Willingness to communicate (WTC) in a foreign language is linked to a range of interacting learner-internal and learner-external variables. The present study identified the predictors of WTC of 210 ...foreign language learners of English from Spain. Multiple regression analyses revealed that the strongest (negative) predictor of WTC was foreign language classroom anxiety, while foreign language enjoyment and frequency of foreign language use by the teacher were positive predictors.
Positive psychology has boosted interest in the positive as well as the negative emotions that Foreign Language learners experience. The present study examines whether – and to what extent – foreign ...language enjoyment (FLE) and foreign language (FL) classroom anxiety (FLCA) are linked to a range of learner internal variables and teacher/classroom-specific variables within one specific educational context. Participants were 189 British high school students learning various FLs. Higher levels of FLE were linked to higher scores on attitudes towards the FL, the FL teacher, FL use in class, proportion of time spent on speaking, relative standing and stage of development. Lower levels FLCA were linked to higher scores on attitudes towards the FL, relative standing and stage of development. FLCA thus seems less related to teacher and teacher practices than FLE. The pedagogical implication is that teachers should strive to boost FLE rather than worry too much about students’ FLCA.
The relationship between grit and success has been investigated extensively in various contexts. However, the association between grit and language performance, especially in a Chinese high school ...context, remains underexplored. This study investigates grit, the positive emotion of enjoyment, the negative emotion of anxiety, foreign language performance, and how enjoyment and anxiety mediate the relationship between grit and foreign language performance. A questionnaire was administered to 697 Chinese high school students, followed by a language test after 2 weeks. The results showed that more than half of the students had a moderate-high level of grit and foreign language enjoyment and that nearly half of them experienced a low-moderate level of foreign language anxiety. It was also found that grit, foreign language enjoyment, and foreign language performance were positively correlated with each other, and all three variables were negatively correlated with anxiety. Both foreign language enjoyment and foreign language anxiety mediated the relationship between grit and foreign language performance to a significant degree, and the mediating effect of foreign language anxiety was stronger than that of foreign language enjoyment.
The provision of instruction in English as a foreign language (EFL) is constantly being extended to include ever younger learners. As one of the challenges for pre‐primary EFL instruction is the ...delivery of a sufficient amount of appropriate input, the main aim of this article is to investigate one potential source of such input, namely an animated television series, in terms of its linguistic features and its suitability for use in pre‐primary instruction. More specifically, the article examines a corpus of 88 episode transcripts of the Peppa Pig series. It analyses the extent to which the data contain linguistic features which can also be found in another corpus of spoken English. Following the analysis, recommendations for integrating the series into pre‐primary English instruction are presented.
Nauczaniem języka angielskiego jako obcego obejmowane są coraz młodsze dzieci. Ponieważ jednym z wyzwań w nauczaniu przedszkolnym jest zapewnienie uczniom kontaktu z językiem angielskim w odpowiednim wymiarze, głównym celem tego artykułu jest zbadanie jednego potencjalnego źródła takiego kontaktu, to znaczy animowanego serialu telewizyjnego. Badaniu pod względem cech językowych oraz przydatności w nauczaniu na tym poziomie poddany został korpus składający się z transkryptów 88 odcinków serialu Świnka Peppa. Badanie analizuje zakres w jakim dane z korpusu zawierają cechy językowe, które są również obecne w innym korpusie mówionej angielszczyzny. Po analizie przedstawione są sugestie odnośnie sposobu włączenia serialu w nauczanie języka angielskiego jako obcego na poziomie przedszkolnym.
In the discipline of teaching English, scholars and even language teachers have long been interested in foreign language teaching anxiety (FLTA). With the increasing proliferation of English as a ...foreign language (EFL), there is a lack of comprehensive research on FLTA among EFL teachers. Therefore, the current study examines FLTA among 48 EFL teachers during their postgraduate programme at a public university in Northern Cyprus. The current analysis included the administration of the Teacher Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (TFLAS) and interviews. According to the results, the participants experienced varying degrees of foreign language teaching anxiety, and anxiety levels do not correlate with participants’ gender and teaching. The findings also revealed that fear of making mistakes was the primary factor that could induce language teaching anxiety. This study contributes to the existing body of prior research on FLTA with valuable contextualised data that could help alleviate anxiety levels experienced by EFL teachers.
The present study explores the relationship between Foreign Language Enjoyment (FLE) and Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety (FLCA) and a number of teacher-centered variables within the Spanish ...classroom context. Participants were 210 former and current learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) from all over Spain who filled out an online questionnaire with Likert scale items. A moderate negative relationship emerged between FLE and FLCA. Participants who had an L1 English speaker as a teacher reported more FLE and less FLCA than those with a foreign language user of English. Teacher characteristics predicted close to 20% of variance in FLE but only 8% of variance in FLCA. The strongest positive predictor of FLE was a teacher's friendliness while a teacher's foreign accent was a weaker negative predictor. Teacher-centered variables predicted much less variance for FLCA. Participants experienced more FLCA with younger teachers, very strict teachers, and teachers who did not use the foreign language much in class. The findings confirm earlier research that FLE seems to be more dependent on the teachers' pedagogical skills than FLCA.
Die Studie untersucht Thomas Manns reale und virtuelle Bibliothek sowie die Lesespuren, die darin zu finden sind, und stellt sie Manns Gesamttext gegenüber Was ist eine Autor:innenbibliothek und wie ...lässt sich mit ihr literaturwissenschaftlich arbeiten? In welchem Verhältnis zeigen sich in einem Romantext wie Thomas Manns »Joseph in Ägypten« (1936) die in seiner Nachlassbibliothek physisch erhaltenen, die bloß sekundär belegbaren und die nichterhaltenen Lektüren des Autors? Wie fügen sich daraus Textmotive und Bedeutungssplitter zu einem narrativen Muster zusammen, und wie verändert sich dieses von Text zu Text? Schönbächlers Studie geht solchen Fragen anhand eines Motivkomplexes nach, der in Thomas Manns Frühwerk Gestalt annimmt und der im dritten Band der »Joseph«-Tetralogie einen bedeutsamen Wandel durchläuft: Erstmals widerfährt einer Frauenfigur die Mann`sche ›Heimsuchung‹ von der eigenen Leidenschaft. Geschlecht wird so zum Vehikel, das in der Zeit des deutschen Faschismus eine Ehrenrettung früherer Vorstellungen von Deutsch- und Künstlertum erlaubt. Schönbächlers intertextuell-poetologische Perspektive macht einerseits die Durchlässigkeit zwischen Bibliothek und Werk sichtbar und andererseits deren Diskurspoetologie.
Recent research has shown that Chinese foreign language learners' classroom emotions stand out from learners in the rest of the world. The present mixed-method study investigated to what extent ...foreign language enjoyment (FLE) and foreign language classroom anxiety (FLCA) of 564 Chinese undergraduate EFL learners are different from learners outside China. While mean levels of FLE and FLCA were found to differ, most of the patterns between FLE and FLCA and a range of learner-internal and teacher-related variables were comparable to those identified in previous research, except for Chinese students' dislike of unpredictable behaviour by the teacher. Participants reported similar levels of FLE but higher levels of FLCA compared to the international sample in Dewaele and MacIntyre (2014), which could be attributed to the Chinese educational context. Multiple regression analyses revealed that FLE was predicted more strongly by teacher-related variables while FLCA was mostly predicted by learner-internal variables, confirming earlier research outside China. Qualitative analysis of learners’ emotional experiences also revealed that FLE was more likely to have been triggered by the teacher while FLCA was more related to learners themselves. Pedagogical implications of the findings are provided for EFL teaching in Chinese universities.
This study aimed to examine grit and its components (i.e. perseverance of effort and consistency of interest) in the foreign language (L2) classrooms by investigating its relations to personal best ...goals, L2 emotions (i.e. enjoyment and anxiety) and L2 achievement. We further examined whether grit could predict L2 achievement when other constructs are included in the analyses. For this purpose, a total of 226 participants who were studying English in a language institute completed the questionnaire. When grit was the only predictor of L2 achievement, results indicated that only perseverance of effort could significantly predict L2 achievement. However, when other predictors were included in the analyses, neither of grit components could predict L2 achievement. We further found that both grit components predicted L2 anxiety, while only perseverance of effort predicted L2 enjoyment and personal best goals. Finally, we found that perseverance of effort was indirectly related to L2 achievement through personal bests. These findings show the problematic role of consistency of interest in predicting L2 achievement reflecting the arguments made in the field of education. Results of the study provide us with important findings concerning the mechanism underlying the relations between grit and L2 achievement and how this relation might be mediated through personal best goals.
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