Autonomous learning and effective self-regulatory strategies are increasingly important in foreign language learning; without these, students might not be able to exploit learning opportunities ...outside language classrooms. This study investigated the influence of motivational factors and self-regulatory strategies on autonomous learning behavior. The researchers developed a new questionnaire for Hungarian learners and administered it to secondary school students, university students, and adult language learners. Their structural equation models show that strong instrumental goals and international posture, together with positive future self-guides, are prerequisites for use of effective self-regulatory strategies, which in turn play an important role in influencing autonomous use of traditional and computer-assisted learning resources. Findings reveal no major structural differences between the groups, which suggests that the model is applicable to the most important language learner populations in the context investigated. Efficient management of time and boredom, as well as proactivity in seeking learning opportunities, were found to be necessary to promote autonomous use of traditional learning resources. In contrast, satiation control and time management were not important determiners of independent use of modern learning technology. Results indicate that in order to exploit the affordances of learning technology, a proactive approach to locating and using these learning resources is necessary.
This study examines the relationship between the repetition of oral monologue tasks and immediate gains in L2 fluency. It considers the effect of aural-oral task repetition on speech rate, frequency ...of clause-final and midclause filled pauses, and overt self-repairs across different task types and proficiency levels and relates these findings to specific stages of L2 speech production (conceptualization, formulation, and monitoring). Thirty-two Japanese learners of English sampled at three levels of proficiency completed three oral communication tasks (instruction, narration, and opinion) six times. Results revealed that immediate aural-oral same task repetition was related to gains in oral fluency regardless of proficiency level or task type. Overall gains in speech rate were the largest across the first three performances of each task type but continued until the fifth performance. More specifically, however, clause-final pauses decreased until the second performance, midclause pauses decreased up to the fourth, and self-repairs decreased only after the fourth performance, indicating that task repetition may have been differentially related to specific stages in the speech production process.
Our study describes the motivation for learning English as a foreign language in three distinct learner populations: secondary school pupils, university students, and adult language learners. ...Questionnaire data were collected from 623 Hungarian students. The main factors affecting students' second language (L2) motivation were language learning attitudes and the Ideal L2 self, which provides empirical support for the main construct of the theory of the L2 Motivational Self‐System (Dörnyei, 2005). Models of motivated behavior varied across the three investigated learner groups. For the secondary school pupils, it was interest in English‐language cultural products that affected their motivated behavior, whereas international posture as an important predictive variable was only present in the two older age groups.
The study reported in this paper investigated the relationship between components of aptitude and the fluency, lexical variety, syntactic complexity, and accuracy of performance in two types of ...written and spoken narrative tasks. We also addressed the question of how narrative performance varies in tasks of different cognitive complexity in the written and spoken modes. Our findings indicate a complex interaction between aptitude components and task performance under different conditions. The components of aptitude that seemed to be most strongly related to the complexity and accuracy of production were inductive ability and grammatical sensitivity. The results also show that in writing the participants used more varied vocabulary than in speech, but their performance was similar in terms of syntactic complexity.
The present mixed-methods study examined the role of learner appraisals of speech tasks in second language (L2) French fluency. Forty adult learners in a Canadian immersion program participated in ...the study that compared four sources of data: (1) objectively measured utterance fluency in participants’ performances of three narrative tasks differing in their conceptualization and formulation demands, (2) a questionnaire on their interest, task-related anxiety, task motivation, and perceived success in task-completion, (3) an interview in which they elaborated on their perceptions of the tasks, and (4) subjective ratings of their performances by three native speakers. Findings showed the cognitive demands of tasks were associated with learners’ affective responses to tasks as well as objective and subjective measures of fluency. Furthermore, task-related anxiety and perceived success in task completion were the most important affective factors associated with fluent task performance, whereas interest and task motivation were correlated with native speakers’ fluency ratings. These results are discussed in terms of how task design and implementation can contribute to enhanced task motivation and performance in the classroom.
► Cognitive and motivation factors can explain important variations in L2 writing processes. ► Goals, self-efficacy beliefs and self-regulatory capacities are influential in the psycholinguistic ...mechanisms of L2 writing. ► Aptitude, working memory and motivation affect how L2 learners exploit the learning potential of writing tasks.
Although the role of individual differences in second language (L2) speech has been extensively studied, the impact of individual differences on the process of second language writing and the written product has been a neglected area of research. In this paper, I review the most important individual difference factors that might explain variations in L2 writing processes and discuss the influence of these factors on how L2 learners exploit the language learning potential of writing tasks. First, the role of cognitive factors will be explored, and recent research investigating the relationship between writing performance and aptitude and working, and phonological short memory, will be presented. Next, the potential role of motivational factors, such as language learning goals, self-efficacy beliefs, and self-regulatory capacities that influence the psycholinguistic mechanisms of L2 writing and the way students learn about the target language through writing, will be explored. The article concludes with a summary of the role of individual differences in L2 writing processes and in learning through writing, and with an outline of a research agenda for future studies.
While there exists a considerable body of literature on task-based difficulty and second language (L2) fluency in English as a second language (ESL), there has been little investigation with French ...learners. This mixed methods study examines learner appraisals of task difficulty and their relationship to automated utterance fluency measures in French under three different task conditions. Participants were 40 adult learners of French at varying levels of proficiency studying in a university immersion context in Québec. Appraisal of task difficulty was assessed quantitatively by participants' self reports in response to a five-item questionnaire and qualitatively by retrospective interviews. Utterance fluency was operationalized by four temporal variables and measured by Praat, a speech analysis software program. Across tasks, the quantitative results indicate that appraisals of lexical retrieval difficulty and fluency difficulty were most strongly related to perceived overall task difficulty. The qualitative analysis shows how L2 speakers evaluated the difficulty of each task as well as the features that either contributed to or limited their L2 fluency. Students' fluency in performing the three tasks was found to differ for articulation rate and average pause time, but not for pause frequency or phonation-time ratio.
Extensive research has demonstrated the impact of working memory (WM) on first language (L1) reading comprehension across age groups (Peng et al., 2018), and on foreign language (FL) reading ...comprehension of adults and older adolescents (Linck et al., 2014). Comparatively little is known about the effect of WM on young FL readers’ comprehension, and even less within testing contexts. Young FL readers are still developing their L1 reading skills and general cognitive skills (e.g., attentional regulation abilities). Completing FL reading tests might be particularly taxing on their WM, and differences in WM capacity – as well as other learner and task characteristics – might create construct-irrelevant variance in test performance.
In this study, we investigate the effects of WM, grade level, and reading task on young learners’ FL reading test performances. Ninety-four young English language learners (Grades 6–7) in Hungary completed the TOEFL® Junior™ Comprehensive’s reading test and a WM test battery. Our mixed-effects model predicted significantly higher comprehension accuracy among learners with higher WM capacity, and among learners in Grade 7 compared to learners in Grade 6. Reading task differences were not associated with significant comprehension accuracy differences. We discuss the implications of our findings for testing young learners’ FL reading comprehension.
This article revisits the role of cognitive individual differences in creating synergies between second language (L2) writing and second language acquisition research that were proposed by Kormos ...(2012). It takes stock of the advances in research findings, in the past decade, on the role of working memory and language learning aptitude in L2 writing processes and performance. The article offers an overview of how cognitive factors can mediate learning gains when L2 users engage in writing. Using theoretical accounts of cognitive individual differences, the article discusses how the characteristics of writing tasks can interact with individual variation in cognitive functioning. The article concludes by proposing a Task-Mediated Cognitive Model of L2 Writing and Writing to Learn that describes the role of cognitive factors in L2 writing processes and in learning through writing, and an outline of a research agenda for future studies.
► New ways in which the cognitive complexity of tasks can be understood and analyzed in L2 writing were proposed. ► The indices measuring lexical competence, clausal complexity and causal cohesion ...proved to be the most useful in describing task and proficiency-related variation in written narrative performance. ► Task characteristics had an impact on only one measure of lexical sophistication and the overt expression of temporal cohesion. ► Major differences between L1 and L2 writers were found for lexical variety, sophistication and range.
The research presented in this paper aimed to investigate the linguistic and discourse characteristics of narratives produced by upper-intermediate foreign language learners in a bilingual secondary school. In our analyses we used a variety of linguistic and discourse variables and a recently developed computer tool (Coh-Metrix 2.0: McNamara, Louwerse, Graesser, 2002) to describe the characteristics of narrative texts.As a background for comparison, we also collected data from a small group of L1 writers in order to gain an insight into features of written task performance that is not hindered by difficulties in accessing linguistic knowledge required to execute a task. The variable whether students had to narrate a story with a given content or whether they were free to plan the plot of the story exerted a major impact only on one measure of lexical sophistication and had a minor effect on the overt expression of temporal cohesion. The study showed that the major difference between L1 and foreign language writers could be found with relation to lexical variety, sophistication and range.
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