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20230719T101520230719T1800Europe/Amsterdam[SYMP57] OPEN CALL - New fields of research in Applied LinguisticsHybrid Session (onsite/online)AILA 2023 - 20th Anniversary Congress Lyon Editioncellule.congres@ens-lyon.fr
Regional differences in the topic of second language acquisition research between 1970 and 2020: A topic modeling approach
Oral Presentation[SYMP57] OPEN CALL - New fields of research in Applied Linguistics10:15 AM - 10:45 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 08:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 08:45:00 UTC
It is important to understand variations in research topics in a discipline across time periods and geographical regions because it gives us a birds-eye view of progress in the field and its present state. In recent quantitative studies on research trends in SLA (e.g., Zhang, 2020), however, the actual text of research articles, which arguably best reflects the topic of the article, has rarely been analysed.
I therefore examined research trends in SLA and their variability between regions through a topic model, a machine learning technique that automatically identifies 'topics' in a corpus. A topic in topic models is characterised by a group of co-occurring words. For instance, a research paper including a high frequency of the word aspect may also include the high frequency of such words as progressive, perfect, and tense. A topic model identifies such groups in a corpus and quantifies the proportion of each topic in each text.
I compiled a corpus including all the full-length research articles published in Language Learning, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, and Second Language Research between 1970 and 2020. The metadata of the corpus included the journal each article was published in, its publication year, and the country/region where the first author's institution is located. The countries/regions were then collapsed into seven continents (e.g., Europe, North America). Seventy topics were identified in the corpus through a structural topic model (Roberts et al., 2016), and an interpretive label was given to each of them (e.g., 'tense and aspect').
In this talk, I will highlight regional (i.e., inter-continental) differences and their interaction with publication years. Findings based on the analysis of topic proportions include the following:
In North America, topics such as 'attention, awareness, and noticing in L2 acquisition' and 'L2 consonants' are more prominent than in the other regions;In Europe, those like 'word-internal and L1-related factors influencing vocabulary learning' and 'L2 German' are more prominent than in the other places; andIn Asia, topics such as 'comparing and contrasting learner groups, target varieties, and within-learner languages' and 'L1/L2 Japanese and Korean' are more popular than in the other regions.
In some topics, regions interact with publication years. For instance, 'statistical modeling' and 'gestures' have increased popularity over the years in Europe and North America, while their proportions have remained relatively constant in Asia. On the other hand, 'interactionist approach' has gained popularity in North America until mid-2000s, while its popularity has remained constant in Europe and Asia.
Whereas some findings straightforwardly make sense (e.g., 'L2 German' being popular in Europe), the topic model also allowed us to identify patterns that are not necessarily intuitive for many of us in the field (e.g., interactions between regions and the chronological change).
References
Roberts, M. E., Stewart, B. M., Airoldi, E. (2016). A model of text for experimentation in the social sciences. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 111(515), 988–1003. Zhang, X. (2020). A bibliometric analysis of second language acquisition between 1997 and 2018. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 42(1), 199-222
Presenters Akira Murakami Birmingham Fellow, University Of Birmingham
Predictors and successors of L2 grit in online and face-to-face language classes
Oral Presentation[SYMP57] OPEN CALL - New fields of research in Applied Linguistics10:45 AM - 11:15 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 08:45:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 09:15:00 UTC
This preregistered comprehensive questionnaire study investigates how grit and its putative determinants non-trivially affect the effectiveness of in-class vs online L2 learning. The selected predictors are ones singled out as of plausible import in remote learning settings, where students need to construct knowledge on their own. We used several validated scales: L2 grit scale (Teimouri et al.,2020), Language Mindsets Inventory (Lou & Noels,2017), Curiosity and Exploration Inventory-II (Kashdan et al.,2009), Autonomy scale from the Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scale (Chen et al.,2015), as well as a custom-made brand-new scale of readiness for online learning measuring its two dimensions: self-directed learning and online learning motivation (Paradowski & Jelińska,under review). All scales yielded acceptable to high reliability (Cronbach's α from .75 to .89). Multiple linear regression models basing on responses of N=773 participants from 60 countries demonstrate that perseverance of effort is determined by autonomy, motivation for remote learning, and self-directed learning (50% of variance explained; F6,203=36.48, p
Presenters Michał B. Paradowski Associate Professor, University Of Warsaw Co-authors
The impact of lyrical and non-lyrical background music on the reading comprehension task in English as a second language
Oral Presentation[SYMP57] OPEN CALL - New fields of research in Applied Linguistics11:15 AM - 11:45 AM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 09:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 09:45:00 UTC
Background music's effect on reading comprehension is debatable. Hu and his colleagues (Hu et al., 2019) demonstrate that listening to the music of one's selection while reading may be good for keeping a pleasant mood and has no detrimental influence on reading performance. Their findings suggest that varied audio pieces have little effect on reading comprehension skills. Chew et al. (2016)also found that song familiarity and language have no statistically significant influence on reading comprehension but may alter word memory in language acquisition. However, Du et al. (2020) used ERPs to study how background music influences brain responses during reading comprehension and how musical arousal levels modulate them. Their findings support that, compared to a silent environment, the presence of background music made brain processing more challenging during reading comprehension. Thompson et al. (2012) claimed a similar conclusion in their study on the influence of background music in different tempos and intensities on reading comprehension tasks. Their results reveal that instrumental background music is most likely to disrupt reading comprehension when the music is fast and loud. Except for instrumental and lyrical background music, a study on the effect of background white noise on memory performance was carried out by Söderlund et al. (2010). According to their results, background noise enhanced inattentive children's performance while deteriorating attentive children's performance, as well as eliminating episodic memory differences between attentive and inattentive school children. In Angwin et al. (2018, 2019), they tested the effects of white noise on direct and indirect semantic priming and new-word learning respectively. White noise significantly reduces the magnitude of indirect priming at each inter-stimulus interval. And for participants with lower executive and orienting attention, a reduction in indirect priming is found in noise relative to silence (Angwin et al., 2018). Moreover, with respect to new-word learning, the noise group shows a greater immediate identification accuracy for learned new word meanings than the no noise group, but this advantage was lost in the delayed recognition test. Therefore, it suggests that white noise has the capacity to facilitate meaning acquisition from context (Angwin et al., 2019). Though immediate positive effects are found on inattentive school children and on the new word learning processes on the basis of previous studies, will the positive effects of white noise also be visible when dealing with reading comprehension tasks with complex syntactic structures? Moreover, will the language of songs be a factor which affects L2 learners' reading comprehension of complex syntactic structures? Therefore, we generate two general research questions. The first one is that can the different types of music including white noise affect L2 learners reading comprehension process of complex syntactic structures. The second question is whether the languages of background songs influence L2 reading of complex syntactic structures.
Reference Angwin, A. J., Wilson, W. J., Copland, D. A., Barry, R. J., Myatt, G., & Arnott, W. L. (2018). The impact of auditory white noise on semantic priming. Brain and Language, 180–182, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2018.04.001 Angwin, A. J., Wilson, W. J., Ripollés, P., Rodriguez-Fornells, A., Arnott, W. L., Barry, R. J., Cheng, B. B. Y., Garden, K., & Copland, D. A. (2019). White noise facilitates new-word learning from context. Brain and Language, 199, 104699. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2019.104699 Chew, A. S.-Q., Yu, Y.-T., Chua, S.-W., & Gan, S. K.-E. (2016). The effects of familiarity and language of background music on working memory and language tasks in Singapore. Psychology of Music, 44(6), 1431–1438. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735616636209 Du, M., Jiang, J., Li, Z., Man, D., & Jiang, C. (2020). The effects of background music on neural responses during reading comprehension. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 18651. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-75623-3 Hu, X., Li, F., & Kong, R. (2019). Can Background Music Facilitate Learning?: Preliminary Results on Reading Comprehension. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Learning Analytics & Knowledge, 101–105. https://doi.org/10.1145/3303772.3303839 Söderlund, G. B., Sikström, S., Loftesnes, J. M., & Sonuga-Barke, E. J. (2010). The effects of background white noise on memory performance in inattentive school children. Behavioral and Brain Functions, 6(1), 55. https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-9081-6-55 Thompson, W. F., Schellenberg, E. G., & Letnic, A. K. (2012). Fast and loud background music disrupts reading comprehension. Psychology of Music, 40(6), 700–708. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305735611400173
Ran Bi NO.2, Chongwen Road, Nan'an District, Chongqing University Of Posts And Telecommunications, Chongqing, China, Chongqing University Of Posts And Telecommunications Co-authors
The influence of musical abilities on L2 prosodic processing
Oral Presentation[SYMP57] OPEN CALL - New fields of research in Applied Linguistics11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 09:45:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 10:15:00 UTC
To date, numerous studies have investigated the relation between musical abilities and speech prosody perception. Many studies show enhanced prosody perception, e.g. [1], which can be explained as a between‑domain transfer of skills due to partly overlapping neural networks for speech and music [2]. Investigating a potential connection to L2 prosody can contribute to knowledge on individual differences in L2 acquisition and use, but this remains under‑researched [3]. Furthermore, to what extent any music‑related enhancements of prosody perception contribute to L2 processing remains unexplored. Our study therefore investigated the influence of 45 Dutch adults' musical abilities on focus processing in their L2 English. In Dutch and English, contrastive focus is signalled by a pitch accent. Native listeners use this cue to anticipate upcoming information [4]. Eye-tracking evidence suggests Dutch L2 English users have difficulty using prosodic cues for anticipation [5], possibly due to differences between Dutch and English focus cues and higher demands on processing resources. In our study, we used a visual-world eye-tracking paradigm to investigate the role of musical abilities. Participants viewed images (Figure 1) and listened to sentences where only associates with the word that receives a focus accent, e.g. I only gave a SPOON to the girl, I didn't give a FORK to the girl. We analysed fixations to determine whether participants anticipated the upcoming alternative (fork) after participants heard the focus accent on spoon. Participants also completed the Short‑PROMS music perception test [6]. We tested the influence of PROMS scores on focus-related fixations. Initial analyses using linear regression models indicate that individuals with stronger musical abilities show more correct anticipatory fixations, indicating a faster interpretation of focus-marking pitch accents during L2 speech processing. This may provide a foundation for further research on the role of musical abilities in L2 phonological processing and L2 speech production.
Figure 1. Visual display.
References [1] C. Marques, S. Moreno, S. L. Castro, and M. Besson, "Musicians detect pitch violation in a foreign language better than nonmusicians: Behavioral and electrophysiological evidence," J. Cogn. Neurosci., vol. 19, no. 9, pp. 1453–1463, 2007. [2] A. D. Patel, "Can nonlinguistic musical training change the way the brain processes speech? The expanded OPERA hypothesis," Hear. Res., vol. 308, pp. 98-108. [3] N. Jansen, E. Harding, H. Loerts, D. Başkent, and W. Lowie, "The relation between musical ability and sentence-level intonation perception: A meta-analysis comparing L1 and non-native listening," Proc. Speech Prosody 2022, 713-717. [4] M. Perdomo and E. Kaan, "Prosodic cues in second-language speech processing: A visual world eye-tracking study," Second. Lang. Res., vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 349-375, 2019. [5] H. Ge, I. Mulders, X. Kang, A. Chen, and V. Yip, "Processing focus in native and non-native speakers of English: An eye-tracking study in the visual world paradigm," Appl. Psycholinguist., vol. 42, pp. 1057–1088, 2021. [6] M. Zentner and H. Strauss, "Assessing musical ability quickly and objectively: Development and validation of the Short‐PROMS and the Mini‐PROMS," Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci., vol. 1400, no. 1, pp. 33-45, 2017.
Setting up peer-review practice for oral assessment at university: Some considerations on the use of evaluation criteria and the mirror effect
Oral Presentation[SYMP57] OPEN CALL - New fields of research in Applied Linguistics12:15 PM - 12:45 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 10:15:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 10:45:00 UTC
University examinations are deemed "high-stakes" assessments (Mehrens, 1998), since their successful completion is necessary to progress to the next year and obtain the final diploma. In coining this term, Mehrens wanted to emphasize both the teachers and the institutions' responsibility with regard to evaluation. In French primary and secondary schools, a shift from evaluation conceived as negative to positive has occurred, especially for language learning. Could such a change be implemented at universities? For which purpose and by what means? For Waring (2008), positive assessment depends mostly on the type of feedback teachers give. In the French university context, feedback is rarely provided to students before assessment. In their criticism of institutional evaluations, Huver and Springer (2011) underline the often fixed, 'essentializing' (p. 289) character of evaluation, which does not accept variation. Their work echoes Ferrel and Sheppard's major survey of UK universities (EUNIS 2013) which showed that the main source of student dissatisfaction at university lies in the assessment procedures. They also revealed that students rarely have the opportunity to appropriate the assessment tools as well as the criteria for making judgements (p. 3). In 2022, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (USN) decided to support The Eval+ project based on peer review practices with the aim of designing a concept course flagged with a "positive evaluation" label. The notion of peer review can take a variety of forms: from co-assessment to corrective or appreciative feedback, be it before or after the assessment itself (Lundstrom & Wendy Baker, 2009; Kong, 2013). This paper will report on the Eval+ project which involves two groups of 25 third-year English degree students who are following a course on Second Language Learning. The peer review session is held before the final oral slideshow-based presentation and has been fully integrated to the syllabus. The teacher's assessment grid is shared with the students both as a personal and as a peer reviewer checklist. Thus, the assessment criteria are made explicit from the start. We will focus on the level of appropriation of the criteria as it appears in the analysis of the assessment grids. We assume that some criteria (in relation to visual, written or spoken aspects) will be used more than others. In addition, can a mirror effect be observed?
Huver, E. & Springer, C. (2011). L'Évaluation en didactique des langues. Paris : Didier. Coll. Langues et didactique.
Kong, Y. (2013. « Peer Review : Exploring Training and Socio-Cultural Influences on Activity Theory. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
Lundstrom, Kristi and Wendy Baker. (2009). "To Give is Better Than to Receive: The Benefits of Peer Review to the Reviewer's Own Writing." Journal of Second Language Writing 18, 30-43.
Translanguaging in classes with low-educated adult migrant learners: Teachers’ attitudes and practices
Oral Presentation[SYMP57] OPEN CALL - New fields of research in Applied Linguistics03:00 PM - 03:30 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 13:30:00 UTC
The shift toward learner-centered pedagogy has been a moving force in changing how learning and teaching are viewed in many regions of the world, with international organizations such as the Council of Europe (2018) promoting learner-centered pedagogy in the quest to deliver quality language education.Despite this emphasis on individual students and their needs, we argue here that when teachers are confronted with a significantly different population of language learners, what they think students need and want, however well-intentioned, is not necessarily correct. Instead, it is often the case that teachers are viewing these students through a particular paradigm of learning, i.e., that of formal education. This learning paradigm, however, is not that of students with limited or interrupted prior formal education who have not been able to engage in age-appropriate formal education, leading to the development of a vastly different learning paradigm. Thus, these learners experience considerable challenges when confronted with Western-style formal educational models based on academic ways of learning, reading, and writing (e.g., Hopkins et al., 2013). Nevertheless, these learners, while not accustomed to literacy-based ways of learning and meaning-making, do possess strong oral skills, often in multiple languages and/or dialect (Vinogradov, 2010; Watson, 2019). By leveraging these oral skills, teachers move away from a deficit approach to asset-based learning to build these learners' literacy skills as well as foster successful second language learning. Yet, despite a growing body of work on the benefits of translanguaging, significant hurdles remain in effective implementation. In this presentation, we explore the results of our interview study of instructors of German as a Second Language integration courses for adult migrants (n=11). Our goal was to investigate the beliefs and self-reported practices of the teachers toward translanguaging in their classrooms. We examine how while some spontaneous translanguaging takes place, pedagogical translanguaging is not embedded in the classroom, thereby leaving the multilingual oral assets of SLIFE mostly overlooked and underutilized. We explore the explicit and implicit assumptions expressed by participants, including beliefs about second language acquisition and questions of power and identity, as well as systemic top-down constraints of curriculum, learning materials, and assessment requirements.
Bibliography
Council of Europe. (2018). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Companion Volume with New Descriptors.Council of Europe. Hopkins, M., Martinez-Wenzl, M., Aldana, U., Gándara, P. (2013). Cultivating capital: Latino Newcomer Young men in a U.S. urban high school. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 44(3), 286-303. Ngaka, W., Openjuru, G., & Mazur, R. E. (2012). Formal and non-formal education in Uganda: The quest for recognition and integration of the diverse learning options for sustainable livelihoods. International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities & Nations 11 (6), 109–121. Vinogradov, P. (August 2010). Using oral language skills to build on the emerging literacy of adult English learners. CAELA Network Brief. Watson, J. (2019). Understanding indigenous education practices as a way of engaging deeply with refugee-background students (and everyone else) in the classroom.European Journal of Applied Linguistics and TEFL,8(1), 203–224.
Multilingualism, conflict, and identity: Scaling analysis of the conflictual interactions of a community of practice in cyberspace
Oral Presentation[SYMP57] OPEN CALL - New fields of research in Applied Linguistics03:30 PM - 04:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 13:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 14:00:00 UTC
Online conflict informs new social facts in cyberspace and beyond. This study aims to investigate the discursive construction of polylogal conflict (Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, 2018) and identity (Blommaert & de Fina, 2017; Bucholtz & Hall, 2005) and the underexplored role of multilingualism therein in an online community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) through scaling analysis (Blommaert, 2007; 2010; 2015; 2021) based on a case study of Li Ziqi's YouTube channel. Differing from the current interactionist and CDA studies on online conflict and identity (e.g., Cosper, 2022; Sagredos & Nikolova, 2022), this study adopts sociolinguistics scales to both interactionally and critically delineate the complexity, polycentricity (Blommaert, 2010, p. 39), and dynamics of online conflict and identity in multilingual cyberspace. Screen-based data were collected from popular comments below two controversial videos arousing cultural spats over certain fermented vegetables through observation and archiving as cyberethnographic approaches. Moment Analysis (Li, 2011) is adopted to examine prominent conflictual discourse involving scaling moves illuminating stance-making and identification. Special attention was paid to metalinguistic comments as a source of a more emic perspective of the interactions. It is found that online CoP members draw on scaling resources to make social meanings, position themselves, and discursively construct identities in online conflicts. They flexibly downscale, upscale, or outscale to anchor authority and authenticity, legitimize "us", delegitimize "others", handle conflicts, and construct individual or collective identities. Multilingualism, in forms of truncated repertoire or grassroots literacy enabled by technological affordances, is utilized to upscale and reach a wider readership, either for winning more allies or for further humiliation of the "other". Metalinguistic comments on code choices further demonstrate language ideologies and power struggles among interactants. These findings indicate that the seemingly flattened internet offers another arena for conflicts, deep-rooted identity-related language ideologies, and the invisible boundaries extended from offline geopolitics in cyberspace.
References Blommaert, J. (2007). Sociolinguistic scales. Intercultural Pragmatics, 4(1), 1–19. Blommaert, J. (2010). The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, J. (2015). Chronotopes, Scales, and Complexity in the Study of Language in Society. Annual Review of Anthropology, 44(1), 105–116). Annual Reviews Inc. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102214-014035 Blommaert, J. (2021). Sociolinguistic scales in retrospect. Applied Linguistics Review, 12(3), 375–380. Blommaert, J., & de Fina, A. (2017). Chronotopic Identities: On the Timespace Organization of Who We Are. In A. de Fina, D. Ikizoglu, & J. Wegner (Eds.), Diversity and Super-diversity: Sociocultural Linguistic Perspectives (pp. 1–15). Georgetown University Press. Bucholtz, M., & Hall, K. (2005). Identity and interaction: A sociocultural linguistic approach. Discourse Studies, 7(4-5), 585–614. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445605054407 Cosper, C. (2022). Patterns of conflict speech and young adult feminist identity construction on Tumblr. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 10(1), 85–110. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00061.cos Garcés-Conejos Blitvich, P. (2018). Globalization, transnational identities, and conflict talk: The complexity of the Latino identity. Journal of Pragmatics, 134, 120–133. doi: 10.1016/j.pragma.2018.02.001 Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. Sagredos, C., & Nikolova, E. (2022). 'Slut I hate you.' Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 10(1), 169–196. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.00065.sag
Presenters Mengdi Liu Graduate Student, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Oral Presentation[SYMP57] OPEN CALL - New fields of research in Applied Linguistics04:00 PM - 04:30 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 14:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 14:30:00 UTC
This conceptual study applies Giorgio Agamben's theory on the state of exception to understand the relationship between named language and fluid language as a critique of the recent translanguaging trend in sociolinguistics. The fluidity of language attracts scholars' attention in sociolinguistics as a group of concepts were established to illustrate this phenomenon, such as translanguaging (García & Li, 2014), which criticizes viewing language as separated entities and emphasizes speaker's whole linguistic repertoire. Translanguaging trends thus attempt to develop translanguaging pedagogies (Cenoz & Gorter, 2022) and frame translanguaging as a political stance with reconstitutivenature that goes beyond language (Li, 2022). However, the proponents of translanguaging, using 'language' interchangeably with 'named language', fail to identify the original form of language. In addition, the attempt to develop translanguaging pedagogy fails to question the roles played by the language learning institutions and ignores the dynamics between named language and fluid language as if it is an either-or question. This study applies Agamben's theory to argue that fluid language is not beyond the language but is the original form of language. Thus, the existence of named language presupposes fluid language and institutions can be understood as relying on fluid language where fluid language is captured by while fleeing from institutions and the native norms produced within. Agamben (2005) developed Foucault's concept of biopolitics with the focus on the Holocaust as the state of exception, which he argues is the original juridico-political structure in the sense that the applicability of law in normal situation is based on its suspension in the state of exception. Compared the law to language, Agamben (2005) then points out that the existence of language presupposes the suspension of denotation. In other words, the unfixed relation between signifier and signified – the state of fluid language - is the fundamental condition of the language rather than anything beyond. Likewise, it can also be argued that language learning institutions, which constantly produces norms of named language, depends on the presupposed existence of fluid language since they would not exist if there were no fluid language to be corrected. The translanguaging trend ignores these dynamics and the paradoxical function of institutions as an apparatus to require while capture fluid language under their norms. While fluid language is captured while fleeing from institutions, the translanguaging pedagogy inclines to capture fluid language they celebrate back to institutions with a particular end rather than focuses on the fleeing aspect of fluid language without predetermined ends. Applying Agamben's theory in reflecting the translanguaging trend in sociolinguistics, this study aims at raising awareness of the essence of fluid language and its dynamics with named languages in institutions at the aspect of how fluid language deactivating and inactivating named languages.
Agamben, G. (2005). State of Exception. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2022). Pedagogical Translanguaging and its Application to Language Classes. RELC Journal,0, 1-13. García, O., & Li Wei. (2014). Translanguaging. Palgrave Macmillan. Li, W. (2022). Translanguaging as a political stance. ELT Journal, 76(2), 172-182.
Presenters Xinqi He Assistant Professor, Rikkyo University
Machine Translation is Changing English Education in Japan
Oral Presentation[SYMP57] OPEN CALL - New fields of research in Applied Linguistics04:30 PM - 05:00 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 14:30:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 15:00:00 UTC
Many Japanese high schools have class sizes of 40 or more students, making it difficult to deal with the details. In addition, the Common University Test only measures reading and listening comprehension. Because of these and other factors, English learning in high schools is often focused on reading and listening to texts and achieving high scores on entrance exams and certification tests. As a result, according to a survey of high school seniors, only less than 20% reached the A2 level in written English. In recent years, the accuracy of Machine Translation (MT) has improved, and some MTs have voice input/output capabilities. The authors decided to aim for a paradigm shift in English language instruction for first-year university students. Teachers will use MT to improve the efficiency of time-consuming English correction, while students will use MT on their own for speech training while giving speeches and debates in class. First, in 2021, the authors investigated how the use of MT changes the attitudes of first-year university students at the A2 level through the teaching of English essays. The first survey revealed that many students felt guilty about using MT. This is because their experiences in high school was that they used MTs to read given English texts instead of reading them on their own. In addition, many learners were not able to use MT appropriately. Therefore, in the class, the authors taught them how to use MT appropriately as a learning machine for writing essays. Then, many students had a positive attitude toward the use of MT. Then, in 2022, the authors taught the students how to correct English sentences by themselves using MT and how to do voice training by themselves using the voice input/output function of English. First, as for the correction of English sentences using MT, there were quite a few essays submitted by the students that showed that some of them did not understand the structural differences between the Japanese and English sentences. Therefore, the author instructed the students to make the Japanese sentences to be machine-translated into English well and to use another MT to back-translate the translated English sentences into Japanese to check whether the Japanese sentences were translated as they were meant to be. As a result, the quality of the students' English writing gradually improved. Next, for voice training, the students used the voice input/output function of Google Translate. First, the students type their own English sentences into Google Translate, which outputs them as spoken English, and then they repeat the English sentences over and over to practice pronouncing the sentences. Regarding the checking of pronunciation, the students were instructed that they would pass the test if their pronunciation entered into Google Translate was accurately recognized by it. Thus, by using MT as a language learning machine, the authors were able to shift the paradigm to a class where students wrote English sentences that effectively persuaded their opponents in debates, and spoke while efficiently learning correct pronunciation in speeches.
Transmodalities and Transpositioning: Theorizing Semiotics and Relationalities in Applied Linguistics
Oral Presentation[SYMP57] OPEN CALL - New fields of research in Applied Linguistics05:00 PM - 05:30 PM (Europe/Amsterdam) 2023/07/19 15:00:00 UTC - 2024/07/19 15:30:00 UTC
Translanguaging, transmodalities and transpositioning are inextricably intertwined concepts that offer innovative analytic perspectives and insights for understanding communications in this era of increased globalization and communication across diversity. Transmodalities, a theory of social semiotics (expanding on those such as multiliteracies and multimodality), subsumes (but fully incorporates) translanguaging, accounting for 'complexities' in communications across space and difference- between interlocutors from diverse communities, cultures, lifestyles, geographies, ideologies and language varieties. Communications, we contend, matter, because they shape, reflect and index social relations. Transpositioning bridges communications and human relations, illuminating ways in which actors are emplaced in communicative flows across time-space and scales, with their positioning and subjectivities continually shifting within them. Transpositioning references emergent identifications and subjectivities that are located in new spatial, relational, ideological and semiotic configurations. We introduce and define translanguaging, transmodalities and transpositioning, demonstrating their heuristic potential through an analysis of a transnational WeChat exchange among residents of China and Chinese nationals living outside of China discussing COVID-19 in China, illustrating how sociopolitical contexts and realities, political stances, subjectivities, geographical locations, modes of communication, resources leveraged, language/s, histories, relationalities and more shift and flow throughout the (asynchronous) interactions, identifying understandings resulting from the fluid transpositioning that occurs.
Translanguaging, transmodalities and transpositioning are inextricably intertwined concepts, offering innovative analytic perspectives and insightand for understanding communications in this era of increased globalization and communication across diversity. They together capture and connect movements and mobilities, relations and relationalities, and spatio-temporal scales inherent in communications (languaging) in today's world. In brief: transmodalities is a theory of social semiotics, expanding on those such as multiliteracies and multimodality, that subsumes (but fully incorporates) translanguaging, and accounts for 'complexities' in communications across space and difference- between interlocutors from diverse communities, cultures, lifestyles, geographies, ideologies and language varieties. Fully embedding actors in their historic, geographic, cultural and linguistic contexts, it incorporates: signs and modes leveraged in interactions; relations between modes, language and actors (human and non-human); the arc of communication (assemblage, movement, reception, negotiation); contexts and cultures; transnationalism and relations of status and power. Taken together, this enables a robust social semiotic analysis of communications and interactions through the totality of signs, symbols, resources, modes and actors enmeshed in communicative networks and ecologies, within the full scope of the (emplaced, sedimented and shifting) sociocultural, historical, geophysical, ideological and material contexts in which they occur. Communications, we contend, matter, because they shape, reflect and index social relations. Transpositioning bridges communications and human relations, illuminating the ways in which actors are located in communicative flows across time-space and scales, with their positioning and subjectivities continually shifting within them. Who we are, how we make meaning in communications, how we see the world and understand ourselves and others in it, are always-emergent processes co-constructed with others through social interactions that are situated-or positioned- in particular times and places, between particular people (and things), and located in (and shaped by) particular histories, trajectories and movements of ideas, ideologies, resources, information and goods. Everyone and everything are emplaced in particular ways- positioned- in any interaction, and meanings being made are contingent on that positioning. Transpositioning, then, references new and fluid identifications, subjectivities and positionings that are embedded in new spatial, relational, ideological and semiotic configurations. Importantly, we recognize that emplacements, interactions and relationalities are always fraught with power dynamics, and so we center the notion of critical cosmopolitanism (Hawkins, 2014), with the construction of equitable, open and caring relations (across distance and diversity) foundational to our thinking and aims. Here we introduce and define our key concepts- translanguaging, transmodalities and transpositioning, demonstrating their heuristic potential through analysis of a transnational WeChat exchange among residents of China and Chinese nationals living outside of China discussing Chinese COVID-19 policies and the 2022 Shanghai lockdown. We show how sociopolitical contexts and realities, political stances, subjectivities, geographical locations, current events, modes of communication, resources leveraged, language/s, histories, relationalities and more shift and flow throughout the (asynchronous) interactions, identifying understandings resulting from the fluid transpositioning that occurs. We demonstrate why it's critical ((in both the sense of important and that of liberatory) to understand relationships between communications and social relations, and how translanguaging, transmodalities and transpositioning support this endeavor.
Akira Murakami
Michał B. Paradowski
Wander Lowie
Claire Tardieu
Ina-Maria Maahs
Mengdi Liu
Xinqi He
