Elia - 2013 - Nº 13
URI permanente para esta colecciónhttps://hdl.handle.net/11441/2489
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Artículo Effects of Input Enhancement and Visual Prompts in Children’s L2 Acquisition of Spanish Verbal Morphology(Universidad de Sevilla, 2013) Rosas Mayén, NormaIn the pedagogical arena of second language (L2) acquisition, much of the input enhancement research (Sharwood Smith, 1993) has focused on adult L2 acquisition. However, the impact of this pedagogi¬cal technique in child L2 acquisition is an area of investigation that still deserves more attention. The present study analyzes the effect of input enhancement techniques supported by visual prompts in the acquisition of Spanish verbal morphology by child L2 learners. Over a fourteen-week period, meeting once a week, two experimental groups of L2 Span¬ish child learners, ages seven to nine, were exposed to a variety of input enhancement techniques applied to Spanish verbal morphology. At the end of the study, their performance on five different tasks (reading, fill in the blanks, writing, structured oral interview and oral translation) was assessed and compared with a control group. The results of the present study show that using input enhancement techniques supported by visual aids help L2 child learners to notice and retain the Spanish verbal mor-phology studied facilitating its intake.Artículo Metaphoric Competence and the Acquisition of Figurative Vocabulary in Foreign Language Learning(Universidad de Sevilla, 2013) Doiz, Aintzane; Elizari, CarmenSuccessful vocabulary teaching in the English as a foreign lan¬guage classroom has to surmount many obstacles, such as the decrease in the rate of acquisition of new words by EFL students once a high level of proficiency is achieved, the students’ frustration at their inability to ex¬press their own thoughts adequately or plain boredom with the learning of lists of vocabulary items (MacArthur, 2010). In this article, we follow Danesi’s (2008) claim that the use of figurative language helps overcome some of these hurdles by providing the means to expand the learners’ vocabulary. The goal of this article is to highlight the importance of the role of metaphors in the acquisition of figurative vocabulary by learners of Eng¬lish in two contexts, an EFL classroom and a CLIL classroom. Firstly, we report on an experimental study where the consequences of developing conceptual metaphor awareness for figurative language learning in the EFL classroom are studied. Results show that, compared to the tradition¬al translation-based approach, systematic presentation of the target figu¬rative expressions on anger around the two conceptual metaphors they instantiate improves comprehension and spontaneous retention of the target vocabulary. Secondly, we implement the metaphor approach in the design of a lesson plan for a class of Philosophy and Citizenship where the medium of instruction is English (CLIL). We show that the metaphor awareness is instrumental in the accomplishment of two objectives: the learning of new figurative vocabulary in English and the understanding of the subject-matter targeted in the lesson plan.Artículo Requesting in English as a Lingua Franca: Proficiency Effects in Stay Abroad(2013) Vilar Beltrán, ElinaThis article reports on an empirical study designed to assess pragmatic awareness and production of 104 nonnative speakers of English of two different proficiency levels (intermediate and advanced). The paper first frames the study providing information on the users of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), a new communicative competence model that takes into account lingua franca users, and studies dealing with ELF topics. This is followed by the description of the methodology employed and a discussion of the results. The findings confirm that proficiency level has effects on the awareness and production of appropriate and correct request acts and request act modifiers. Statistical analyses show that advanced learners produce more appropriate and accurate requests than intermediate participants, which was also the case for most internal request modifiers. Advanced learners also appear to be better at assessing pragmatic and grammatical failure of some types of request strategies.Artículo Issues in Language and Identity Research in Applied Linguistics(2013) Block, DavidArtículo The Use of Hedges in the Speech of ESL Learners(2013) Neary-Sundquist, ColleenArtículo The Second Language Lexicon(2013) Milton, James