Indonesian EFL students’ perceptions of effective non-native English teachers

Effective non-native English teachers (NNETs) are essential to facilitate students to develop their English mastery. However, while students are directly affected by teachers’ instructions, they have been limitedly involved in teacher education and development research. The current study aims to explore the qualities of effective non-native English teachers (NNETs) from students’ perspectives in Tanjungpinang, Indonesia. This study was mixed-method research specifically an explanatory sequential design. In the quantitative phase, 380 students were selected using cluster sampling techniques. Meanwhile, in the qualitative phase, six students were purposely selected based on their English proficiency levels and gender. The instruments used were a questionnaire adapted from Park and Lee (2006) and an interview guide. To analyze the questionnaire data, descriptive and inferential statistical analyses were employed. MANOVA test was run to seek significant differences by students’ gender and English proficiency levels. Meanwhile, the qualitative data were coded to identify the emerging patterns. The results show that the qualities concerning teachers’ socio-affective skills gained the highest mean scores compared to those concerning teachers’ subject matter knowledge and pedagogical skills. This study also confirms that there was a significant difference among students in perceiving effective NNETs by English proficiency levels. This study is expected to help various stakeholders to improve pre and in-service EFL teacher education and development in Indonesia.

Accuracy order in L2 grammatical morphemes: Corpus evidence from different proficiency levels of Turkish learners of English

The present study empirically scrutinizes the fixed natural order of grammatical morphemes relying on a manual analysis of an EFL learner corpus. Specifically, we test whether the accuracy order of L2 grammatical morphemes in the case of L1 Turkish speakers of English deviates from Krashen’s (1977) natural order and whether proficiency levels play a role in the order of acquisition of these morphemes. With this in mind, we focus on the (in)accuracy of nine English grammatical morphemes with 2883 cases manually tagged by the UAM Corpus Tool in the written exam scripts of Turkish learners of English. The results based on target-like use scores provide evidence for deviation from what is widely believed to be a set order of acquisition of these grammatical morphemes by second language learners. In light of such findings, we challenge the view that the internally driven processes of mastering grammatical morphemes in English for interlanguage users are largely independent of their L1. Regardless of L2 grammar proficiency in our data, the observed accuracy of some morphemes ranked low in comparison with the so-called natural order. These grammatical morphemes were almost exclusively non-existent features in participants’ mother tongue (e.g., third person singular –s, articles and the irregular past tense forms), thus suggesting the influence of L1 in this respect.

Investigating the relationship between linguistic changes in L2 writers’ paraphrasing, paraphrasing performance and L2 proficiency

While the typology of paraphrasing revolves around linguistic changes of paraphrasing, little is known about the importance of different types of linguistic changes and their relationship between paraphrasing performance and L2 proficiency. Empirical enquiry has focused on L2 writers’ inappropriate paraphrasing performance against the norm of L1 writer, which is problematic in that L2 and L1 writers displayed considerable variation in paraphrasing. The present study drew upon 202 Chinese EFL writers’ written responses in a paraphrasing test to look into the discrete linguistic transformations in paraphrasing and examine how the frequency of different linguistic changes in paraphrasing relates to their paraphrasing performance and L2 proficiency. Correlation analysis was run to analyze the relationship between the frequency of linguistic changes and paraphrasing performance. Multivariate analysis of variance analysis was conducted to examine how the frequency of linguistic changes relates to L2 proficiency. The findings revealed that Conceptual Transformation had the highest significant correlation with paraphrasing scores, followed by Lexical Transformation and then Syntactic Transformation. The frequency of Synonym Substitution, Morphology, Multiple Word Units, Phrase/Clause Shift, Active/Passive Shift and Conceptual Transformation increased as L2 writers’ proficiency levels increased. Implications are drawn from the findings for paraphrasing instruction and assessment, research in paraphrasing and L2 writers’ academic writing practice.

What Can L2ers Tell Us about Codeswitching? Mood Selection in Spanish

An increasing amount of research shows that bilinguals that engage in codeswitching (CS) may show different patterns of usage and sensitivity to particular linguistic structures depending on community norms. Additionally, proficiency may play a different role in sensitivity to code-switched utterances depending on speaker background, as well as the structure investigated. In this study, we aim to examine how bilinguals not exposed to CS in the community rate CS vs. unilingual sentences involving mood selection in Spanish. In an online acceptability judgment task (AJT), 20 Spanish L2ers rated sentences containing verbs in the indicative and subjunctive mood in restrictive relative clauses manipulated for the specificity of the antecedent in two separate sessions: a Spanish monolingual mode and a CS session. The L2ers did not show evidence of a CS effect and maintained a mood distinction according to the specificity of the antecedent both in unilingual and codeswitched sentences. These results are in contrast with the results previously reported for Spanish heritage speakers (HSs), where a CS effect is attested in the loss of preference for the subjunctive in nonspecific relative clauses in the CS vs. the monolingual Spanish condition. Additionally, this distinction is found at both lower and higher proficiency levels. The differences between these speakers and HSs are consistent with data from previous research on CS effects on phonology and Det–N switches. We argue that exposure to community norms is necessary for the acquisition of patterns not related exclusively to the grammaticality of switch junctures (I-language).

Acquiring Word Order in Slovak as a Foreign Language: Comparison of Slavic and Non-Slavic Learners Utilizing Corpus Data

The paper deals with the acquisition of Slovak word order in written texts of students of Slovak as a foreign language. Its attention is focused on identifying the correct and incorrect placement of enclitic components, and their erroneous usage is analysed with respect to different investigated variables (types of enclitic components, types of syntactic construction, distance from lexical/syntactic anchor, and realization in pre- or post-verbal position). The paper also pays attention to the error rate regarding individual proficiency levels of students, and error distribution in two language groups, Slavic and Non-Slavic learners, is compared.

Using a parallel corpus to adapt the Flesch Reading Ease formula to Czech

Text readability metrics assess how much effort a reader must put into comprehending a given text. They are, e.g., used to choose appropriate readings for different student proficiency levels, or to make sure that crucial information is efficiently conveyed (e.g., in an emergency). Flesch Reading Ease is such a globally used formula that it is even integrated into the MS Word Processor. However, its constants are language-dependent. The original formula was created for English. So far it has been adapted to several European languages, Bangla, and Hindi. This paper describes the Czech adaptation, with the language-dependent constants optimized by a machine-learning algorithm working on parallel corpora of Czech and English, Russian, Italian, and French, respectively.