The literature on corrective feedback (CF) that second language writers receive in response to th... more The literature on corrective feedback (CF) that second language writers receive in response to their grammatical and lexical errors is plagued by controversies and conflicting findings about the merits of feedback. Although more recent studies suggest that CF is valuable (e.g., Bitchener, 2008; Sheen, 2007), it is still not clear whether direct or indirect feedback is the most effective, or why. This study explored the efficacy of two different forms of CF. The investigation focused on the nature of the learners’ engagement with the feedback received to gain a better understanding of why some feedback is taken up and retained and some is not. The study was composed of three ses- sions. In session 1, learners worked in pairs to compose a text based on a graphic prompt. Feedback was provided either in the form of reformulations (direct feedback) or editing symbols (indirect feed- back). In session 2 (day 5), the learners reviewed the feedback they received and rewrote their text. All pair talk was audio-recorded. In session 3 (day 28), each of the learners composed a text individually using the same prompt as in session 1. The texts produced by the pairs after feedback were analyzed for evidence of uptake of the feedback given and texts produced individually in session 3 for evi- dence of retention. The learners’ transcribed pair talk proved a very rich source of data that showed not only how learners processed the feedback received but also their attitudes toward the feedback and their beliefs about language conventions and use. Closer analysis of four case study pairs suggests that uptake and retention may be af- fected by a host of linguistic and affective factors, including the type of errors the learners make in their writing and, more importantly, learners’ attitudes, beliefs, and goals. The findings suggest that, although often ignored in research on CF, these affective factors play an important role in uptake and retention of feedback.
This paper reports on a study in two remote multilingual Indigenous Australian communities: Yakan... more This paper reports on a study in two remote multilingual Indigenous Australian communities: Yakanarra in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and Tennant Creek in the Barkly region of the Northern Territory. In both communities, processes of language shift are underway from a traditional language (Walmajarri and Warumungu, respectively) to a local creole variety (Fitzroy Valley Kriol and Wumpurrarni English, respectively). The study focuses on language input from primary caregivers to a group of preschool children, and on the children's productive language. The study further highlights child-caregiver interactions as a site of importance in understanding the broader processes of language shift. We use longitudinal data from two time-points, approximately 2 years apart, to explore changes in adult input over time and developmental patterns in the children's speech. At both time points, the local creole varieties are the preferred codes of communication for the dyads in this study, although there is some use of the traditional language in both communities. Results show that for measures of turn length (MLT), there are notable differences between the two communities for both the focus children and their caregivers. In Tennant Creek, children and caregivers use longer turns at Time 2, while in Yakanarra the picture is more variable. The two communities also show differing trends in terms of conversational load (MLT ratio). For measures of morphosyntactic complexity (MLU), children and caregivers in Tennant Creek use more complex utterances at Time 2, while caregivers in Yakanarra show less complexity in their language at that time point. The study's findings contribute to providing a more detailed picture of the multilingual practices at Yakanarra and Tennant Creek, with implications for understanding broader processes of language shift. They also elucidate how children's language and linguistic input varies diachronically across time. As such, we contribute to understandings of normative language development for non-Western, non middle-class children in multilingual contexts.
Spanning Indigenous settings in Africa, the Americas, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, Central As... more Spanning Indigenous settings in Africa, the Americas, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, Central Asia and the Nordic countries, this book examines the multifaceted language reclamation work underway by Indigenous peoples throughout the world. Exploring political, historical, ideological, and pedagogical issues, the book foregrounds the decolonizing aims of contemporary Indigenous language movements inside and outside of schools. Many authors explore language reclamation in their own communities. Together, the authors call for expanded discourses on language planning and policy that embrace Indigenous ways of knowing and forefront grassroots language reclamation efforts as a force for Indigenous sovereignty, social justice, and self-determination. This volume will be of interest to scholars, educators and students in applied linguistics, Ethnic/Indigenous Studies, education, second language acquisition, and comparative-international education, and to a broader audience of language educators, revitalizers and policymakers.
The Sociopolitics of English Language Testing, 2020
Highlighting marginalized but significant perspectives about the sociopolitical essence of Englis... more Highlighting marginalized but significant perspectives about the sociopolitical essence of English language tests and testing processes worldwide, this book explores the social considerations of testing theories and practices from a critical perspective. Investigating concerns surrounding power inequalities, The Sociopolitics of English Language Testing takes a socially-situated view of language assessment, bringing sociopolitical understandings of language teaching, learning, and assessment to the forefront in the field.
The role of bilingual assistance may be an important consideration in classrooms, particularly in... more The role of bilingual assistance may be an important consideration in classrooms, particularly in the early stages of learning a language. Some of the learners who participated in the individual case studies reported in this volume were enrolled in a bilingual classroom with a bilingual teacher. While others were not enrolled in bilingual classrooms, they made use of bilingual resources, and also used their first languages in the classroom. The case study classroom (reported in Chapter 9) had a monolingual teacher, but two bilingual aides. This chapter examines the views of both learners and teachers on the value and role that bilingual assistance may have in the classroom, beginning with a brief historical overview of earlier research
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2020
We used an error disruption paradigm to investigate how deaf readers from Hong Kong, who had vary... more We used an error disruption paradigm to investigate how deaf readers from Hong Kong, who had varying levels of reading fluency, use orthographic, phonological, and mouth-shape-based (i.e., “visemic”) codes during Chinese sentence reading while also examining the role of contextual information in facilitating lexical retrieval and integration. Participants had their eye movements recorded as they silently read Chinese sentences containing orthographic, homophonic, homovisemic, or unrelated errors. Sentences varied in terms of how much contextual information was available leading up to the target word. Fixation time analyses revealed that in early fixation measures, deaf readers activated word meanings primarily through orthographic representations. However, in contexts where targets were highly predictable, fixation times on homophonic errors decreased relative to those on unrelated errors, suggesting that higher levels of contextual predictability facilitated early phonological acti...
... III, Competency 6, raw scores and Rasch estimates Tasks: Negotiating annual leave (NNS versus... more ... III, Competency 6, raw scores and Rasch estimates Tasks: Negotiating annual leave (NNS versus NS interlocutor) Negotiating complaint (+/-structure) Variables Raw scores Rasch estimates Task 2 ... I: And if er there are some concession fares for student concession… tickets. ...
The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics around the World (2nd ed), 2022
The wider sociolinguistic context of contemporary Indigenous Australia takes in a great diversity... more The wider sociolinguistic context of contemporary Indigenous Australia takes in a great diversity of local language ecologies, ranging from small remote communities where many traditional languages are spoken to large cities where Aboriginal Englishes are used within superdiverse contexts alongside other Englishes and languages. Prior to colonisation, some 800 varieties – more than 250 distinct languages – were spoken across Australia. Since that time the region’s linguistic heritage has been decimated with fewer than 15 languages still learned by children, located mainly in the north and centre of Australia. Recent years have also seen, however, incredible resilience and creativity in the emergence of new varieties and in revitalisation efforts across the country. The rapid and drastic social changes of the past two centuries have produced similarly seismic sociolinguistic shifts. Some sociolinguistic work has been possible within the small speaker communities of many Australian languages, but other approaches (e.g. variationist sociolinguistics) have only been possible where larger speech communities exist. As a result, the application of such methods has been somewhat limited. Nevertheless, recent years have seen sociolinguistic work in the Australian context increasingly engage with global methodological developments and ethical debates. Although social questions have long occupied a central location in linguistic work in the Australian context, the sociolinguistics of Australian Indigenous languages is now developing as a field in its own right, answering the call for more diverse data across many subfields of linguistics (e.g. Stanford 2016) with regular workshops and growing numbers of graduate researchers expanding the limits of the topic. In this chapter, we provide an overview of key sociolinguistic research in Indigenous Australia, taking in both pre- and post-colonial contexts. Our discussion is structured around four interconnected strands which represent key gathering points of research endeavours: linguistic variation; multilingualism; language contact; and child language.
The literature on corrective feedback (CF) that second language writers receive in response to th... more The literature on corrective feedback (CF) that second language writers receive in response to their grammatical and lexical errors is plagued by controversies and conflicting findings about the merits of feedback. Although more recent studies suggest that CF is valuable (e.g., Bitchener, 2008; Sheen, 2007), it is still not clear whether direct or indirect feedback is the most effective, or why. This study explored the efficacy of two different forms of CF. The investigation focused on the nature of the learners’ engagement with the feedback received to gain a better understanding of why some feedback is taken up and retained and some is not. The study was composed of three ses- sions. In session 1, learners worked in pairs to compose a text based on a graphic prompt. Feedback was provided either in the form of reformulations (direct feedback) or editing symbols (indirect feed- back). In session 2 (day 5), the learners reviewed the feedback they received and rewrote their text. All pair talk was audio-recorded. In session 3 (day 28), each of the learners composed a text individually using the same prompt as in session 1. The texts produced by the pairs after feedback were analyzed for evidence of uptake of the feedback given and texts produced individually in session 3 for evi- dence of retention. The learners’ transcribed pair talk proved a very rich source of data that showed not only how learners processed the feedback received but also their attitudes toward the feedback and their beliefs about language conventions and use. Closer analysis of four case study pairs suggests that uptake and retention may be af- fected by a host of linguistic and affective factors, including the type of errors the learners make in their writing and, more importantly, learners’ attitudes, beliefs, and goals. The findings suggest that, although often ignored in research on CF, these affective factors play an important role in uptake and retention of feedback.
This paper reports on a study in two remote multilingual Indigenous Australian communities: Yakan... more This paper reports on a study in two remote multilingual Indigenous Australian communities: Yakanarra in the Kimberley region of Western Australia and Tennant Creek in the Barkly region of the Northern Territory. In both communities, processes of language shift are underway from a traditional language (Walmajarri and Warumungu, respectively) to a local creole variety (Fitzroy Valley Kriol and Wumpurrarni English, respectively). The study focuses on language input from primary caregivers to a group of preschool children, and on the children's productive language. The study further highlights child-caregiver interactions as a site of importance in understanding the broader processes of language shift. We use longitudinal data from two time-points, approximately 2 years apart, to explore changes in adult input over time and developmental patterns in the children's speech. At both time points, the local creole varieties are the preferred codes of communication for the dyads in this study, although there is some use of the traditional language in both communities. Results show that for measures of turn length (MLT), there are notable differences between the two communities for both the focus children and their caregivers. In Tennant Creek, children and caregivers use longer turns at Time 2, while in Yakanarra the picture is more variable. The two communities also show differing trends in terms of conversational load (MLT ratio). For measures of morphosyntactic complexity (MLU), children and caregivers in Tennant Creek use more complex utterances at Time 2, while caregivers in Yakanarra show less complexity in their language at that time point. The study's findings contribute to providing a more detailed picture of the multilingual practices at Yakanarra and Tennant Creek, with implications for understanding broader processes of language shift. They also elucidate how children's language and linguistic input varies diachronically across time. As such, we contribute to understandings of normative language development for non-Western, non middle-class children in multilingual contexts.
Spanning Indigenous settings in Africa, the Americas, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, Central As... more Spanning Indigenous settings in Africa, the Americas, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, Central Asia and the Nordic countries, this book examines the multifaceted language reclamation work underway by Indigenous peoples throughout the world. Exploring political, historical, ideological, and pedagogical issues, the book foregrounds the decolonizing aims of contemporary Indigenous language movements inside and outside of schools. Many authors explore language reclamation in their own communities. Together, the authors call for expanded discourses on language planning and policy that embrace Indigenous ways of knowing and forefront grassroots language reclamation efforts as a force for Indigenous sovereignty, social justice, and self-determination. This volume will be of interest to scholars, educators and students in applied linguistics, Ethnic/Indigenous Studies, education, second language acquisition, and comparative-international education, and to a broader audience of language educators, revitalizers and policymakers.
The Sociopolitics of English Language Testing, 2020
Highlighting marginalized but significant perspectives about the sociopolitical essence of Englis... more Highlighting marginalized but significant perspectives about the sociopolitical essence of English language tests and testing processes worldwide, this book explores the social considerations of testing theories and practices from a critical perspective. Investigating concerns surrounding power inequalities, The Sociopolitics of English Language Testing takes a socially-situated view of language assessment, bringing sociopolitical understandings of language teaching, learning, and assessment to the forefront in the field.
The role of bilingual assistance may be an important consideration in classrooms, particularly in... more The role of bilingual assistance may be an important consideration in classrooms, particularly in the early stages of learning a language. Some of the learners who participated in the individual case studies reported in this volume were enrolled in a bilingual classroom with a bilingual teacher. While others were not enrolled in bilingual classrooms, they made use of bilingual resources, and also used their first languages in the classroom. The case study classroom (reported in Chapter 9) had a monolingual teacher, but two bilingual aides. This chapter examines the views of both learners and teachers on the value and role that bilingual assistance may have in the classroom, beginning with a brief historical overview of earlier research
Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 2020
We used an error disruption paradigm to investigate how deaf readers from Hong Kong, who had vary... more We used an error disruption paradigm to investigate how deaf readers from Hong Kong, who had varying levels of reading fluency, use orthographic, phonological, and mouth-shape-based (i.e., “visemic”) codes during Chinese sentence reading while also examining the role of contextual information in facilitating lexical retrieval and integration. Participants had their eye movements recorded as they silently read Chinese sentences containing orthographic, homophonic, homovisemic, or unrelated errors. Sentences varied in terms of how much contextual information was available leading up to the target word. Fixation time analyses revealed that in early fixation measures, deaf readers activated word meanings primarily through orthographic representations. However, in contexts where targets were highly predictable, fixation times on homophonic errors decreased relative to those on unrelated errors, suggesting that higher levels of contextual predictability facilitated early phonological acti...
... III, Competency 6, raw scores and Rasch estimates Tasks: Negotiating annual leave (NNS versus... more ... III, Competency 6, raw scores and Rasch estimates Tasks: Negotiating annual leave (NNS versus NS interlocutor) Negotiating complaint (+/-structure) Variables Raw scores Rasch estimates Task 2 ... I: And if er there are some concession fares for student concession… tickets. ...
The Routledge Handbook of Sociolinguistics around the World (2nd ed), 2022
The wider sociolinguistic context of contemporary Indigenous Australia takes in a great diversity... more The wider sociolinguistic context of contemporary Indigenous Australia takes in a great diversity of local language ecologies, ranging from small remote communities where many traditional languages are spoken to large cities where Aboriginal Englishes are used within superdiverse contexts alongside other Englishes and languages. Prior to colonisation, some 800 varieties – more than 250 distinct languages – were spoken across Australia. Since that time the region’s linguistic heritage has been decimated with fewer than 15 languages still learned by children, located mainly in the north and centre of Australia. Recent years have also seen, however, incredible resilience and creativity in the emergence of new varieties and in revitalisation efforts across the country. The rapid and drastic social changes of the past two centuries have produced similarly seismic sociolinguistic shifts. Some sociolinguistic work has been possible within the small speaker communities of many Australian languages, but other approaches (e.g. variationist sociolinguistics) have only been possible where larger speech communities exist. As a result, the application of such methods has been somewhat limited. Nevertheless, recent years have seen sociolinguistic work in the Australian context increasingly engage with global methodological developments and ethical debates. Although social questions have long occupied a central location in linguistic work in the Australian context, the sociolinguistics of Australian Indigenous languages is now developing as a field in its own right, answering the call for more diverse data across many subfields of linguistics (e.g. Stanford 2016) with regular workshops and growing numbers of graduate researchers expanding the limits of the topic. In this chapter, we provide an overview of key sociolinguistic research in Indigenous Australia, taking in both pre- and post-colonial contexts. Our discussion is structured around four interconnected strands which represent key gathering points of research endeavours: linguistic variation; multilingualism; language contact; and child language.
Pour rendre hommage aux travaux du professeur Anne Freadman, vingt-trois spécialistes explorent i... more Pour rendre hommage aux travaux du professeur Anne Freadman, vingt-trois spécialistes explorent ici la question du genre. Les domaines de l'enseignement (notamment celui des langues indigènes ou étrangères), de la sémiotique, de la linguistique ou de la littérature sont ainsi abordés.
This paper reports on a study in a remote multilingual Indigenous Australian community – Yakanarr... more This paper reports on a study in a remote multilingual Indigenous Australian community – Yakanarra in the Kimberley region of Western Australia – which is undergoing language shift from the traditional language, Walmajarri, to Fitzroy Valley Kriol (also known as Kimberley Kriol). The study focuses on language input by primary caregivers to a group of four preschool children, and also focuses on the children’s productive language. We use longitudinal data from two time-points, approximately two years apart, to describe changes in adult input over time and developmental patterns in the children’s speech, as well as to contribute to an understanding of broader patterns of community language use in Yakanarra.
At both time points, Fitzroy Valley Kriol is the preferred language of communication for the dyads in this study. Results show that for measures of morphosyntactic complexity (MLU), children and caregivers used more complex utterances at Time 2 than at Time 1, as was expected, but that at Time 2 the children’s utterances were mostly more complex than their caregiver’s. Regarding measures of utterance length (MLT), on average children’s words per turn increased a small amount between Times 1 and 2, although there was variability between participants, while caregivers’ average MLT was in fact lower at Time 2 than Time 1. When overall conversational load was considered (MLT ratio), the children’s contributions were found to constitute a relatively large share of the interactions, with one child even having a greater conversational burden than her caregiver. We might infer from this that the Yakanarra caregivers, who use shorter and fewer turns at Time 2, respond to their children’s language development by making room for their productive language capacity.
This study will contribute to a fuller understanding of child-caregiver interactions in remote Indigenous communities. It will also elucidate the contribution of intergenerational transfer to language maintenance in a community where the language practices of the youthful population are a core contributing factor to the rapidity of language shift from Walmajarri to Fitzroy Valley Kriol.
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some 800 varieties – more than 250 distinct languages – were spoken across Australia. Since that time the region’s linguistic heritage has been decimated with fewer than 15 languages still learned by children, located mainly in the north and centre of Australia. Recent years have also seen, however, incredible resilience and creativity in the emergence of new varieties and in revitalisation efforts across the country.
The rapid and drastic social changes of the past two centuries have produced similarly seismic sociolinguistic shifts. Some sociolinguistic work has been possible within the small speaker communities of many Australian languages, but other approaches (e.g. variationist sociolinguistics) have only been possible where larger speech communities exist. As a result, the application of such methods has been somewhat limited. Nevertheless, recent years have seen sociolinguistic work in the Australian context increasingly engage with global methodological developments and ethical debates. Although social questions have long occupied a central location in linguistic work in the Australian context, the sociolinguistics of Australian Indigenous languages is now developing as a field in its own right, answering the call for more diverse data across many subfields of linguistics (e.g. Stanford 2016) with regular workshops and growing numbers of graduate researchers expanding the limits of the topic.
In this chapter, we provide an overview of key sociolinguistic research in Indigenous Australia, taking in both pre- and post-colonial contexts. Our discussion is structured around four interconnected strands which represent key gathering points of research endeavours: linguistic variation; multilingualism; language contact; and child language.
some 800 varieties – more than 250 distinct languages – were spoken across Australia. Since that time the region’s linguistic heritage has been decimated with fewer than 15 languages still learned by children, located mainly in the north and centre of Australia. Recent years have also seen, however, incredible resilience and creativity in the emergence of new varieties and in revitalisation efforts across the country.
The rapid and drastic social changes of the past two centuries have produced similarly seismic sociolinguistic shifts. Some sociolinguistic work has been possible within the small speaker communities of many Australian languages, but other approaches (e.g. variationist sociolinguistics) have only been possible where larger speech communities exist. As a result, the application of such methods has been somewhat limited. Nevertheless, recent years have seen sociolinguistic work in the Australian context increasingly engage with global methodological developments and ethical debates. Although social questions have long occupied a central location in linguistic work in the Australian context, the sociolinguistics of Australian Indigenous languages is now developing as a field in its own right, answering the call for more diverse data across many subfields of linguistics (e.g. Stanford 2016) with regular workshops and growing numbers of graduate researchers expanding the limits of the topic.
In this chapter, we provide an overview of key sociolinguistic research in Indigenous Australia, taking in both pre- and post-colonial contexts. Our discussion is structured around four interconnected strands which represent key gathering points of research endeavours: linguistic variation; multilingualism; language contact; and child language.
At both time points, Fitzroy Valley Kriol is the preferred language of communication for the dyads in this study. Results show that for measures of morphosyntactic complexity (MLU), children and caregivers used more complex utterances at Time 2 than at Time 1, as was expected, but that at Time 2 the children’s utterances were mostly more complex than their caregiver’s. Regarding measures of utterance length (MLT), on average children’s words per turn increased a small amount between Times 1 and 2, although there was variability between participants, while caregivers’ average MLT was in fact lower at Time 2 than Time 1. When overall conversational load was considered (MLT ratio), the children’s contributions were found to constitute a relatively large share of the interactions, with one child even having a greater conversational burden than her caregiver. We might infer from this that the Yakanarra caregivers, who use shorter and fewer turns at Time 2, respond to their children’s language development by making room for their productive language capacity.
This study will contribute to a fuller understanding of child-caregiver interactions in remote Indigenous communities. It will also elucidate the contribution of intergenerational transfer to language maintenance in a community where the language practices of the youthful population are a core contributing factor to the rapidity of language shift from Walmajarri to Fitzroy Valley Kriol.