This issue of RFL has six regular articles featuring both quantitative and qualitative studies from Japan, South Lebanon, China, Thailand, and New Zealand. In the first, Natsuki Aka examines the effects of a year-long extensive reading program on the development of language knowledge and reading abilities with learners of English in Japan. Findings reveal that the scores of the middle and lower proficiency groups increased significantly. In the second article, Gazi Ghaith and Hind El-Sanyoura tested the mediating role of metacognitive strategies with L2 readers and found that problem-solving strategies positively associated with literacy and high-order reading comprehension. In the next article, Huan Liu, Cindy Brantmeier and Michael Strube examine the multidimensionality of the reading-writing relationship in EFL test preparation in China. Findings indicate that reading comprehension was a significant predictor of descriptive writing performance, regardless of level of instruction. Next, John Macalister and Stuart Webb attend to the challenge of managing the transition from the reading of top-level graded readers to authentic texts. The authors report that the use of L1 children＊s literature is a possibility for the EFL classroom because of the high coverage of word families. In the fifth article, Savika Varaporn and Pragasit Sitthitikul report positive effects of the use of multimodal tasks in critical reading test scores, and more specifically, the researchers find that multimodal tasks enhance intrinsic motivation and learning autonomy. In the last article, Zhiying Zhang and Stuart Webb provide evidence that bilingual books may be a useful tool for vocabulary learning, with gains in vocabulary greater through reading bilingual texts and glossed texts than for reading the English-only text.

There are two book reviews in this volume. Andrew John Wilkins reviews Website Xreading. Next, Ceyhun Y邦kselir reviews Teacher Development in Technology-Enhanced Language Teaching by Jeong-Bae Son.

RFL is a scholarly, refereed journal published on the World Wide Web by the University of Hawai`i, with Richard R. Day and Cindy Brantmeier as the co-editors, Thom Hudson as associate editor, and Xiangying Jiang, West Virginia University, as the reviews editor.

The journal is sponsored by the (NFLRC), the University of Hawai?i , and the University of Hawai?i Department of Second Language Studies. The journal is a fully refereed journal with an editorial board of scholars in the field of foreign and second language reading. There is no subscription fee to readers of the journal. It is published twice a year, in April and October. Detailed information about Reading in a Foreign Language can be found at .

The post Reading in a Foreign Language appeared first on Department of Second Language Studies.

Additional details about Wenyi＊s research grant can be found on the .

ABSTRACT

Mandarin Chinese is one of the most widely learned foreign languages today, and a language deemed critical to national security by the U.S. government. It is also listed in “Category IV: Languages which are exceptionally difficult for native English speakers” by the Foreign Service Institute (U.S. Dept. of State, 2016). A major contributor to this difficulty is the fact that Mandarin is a tonal language, in which differences in pitch contours alone completely change the meaning of a word (e.g., [ma]-flat tone = mother; [ma]-rising tone = hemp; [ma]-low dipping tone = horse; [ma]-falling tone = scold). A successful learner of Mandarin thus needs to be able to distinguish between different tones, connect tonal information with word meaning, and process all this information in real-time while listening and speaking. Little is known so far about which aspects of this complex learning task are particularly challenging for English-speaking learners of Mandarin, and what instructional practices may aid them in mastering this challenge.

The goal of this project is to investigate second language (L2) learners’ processing and use of tones at multiple levels, including tone perception, real-time lexical processing, and word learning, in order to gain a broader understanding of the challenges in the L2 acquisition of Mandarin tones by native speakers of English. To this end, the project draws on theoretical models and methodological paradigms from research in Speech Perception and Psycholinguistics that has investigated the perception and processing of tones by native speakers, and extends these paradigms to investigate the acquisition and use of tones by L2 learners. The project consists of 3 experiments. Experiment 1 employs identification and discrimination tasks well established in categorical perception research to explore the extent to which L2 learners perceive tone categorically, and the role of L2 experience in this process. Experiment 2 investigates L2 learners’ use of tone in the real-time comprehension of spoken Mandarin in a visual-world eye tracking study. Finally, Experiment 3 studies how English speakers with no tonal language experience learn novel words with tones under different training conditions. By exploring the widely recognized difficulty with tones in L2 learning in a controlled laboratory environment, this project will advance our understanding of how L2 learners perceive, process and learn tones in Mandarin, and provide first-hand evidence to inform evidence-based L2 instruction and curricular materials in a language critical to U.S. national security.

The post PhD Student Wenyi Ling Awarded NSF Grant to Study Learners’ Processing and Use of Tones in Mandarin Chinese appeared first on Department of Second Language Studies.

Choe, A. T. (2018). ‘Can anyone help her?’: Managing student embarrassment in the adult ESL classroom.?Hacettepe University Journal of Education,?33?(Special Issue), 16-35.

Kim, H. & Gru?ter, T. (in press). Crosslinguistic activation of implicit causality biases in Korean learners of English. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition.

Lin, Y.-H. (2018). Identity politics and popular culture in Taiwan – A sajiao generation?[Review of the book?Identity Politics and Popular Culture in Taiwan – A Sajiao Generation?by?H.-I S.,?Yueh].?The East Asian Journal of Popular Culture.?4(1), 129-133.

Mendoza, A. (In Press). The practicality of poetry. In E. Hasebe-Ludt & C. Leggo (Eds.), Canadian curriculum studies: A m谷tissage of inspiration/imagination/interconnection. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars Press.

Mendoza, A. & Parba, J. (2018). Thwarted: Relinquishing educator beliefs to understand translanguaging from learners＊ point of view.?International Journal of Multilingualism.?

Rah, Y., & Kim, H. (2018). Construction based approach to teaching the English resultative construction to Korean EFL learners. System, 72(1), 1每12.

Tanaka, J. (in press). Doing critical thinking in university writing courses. In F. Dervin & J.B. Clark (Eds.), Demystifying Critical Thinking in Multilingual and Intercultural Education. Charlotte, NC: Information Age.

2017

Mendoza, A. (2017a). Measuring intra- and international linguistic competence: Appropriation of WEs and ELF discourse in the commercials for two standardized English tests. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies.?

Mendoza, A. (2017b). Preparing pre-service educators for critical, place-based literacies. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy. doi: 10.1002/jaal.708

Park, S. H., & Kim, H. (2017). Second language acquisition and processing of the Korean locative constructions by Chinese speakers. Acta Koreana, 20(2), 591每614.

Tanaka, J., & Gilliland, B. (2017). Critical thinking instruction in English for Academic Purposes writing courses: A dialectical thinking approach. TESOL Journal, 8(3), 657-674. doi:10.1002/tesj.291

2016

Burke, K., Foster, A., Ho, K., Purdy, M., & Watanabe, J. (2016). Hawai＆i Pacific Evaluation Association 2016 Conference Evaluation Report September 9^th and 10^th 2016. 1-57.

Ho, K. (2016). E-learning 2015 World Conference on E-Learning.?Proceedings: Immigrant language use and projected self in social media.

Lamb, G. (2016). Smiling together, laughing together. In M. Prior and G. Kasper, (Eds.). (2016). Emotion in multilingual interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.

Pathakorn, P. & Ho, K. (2016). Review of Teaching and assessing EIL in local contexts around the world by McKay, S. and Brown, J.D. in International Journal of Language Studies.

The post Recent Graduate Student Publications appeared first on Department of Second Language Studies.

Dr. Jacobs served as Professor of Linguistics and ESL from 1973, and chaired the Department of ESL from 1994 to 2000. In 1999, he was appointed Interim Dean of the College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature. More recently, he helped found the , a school for refugee girls in Decatur, Georgia.

The Department of Second Language Studies extends our deepest sympathies and aloha to the family of Dr. Ricky Jacobs.

The post Remembering Professor Emeritus in Linguistics Dr. Roderick “Ricky” Jacobs appeared first on Department of Second Language Studies.

Carrie Bach, George Smith, Hoa Le, Huy Phung, & Nicole Ziegler
What are good tasks? Designing TBLT materials for the classroom

Graham Crookes
Multilingual multicultural initiative

Richard Day (plenary)

Priscilla Faucette
Our Evolving Jobs: English Language Program Administrators＊ Round Table Discussion 每 Workshop

Uy-Di Nancy Le
Developing ESL Students＊ Personal Narrative Writing Skills through Memory Activity 每 Workshop

Anna Mendoza
Fundamentals of ESL/ENG100 course design

Huy Phung
Humanizing the Digital Classroom: Is it the Next of TESOL?

Huy Phung, Hye Young Jung, Amy Marquard, Raquel Renagel, Jing Crystal Zhong, Jing Zhou
Scaffolding Academic Reading: Teaching Strategies that Work

The Georgetown University Round Table (GURT) 2018, Washington DC; March 9每11, 2018

Ann Tai Choe & Elizabeth Reddington (Teachers College, Columbia University)
But-prefacing as a refocusing device in questioning and answering (colloquium)

American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) 2018 Conference, Chicago, IL; March 24每27, 2018

Betsy Gilliland & Priscilla Leal
＆I Wanna Know What You＊re Gonna Do to Help Them＊: Adolescent Micronesian Girls Representing Conflicting Worldviews in Personal Writing

Junichi Yagi
Enacting culture outside of the classroom: A case of microgenetic learning in Japanese as a foreign language

TESOL 2018 International Convention & English Language Expo, Chicago, IL; March 27每30, 2018

Betsy Gilliland
From Student of Writing to Writing Teacher: Successful Transitions (colloquium chair, presenter, and organizer)

Hoa Le
Developing Learner Confidence in English Oral Communication Through Anime: An Ecological Approach (Electronic Village Technology Fairs)

The 6th Business Chinese Workshop in Conjunction with the 2nd International Conference on Business Chinese Education, Honolulu, HI; March 30每31, 2018

J. D. Brown
Doing business Chinese curriculum development 妀昢犖逄諺最扢离 (workshop)
Why should we seriously consider teaching Chinese for specific purposes? (plenary)

22nd Annual Graduate Student Conference, College of Languages, Linguistics & Literature, UHM, Honolulu, HI; April 7, 2018

Wenyi Ling
The Processing of Mandarin Tone by Second Language Speakers (featured speaker)

Chulalongkorn University Language Institute (CULI) International Research Seminar, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand; July 6, 2018

Betsy Gilliland
When teachers research their work: Action research as connector between theory and practice (keynote speaker)

The post 2018 Conference Presentations by SLS Graduate Students and Faculty appeared first on Department of Second Language Studies.

Abstract
This study took place in a 300-level Filipino class at Hawai＊i’s state university. Originally, the researchers intended to study how English-Filipino translanguaging, the use of linguistic features of different languages to achieve meaning-making, (1) supports development of academic writing skills in Filipino for heritage learners who have undergone subtractive bilingualism and (2) challenges the ideology of discrete languages and speech communities. However, throughout the term, students＊ translanguaging practices did not necessarily improve their writing skills in Filipino, and interviews revealed that they still saw themselves as having varied proficiency in English, Filipino (Tagalog-based), and other Filipino languages, which they linked to particular speech communities. Nevertheless, students participated actively and felt they were learning, and translanguaging led to understanding of deeper and more critical content. From these findings, we propose a translanguaging pedagogy that recognises the different social realms in which students have various opportunities to develop different parts of their linguistic repertoires, rather than a pedagogy that simply strives to dissolve linguistic barriers to promote bilingualism and biliteracy.

The post PhD Students Anna Mendoza & Jayson Parba in the International Journal of Multilingualism appeared first on Department of Second Language Studies.

The Bilinski Educational Foundation has provided tremendous support and opportunities for recipient fellows’ research. Thank you.

Click to learn more about a day in the life of a Bilinski Fellow.

The post The Department of Second Language Studies Thanks the Bilinski Educational Foundation for Its Support appeared first on Department of Second Language Studies.

PhD in Second Language Studies Dissertation Defense

Jayson E. Parba

Empowering the Filipino Language Classroom:
Towards Critical Pedagogy and Curriculum

Chair: Graham Crookes

Wednesday, May 2, 2:00每4:00 p.m.
Moore Hall, Room 155A

Abstract

This dissertation research is situated in critical applied linguistics, critical language pedagogy, and heritage and second language (L2) education, within which Filipino language teaching in the U.S. context has remained almost invisible. Drawing on the work of Freire and other critical pedagogues and critical applied linguists, this dissertation examines power negotiation in two Filipino language upper intermediate courses at a University in Hawai?i to analyze how critical language pedagogy (CLP) looks in practice. Most of the existing literature of CLP reports ESL and EFL settings and examines specific aspects of critical language teaching such as dialogue and incorporating critical topics in the curriculum. The field of heritage language (HL) education, however, has drawn on CLP only recently and work of this kind in the HL literature mostly comes from the Spanish language education context only. My dissertation work, therefore, addresses this gap in the literature and directly responds to appeals for tangible guidance and concrete examples coming from teachers of languages other than English (LOTEs) who are interested to adopt a critically-oriented teaching praxis but do not know how and where to start.

Using Teacher Research (TR), I analyze the process of curriculum negotiation in my two Filipino language classes where students took an active role in generating critical themes, making assessment more democratic, and using thematic codes that are drawn from their immediate experiences, identities, and language resources. I also examine the Freirean notion of dialogue as a framework to foster critical consciousness which allows students to identify, challenge, and reframe status quo discourses and ideologies. Moreover, drawing on the notion of translanguaging both as pedagogy and theory of language, I analyze how a classroom language policy, which is anchored on the heteroglossic view of languages and the dynamic language practices of multilinguals, can make language learning more meaningful, empowering, and participatory.

The findings reveal that creating spaces for curriculum negotiation and critical dialogue provides students with opportunities to transform status quo discourses of schooling and education. It also allows for new ways of seeing and understanding oppressive ideologies and practices (e.g., racist stereotypes and discrimination) to emerge in order to resist social inequalities and to promote social justice. The findings further show that curriculum negotiation in Filipino language classrooms where students have very diverse linguistic starting points is possible through adopting critical perspectives of education, multilingualism, language teaching, and teaching philosophy. This study illustrates that politicizing one＊s teaching praxis through critical pedagogy in HL and L2 classrooms necessitates a rethinking of language, HL education, teacher and students＊ roles, and classroom language policy.

The post May 2: Dissertation Defense – Jayson E. Parba appeared first on Department of Second Language Studies.

The post April 20每21: Open Science Symposium appeared first on Department of Second Language Studies.

PhD in Second Language Studies Dissertation Defense

Jing Zhou

Component Skills of Reading among Learners of Chinese as a Second Language

Chair: Richard R. Day

Friday, March 9, 1:00每3:00 p.m.
Moore Hall, Room 155A

Abstract

The component-skill approach to reading comprehension) intended to understand reading as a complex but decomposable component -skill system where various component skills contribute to reading comprehension while interacting with each other. Even though significant progress has been made in understanding how various component skills collaborate to contribute to second language (L2) reading comprehension, there is a lack of empirical studies that examine the component skills of L2 Chinese reading.

To fill this gap, this dissertation examines the direct and indirect effects of semantic radical knowledge, character knowledge, morphological knowledge, vocabulary knowledge and grammar knowledge to L2 Chinese reading. Using a mixed method research approach, this dissertation investigates the direct and indirect effects of components skills on L2 Chinese reading, the component skills that distinguished skilled and less-skilled readers, learners＊ perception of L2 Chinese reading, as well as the convergence and divergence of quantitative and qualitative data.

The participants were 209 learners of Chinese as a second language. A test battery with 12 subtests was designed to measure six latent constructs, including a receptive semantic radical knowledge test and a semantic radical meaning matching test; a lexical decision test and a character knowledge test; a morpheme discrimination test and a compound structure discrimination test; a receptive vocabulary knowledge test and a vocabulary synonym test; a word order test and a grammaticality judgment test; and a multiple-choice reading comprehension test and a cloze test. Thirteen interviews and four focus groups were conducted among 25 participants.

The main findings of the study include:
? Vocabulary knowledge was found to have a significant direct effect on L2 Chinese reading comprehension.
? The receptive vocabulary knowledge test score and vocabulary synonym test score could best distinguish skilled from less-skilled readers

The pedagogical implications of extensive reading for L2 Chinese reading are discussed.

The post March 9 Dissertation Defense – Jing Zhou appeared first on Department of Second Language Studies.