Canadian Modern Language Review/ La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes
Volume 72, Number 2 (May 2016)
ARTICLES
Emerging Multilingual Awareness in Educational Contexts: From Theory to Practice
Ulrike Jessner, Elisabeth Allgäuer-Hackl, and Barbara Hofer
The aim of this article is to stress the importance of a dynamic systems or complexity theory approach as a necessary prerequisite to understanding the development of multi-competence in multilingual learners. Selected results from a study on emergent multilingual awareness in children, carried out in South Tyrol, are outlined and discussed. The classroom activities described in the second part, which were developed mainly in an Austrian school context, focus on multilingual, i.e., metalinguistic and cross-linguistic, awareness and show that multilingual approaches to teaching and learning are linked to significant benefits at the linguistic and metalinguistic levels.
Production d’autoreformulations autoamorcées en langue seconde : rôle de l’attention et de la mémoire phonologique
Daphnée Simard, Annie Bergeron, Yong Gang Liu, Marie Nader, and Leslie Redmond
Les autoreformulations autoamorcées (ARAA) à savoir, les modifications des formes langagières amorcées et réalisées par le locuteur lors de la production orale sont depuis longtemps considérées comme une fenêtre sur les mécanismes psychologiques et linguistiques sous-jacents à l’apprentissage d’une langue seconde. Les études antérieures ont révélé que la production d’ARAA varie notamment en fonction du niveau de compétence langagière des apprenants, de la complexité de la tâche de production orale ou encore des différences individuelles. Dans le cadre de la présente étude, la mémoire phonologique et la capacité de commutation de l’attention ont été examinées en relation avec la production d’ARAA chez 30 francophones adultes apprenants de l’anglais L2. La capacité de commutation de l’attention a été opérationnalisée au moyen du TMT et la mémoire phonologique, au moyen d’une tâche de reconnaissance de non-mots. Les ARAA, recueillies lors d’une narration à partir d’images, ont été codées par deux juges. Les résultats des analyses factorielles en composantes principales montrent que tandis qu’une meilleure capacité de commutation de l’attention est en lien avec une plus grande production d’ARAA centrées sur les choix de mots, une meilleure mémoire phonologique est en lien avec une production moindre d’ARAA centrées sur la forme.
Putting Students at the Centre of Classroom L2 Writing Assessment
Icy Lee
In many educational contexts, L2 writing assessment tends to emphasize its summative functions (i.e., assessment of learning – AoL) more than its formative potential (i.e., assessment for – AfL). While the teacher plays a dominant role in AoL, central to AfL is the role of the students, alongside that of the teacher and peers. A student-centred approach to L2 writing assessment involves learners actively in setting goals, monitoring their progress, and deciding how to address the gaps in their learning. Such a focus, also referred to as assessment as learning (AaL), puts students at the centre of classroom assessment. In the L2 writing literature, however, descriptions and explanations about how AaL can be implemented in the writing classroom are scant. This article attempts to provide a clear understanding of AaL and how a student-centred approach to classroom assessment can be applied in the L2 writing classroom, thus contributing new knowledge to the existing literature on classroom L2 writing assessment.
Maximizing Young Learners’ Input: An Intervention Program
Elsa Tragant, Carmen Muñoz, and Nina Spada
This study reports on a year-long intervention based on comprehension practice of input-rich materials. It was inspired by an innovative program in Canada in which primary school francophone children learned English as a second language (ESL) through simultaneous reading and listening. In our study the participants are a class of 10- to 11-year-old students (N = 28) who spent 60% of their EFL instruction time at school in a reading-while-listening program. The program involved independent simultaneous reading and listening practice using graded readers and storybooks of their own choice. The goals were to examine how students experienced the reading/listening sessions and to compare learners’ perceptions of the program, as well as their linguistic gains, with that of a comparison group who received only teacher-led instruction. Instruments included oral and written language tests, self-reported data, and observations. Results indicate that students in the intervention group showed more positive attitudes toward English language learning and progressed at least as much as the students in the comparison group, in spite of having had much less teacher-led instruction time than the latter.
FOCUS ON THE CLASSROOM / PLEINS FEUX SUR LA CLASSE
A New Receptive Vocabulary Size Test for French
Roselene Batista and Marlise Horst
Researchers have developed several tests of receptive vocabulary knowledge suitable for use with learners of English, but options are few for learners of French. This situation motivated the authors to create a new vocabulary size measure for French, the Test de la taille du vocabulaire (TTV). The measure is closely modelled on Nation’s (1983) Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) and follows the guidelines written by Schmitt, Schmitt, and Clapham (2001). Initially, a pilot version was trialled with 63 participants; then an improved version was administered to 175 participants at four proficiency levels. Results attest to the TTV’s validity: mean scores across the four frequency sections decreased as the tested words became less frequent, and more proficient learner groups outperformed less proficient groups. The TTV in its current form is intended to be of practical use to teachers and learners, but it is also expected to evolve; ideas for future improvements are discussed.
BOOK AND SOFTWARE REVIEWS / CRITIQUES DE LIVRES ET DE LOGICIELS
TESOL: A Guide by J. Liu and C. Berger
Karen Densky
Teaching Languages with Technology: Communicative Approaches to Interactive Whiteboard Use by Euline Cutrim Schmid and Shona Whyte (Eds.)
Nicolas Guichon and Elise Merlet
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