS AIRLANGGA, INDONESIA

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 22
Author(s):  
Dyas Intan Rachmawati ◽  
Jurianto Jurianto
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Significant Negative Correlation ◽  
English Department ◽  
Common Phenomenon ◽  
Speaking Anxiety ◽  
Pearson Product Moment Correlation ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Achievement Score ◽  
Anxiety Levels

Anxiety during a speaking performance is a common phenomenon experienced by any EFL learners, including students majoring in English. Focusing on the issue, this study investigates the correlation between students’ foreign language speaking anxiety and speaking achievement. Moreover, this study also observes the levels and the sources of the speaking anxiety among the English Department’s fifth-semester students of Universitas Airlangga. This study used the Foreign Language Speaking Anxiety Scale (FLSAS) by Öztürk and Gurbuz (2014). The FLSAS questionnaire was distributed to 114 students in order to explore the correlation between speaking anxiety and speaking achievement, the speaking anxiety levels, and the speaking anxiety sources. The data collected through questionnaire were analyzed with SPSS 25.0. Pearson Product Moment Correlation isused to determine the correlation, while descriptive statistic alanalys is isused to investigate the levels and the sources for speaking anxiety. Horwitz, Horwitzand Cope’s(1986) theory and Horwitz and Young (1991) about the source and the levels of foreign language speaking anxiety are also used in this study. This study found that there is a significant negative correlation between speaking anxiety levels and speaking achievement. This means the higher the speaking anxiety they experience, the lower the achievement score they get. Most of the students have moderate levels of speaking anxiety, which is mainly due to the fear of negative evaluation.This study indicates that although the EFL learners are often exposed to English, they still experience speaking anxiety. These findings suggest that the lecturers should be more aware of students’ anxiety and use strategies that might encourage the students to speak more confidently.

An exploration of target L2 morphemes in the oral production of young EFL learners in Croatia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena O'Reilly ◽  
Eva Jakupčević
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Simple Construction ◽  
L2 Acquisition ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Oral Production ◽  
The Past ◽  
Base Form ◽  
Production Study ◽  
Efl Students

Although the second language (L2) acquisition of morphology by late L2 learners has been a popular research area over the past decades, comparatively little is known about the acquisition and development of morphology in children who learn English as a foreign language (EFL). Therefore, the current study presents the findings from a longitudinal oral production study with 9/10-year-old L1 Croatian EFL students who were followed up at the age of 11/12. Our results are largely in line with the limited research so far in this area: young EFL learners have few issues using the be copula and, eventually, the irregular past simple forms, but had considerable problems with accurately supplying the 3rd person singular -s at both data collection points. We also observed a be + base form structure, especially at the earlier stage, which appears to be an emergent past simple construction.

Machine Translation for EFL

Relay Journal ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 228-235
Author(s):  
Paul J. Moore ◽  
Phil Murphy ◽  
Luann Pascucci ◽  
Scott Sustenance
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Machine Translation ◽  
English Language ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Technical Developments ◽  
English Language Institute ◽  
Changing Role

This paper reports on an ongoing study into the affordances of free online machine translation for students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) at the tertiary level in Japan. The researchers are currently collecting data from a questionnaire, task performance, and interviews with 10-15 EFL learners in an English Language Institute in a university in Japan. The paper provides some background on the changing role of translation in language learning theory and pedagogy, before focusing literature related to technical developments in machine translation technology, and its application to foreign language learning. An overview of the research methodology is provided, along with some insights into potential findings. Findings will be presented in subsequent publications.

scholarly journals Metacognitive Instruction for Sustainable Learning: Learners’ Perceptions of Task Difficulty and Use of Metacognitive Strategies in Completing Integrated Speaking Tasks

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6275
Author(s):  
Weiwei Zhang ◽  
Donglan Zhang ◽  
Lawrence Jun Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Task Difficulty ◽  
Rating Scale ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Metacognitive Strategies ◽  
Production Model ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Metacognitive Instruction

This mixed-methods study investigated English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners’ perceptions of task difficulty and their use of metacognitive strategies in completing integrated speaking tasks as empirical evidence for the effects of metacognitive instruction. A total of 130 university students were invited to complete four integrated speaking tasks and answer a metacognitive strategy inventory and a self-rating scale. A sub-sample of eight students participated in the subsequent interviews. One-way repeated measures MANOVA and structure coding with content analysis led to two main findings: (a) EFL learners’ use of metacognitive strategies, in particular, problem-solving, was considerably affected by their perceptions of task difficulty in completing the integrated speaking tasks; (b) EFL learners were not active users of metacognitive strategies in performing these tasks. These findings not only support the necessity of taking into account learners’ perceptions of task difficulty in designing lesson plans for metacognitive instruction, but also support a metacognitive instruction model. In addition, the findings provide empirical support for the utility of Kormos’ Bilingual Speech Production Model. As the integrated speaking tasks came from a high-stakes test, these findings also offer validity evidence for test development in language assessment to ascertain sustainable EFL learning for nurturing learner autonomy as an ultimate goal.

scholarly journals Bilingual advantage in early EFL pronunciation accuracy of German 4th-graders

2021 ◽  
pp. 136700692199681
Author(s):  
Teresa Kieseier
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Primary Schools ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Error Sources ◽  
Common Error ◽  
Language Background ◽  
Background Factors ◽  
Language Groups ◽  
Error Types

Aims and Objectives: We compared speech accuracy and pronunciation patterns between early learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) with different language backgrounds. We asked (1) whether linguistic background predicts pronunciation outcomes, and (2) if error sources and substitution patterns differ between monolinguals and heterogeneous bilinguals. Methodology: Monolingual and bilingual 4th-graders ( N = 183) at German public primary schools participated in an English picture-naming task. We further collected linguistic, cognitive and social background measures to control for individual differences. Data and Analysis: Productions were transcribed and rated for accuracy and error types by three independent raters. We compared monolingual and bilingual pronunciation accuracy in a linear mixed-effects regression analysis controlling for background factors at the individual and institutional level. We further categorized all error types and compared their relative frequency as well as substitution patterns between different language groups. Findings: After background factors were controlled for, bilinguals (irrespective of specific L1) significantly outperformed their monolingual peers on overall pronunciation accuracy. Irrespective of language background, the most frequent error sources overlapped, affecting English sounds which are considered marked, are absent from the German phoneme inventory, or differ phonetically from a German equivalent. Originality: This study extends previous work on bilingual advantages in other domains of EFL to less researched phonological skills. It focuses on overall productive skills in young FL learners with limited proficiency and provides an overview over the most common error sources and substitution patterns in connection to language background. Significance/Implications: The study highlights that bilingual learners may deploy additional resources in the acquisition of target language phonology that should be addressed in the foreign language classroom.

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