Elia - 2009 - Nº 9

URI permanente para esta colecciónhttps://hdl.handle.net/11441/2485

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Mostrando 1 - 6 de 6

A bilingual glossary for IELTS band 5
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2009) Serrano Van der Laan, Marta
A thematic, bilingual glossary was used in an International English Language Testing System (IELTS) course at Politecnico di Torino, Italy. This paper reports on an evaluation performed on this glossary with the objective of determining its validity as a learning tool, as well as its usefulness in helping students pass IELTS at the required band mark. An overview of the literature on the subject of word lists, list-learning and bilingual pair vocabulary learning, together with a critical discussion of the glossary allows positive conclusions to be reached regarding the glossary’s validity. However, the difficulty of ascertaining any tangible influence of the glossary in students’ exam results reveals that the second objective of the evaluation may have been too ambitious. This paper pleads in favor of decontextualized vocabulary learning and the use of bilingual word pairs in SLA theory and English language teaching.
A state-of-the art review of background knowledge as one of the major factors that influence reading comprehension performance
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2009) Lahuerta Martínez, Ana Cristina
The aim of this paper is to review the research carried out to date on the use and effect of background knowledge on reading comprehension. We want to reflect on the use of background knowledge in first (L1) and second (L2) language reading comprehension and on the interrelation between language proficiency and background knowledge in reading comprehension performance. This study aims to provide more insight into the relationship between prior knowledge and reading comprehension, which will add to the knowledge of reading research and will help better understand the role of these factors and how they affect one another.
Affect in L2 learning and teaching
(2009) Arnold Morgan, Jane; Universidad de Sevilla. Departamento de Filología Inglesa (Lengua Inglesa)
Integrating cross-curricular teaching and CALL is feasible: an intervention project in Primary Education
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2009) Rascón Moreno, Diego
Foreign language teaching offers an invaluable opportunity to bring peace, health, environmental, gender, sex, moral and civic, road safety, and consumer education into the classroom. Addressing these topics in all subjects throughout the compulsory educational period was actively encouraged in Spain from 1991 to 2007 Unfortunately, many members of the teaching profession believe that this way of dealing with them did not succeed. This idea is partly confirmed by the information I gathered in 2006 and 2007 from the majority of schools in the city of Jaén as part of my doctoral research. It can be concluded from the data collected that most teachers of English in these schools rely exclusively on published materials to deal with cross-curricular topics of moral nature and that many of these resources do not cover this content sufficiently. Thus, to make up for this shortcoming, teachers should create material on these issues, which is relatively uncomplicated thanks to Information and Communication Technology (ICT). This is what I advocate here, that teachers of English resort to designing ICT activities to compensate for these essential issues being poorly addressed by publishers. This paper describes a project carried out in a primary English classroom that proves that introducing cross-curricular content in their lessons is something that foreign language teachers can easily do now through computer technology.
Rethinking spoken fluency
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2009) McCarthy, Michael
This article re-examines the notion of spoken fluency. Fluent and fluency are terms commonly used in everyday, lay language, and fluency, or lack of it, has social consequences. The article reviews the main approaches to understanding and measuring spoken fluency and suggest that spoken fluency is best understood as an interactive achievement, and offers the metaphor of ‘confluence’ to replace the term fluency. Many measures of spoken fluency are internal and monologue-based, whereas evidence from a variety of research both within and without linguistics and applied linguistics suggest that speakers fine-tune their performances to one another. I report ongoing research into features of spoken language, such as automaticity and turn-boundary phenomena, which illuminate the interactive processes involved in fluent production. The applications of such research will be directed towards the empirical underpinning of the Common European Framework (CEFR) level descriptors for spoken language through the English Profile project.
The treatment of vocabulary in EFL textbooks
(Universidad de Sevilla, 2009) López Jiménez, María Dolores
This empirical study researches the treatment given to vocabulary in current textbooks published for teaching English as a foreign and/or second language (EFL/ESL). The article starts with a description of some of the strengths and weaknesses of L2 textbooks. It continues with different aspects related to the introduction of new vocabulary such as ways of organizing it and the main presentation techniques. It moves on to vocabulary practice and factors that influence L2 vocabulary retention in long term memory. Furthermore, the importance of other lexical aspects such as vocabulary recycling, vocabulary learning strategies and the presence of glossaries with L1 translation equivalents at the end of textbooks is discussed. The rest of the article is devoted to the empirical study which consisted of (a) an analysis of 12 textbooks for teaching English in Spain and (b) a questionnaire distributed among 116 Spanish EFL teachers in order to assess their views of the treatment of vocabulary in EFL textbooks they were using. The analysis of the data from both sources, that is, the textbooks under scrutiny and the responses to the questionnaire reveals that the treatment of vocabulary in current EFL textbooks is rather traditional and economic benefits are given preference over pedagogical ones.

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