This study investigated the convergence of content and language integrated learning, translanguaging, and global citizenship education in an EFL tertiary English class. Conceptualized within translanguaging as an assemblage for meaning-making, machine translation was incorporated into the course in a way that EFL bilinguals could fully avail themselves of their linguistic repertoire for the learning of global citizenship and language. The analyses of thirty-three students’ response essays and survey results demonstrate the success of MT as both a scaffold for bridging language-content gaps and a tool for language acquisition. Design features, perceived as important, were a careful introduction and training on MT use and teacher feedback on MT-assisted writing. Survey results emphasize the crucial role of the students’ L1 in meaning-making. The study offers a practical guide for educators interested in using MT in L2 writing instruction and encourages further research on the theoretical and pedagogical applications of translanguaging in diverse EFL contexts.
The present study explored a reading-based speaking task for its potential to develop EFL students' fluency. Based on an L1 speaking model by Levelt (1989, 1993), the task was developed in a way that students can maximize their fluency in a scaffolding-rich condition: one in the stage of message generation and the other in linguistic encoding. The use of reading texts for the development of speaking fluency was also hypothesized to induce authentic interaction among interlocutors. How the reading-based speaking task functions as hypothesized was tested with five Korean college students who participated in a 4-week reading-based speaking program. The analysis of the group activity transcripts and interviews revealed that scaffolding in message generation took place in three types of language episode: a personal experience episode, a vocabulary-related episode, and a contentclarification/ elaboration episode. Linguistic encoding in L2 speaking was scaffolded via shared context, which enabled the participants to develop and utilize a paraphrasing skill. Finally, the participants’ engagement in speaking activities increased, affecting their willingness to communicate and their motivation to improve speaking.
This study investigated the relative contributions of linguistic knowledge and strategy use to L2 listening success, especially in bottom-up and top-down dominant listening tasks. Participants (n = 130) were Korean college students in a required listening course. The tested variables for linguistic knowledge were sentence processing speed, grammar, receptive vocabulary, and productive vocabulary. Listening strategy use was measured with a metacognitive awareness listening questionnaire. We hypothesized that linguistic knowledge will make greater contributions to Bottom-Up-Listening-Comprehension (BULC) than to Top-Down-Listening Comprehension (TDLC), and different aspects of strategies will be accessed in each comprehension type due to different psycholinguistic features of the tasks. A series of stepwise multiple regressions were conducted and confirmed our prediction. The unique variance explained by linguistic knowledge was 27.8% in BULC, but 22.4% in TDLC. Strategy items that address problem solving and mental translation were significantly related to BULC, while items dealing with directed attention and person knowledge had significant explanatory power for TDLC.