Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching

Volume 16 (2025) Issue 2

Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching 16 (2025) 2, 131-132

Préface

J’ai le plaisir de présenter ce nouveau numéro thématique sur le thème « Frontières linguistiques, frontières culturelles ». À une époque où la fluidité des échanges et la complexification des identités interrogent nos cadres de pensée traditionnels, la notion de « frontière » ne peut plus être appréhendée comme une simple ligne de démarcation. Elle s'impose désormais comme un objet d'étude polymorphe, agissant tour à tour comme zone de contact, espace de tension ou lieu de médiation.

Ce volume du JLLT réunit cinq contributions issues de contextes académiques variés - le Canada, la France et l’Allemagne - offrant ainsi une perspective internationale et interdisciplinaire sur les défis actuels de la didactique des langues et de l'interculturel.

Le numéro s'ouvre sur une remise en question fondamentale des paradigmes traditionnels de la mobilité. Meike Wernicke (Université de la Colombie-Britannique, Canada) nous invite à repenser la frontière non plus comme un franchissement géographique, mais comme un « positionnement relationnel ». À travers l'analyse de deux projets de recherche menés dans l'Ouest canadien, l'auteure explore la complexité des identités chez les futurs enseignants de français langue seconde. Elle met en lumière les processus de racialisation et d'altérisation qui traversent les salles de classe, tout en soulignant l'importance cruciale de soutenir la revitalisation des langues autochtones au sein même des programmes de français.

Ce questionnement sur l'altérité trouve un écho théorique puissant dans l'article de Véronique Lemoine-Bresson (Université de Lorraine, France). S'appuyant sur une synthèse impressionnante de 57 travaux de recherche, l'auteure formalise une compréhension de l'interculturel envisagée comme un « continuum ». En intégrant une perspective intersectionnelle - croisant les enjeux de genre, de classe sociale, de race et de handicap - elle déconstruit les mécanismes de domination et d'assignation identitaire. Sa proposition, à la fois critique et praxéologique, définit quatre domaines d'action (interpersonnel, structurel, idéologique et légal) pour transformer l'indignation en une pédagogie de l'inclusion.

Le lien entre ces deux premières contributions réside dans la volonté de dépasser une vision binaire du « soi » et de « l'autre ». Cette transition s'opère par le biais de supports et de dispositifs favorisant la circulation entre les codes. Esa Christine Hartmann (Université de Strasbourg, France) nous propose une exploration du « voyage » linguistique et culturel à travers un album de jeunesse trilingue. Dans cet espace littéraire, la frontière devient poreuse : les langues ne se juxtaposent pas simplement, elles interagissent pour créer un univers de médiation où le jeune lecteur apprend à naviguer entre différents imaginaires. L’album devient alors un objet sémiologique et didactique privilégié pour éprouver l'altérité dès le plus jeune âge.

Prolongeant cette réflexion sur l'interaction, Martine Derivry-Plard (Université de Bordeaux, France) analyse l'évolution de vingt ans de pratiques numériques. En privilégiant le terme de « télécollaborations interculturelles » sur celui d'échanges virtuels, elle souligne la dimension profondément humaine et politique de ces dispositifs. L'originalité de son approche réside dans un renversement curriculaire audacieux : la communication interculturelle devient l'objectif hégémonique de l'apprentissage, tandis que la compétence linguistique se transforme en un outil d'étayage indispensable mais secondaire. Cette approche vise, in fine, à forger une citoyenneté interculturelle au service d'une éducation démocratique.

Enfin, ce numéro ne pouvait faire l'économie d'une réflexion sur la frontière technologique qui redéfinit actuellement nos pratiques enseignantes. Maximilian Irion (Université Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Allemagne) explore les opportunités et les défis soulevés par l’intelligence artificielle (IA) dans l'enseignement des langues romanes (français et espagnol) au sein du système scolaire allemand. En rendant compte d'une étude scientifique menée auprès de 457 enseignants, l'auteur démontre comment la formation continue peut favoriser une utilisation critique et réfléchie de l'IA. Cette contribution clôt le volume en rappelant que la frontière technologique, si elle est pensée avec discernement, peut devenir un levier d'innovation pédagogique plutôt qu'une menace pour l'interaction humaine.

En parcourant ces articles, nos lecteurs percevront un fil conducteur solide : la nécessité de passer d'une vision statique de la langue et de la culture à une vision dynamique et critique. Qu'il s'agisse de déconstruire les rapports de pouvoir, de médiatiser la rencontre par le récit ou l'échange numérique, ou d'intégrer les nouveaux outils numériques, tous les auteurs s'accordent sur un point : l'éducation aux langues est avant tout une éducation à la relation humaine. 

J'espère que ces explorations récentes sauront nourrir vos réflexions et ouvrir de nouvelles pistes pour vos recherches et vos pratiques. Je vous souhaite une excellente lecture.

Thomas Tinnefeld

JLLT

Directeur scientifique

Foreword to the Issue

The latest issue of JLLT comes with a collection of four articles focused on linguistics, teaching English, learning Finnish and German, and intercultural learning. This issue thus delves into various aspects of language education, a linguistic study into pragmatics, an empirical investigation into the inclusion of pragmatics into English textbooks in Hong Kong, the influence of the respective foreign language in a Finnish-German high school context, and the values teachers and students displayed in a Swedish-Japanese intercultural tandem setting. A perusal of the  contributions in this issue anticipates a blend of tradition and innovation, making each article a compelling exploration that engages and informs.

The first article by Gerald Delahunty (Fort Collins (CO), USA) on "Words, Pictures, and Arguments” is about pragmatics and initiates our exploration into the nuanced intersection of visual rhetoric and argumentation. The discourse surrounding the viability of visual representation within arguments is characterized by opposing views. Advocates of linguistic exclusivity posit that only propositions can effectively contribute to arguments, dismissing the role of visual elements. In contrast, this article, informed by recent developments in Relevance Theory, establishes a comprehensive synthesis, affirming the capacity of visuals, particularly photographs, to represent propositions. The author contends that visuals extend beyond mere propositional representation, offering evidence that supports a spectrum of 'impressions', contributing to a discernible 'credal attitude' towards the associated document.

Liam D. Wilson’s (Hong Kong S.A.R.) article is at the crossroads of linguistics and foreign language teaching and directs our attention to the pragmatic dimension of language use, which is of notable importance in everyday life. Focused on speech acts within English Language Teaching (ELT) coursebooks used during Key Stage 3 in Hong Kong, the investigation scrutinizes the selection and frequency of specific speech acts. Notably, certain acts, such as advice, are found to be recurrent, overshadowing others like requests. The research provides important insights into the pragmatic and sociopragmatic aspects of language instruction, thereby enriching the field of second language pragmatics.

The study presented by Esa M. Penttinen (Helsinki, Finland) & Heiner Böttger (Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany) is at the crossroads of two languages and investigates the importance attributed by upper secondary school learners in Finland and Germany to cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in the context of German language learning. Employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, the study delineates the experiences of Finnish students learning German as a foreign language and German students acquiring German either as a native or second language. Noteworthy findings include the nuanced dynamics of positive and negative transfers, rooted in objective linguistic similarities and subjective assumptions, influencing the learning process. Additionally, the study underscores the interactive interplay of skills in different languages, emphasizing the unifying role of learning to learn in language acquisition.

The article by Christine Ericsdotter Nordgren & Jorunn Nilsson (Stockholm, Sweden) is at the intersection of two cultures, i.e. Japanese and Swedish. Their qualitative analysis explores the values of students and teachers engaged in an online Japanese-Swedish tandem exchange. The findings illuminate divergent emphases placed by students on personal peer-to-peer experiences and linguistic development, while teachers implicitly assume a high degree of autonomy. The research extends the scope of tandem exchange studies by incorporating Japanese and Swedish contexts, contributing to a more global understanding that transcends the prevailing European and American-centric discourse.

The present issue is rounded off by the review by Bernd Klewitz (Jena & Göttingen, Germany) of Inez De Florio’s book “From Assessment to Feedback. Applications in the Second / Foreign Language Classroom”, in which he provides a detailed analysis of this publication coupled with a critical evaluation.

In going through these articles, our readers are invited to explore new findings of visual rhetoric, pragmatics, language acquisition, and intercultural communication, each contributing to the ongoing evolution of scholarly understanding in their respective domains. Last but not least, I would like to wish everyone a very pleasant read.

Thomas Tinnefeld

JLLT

Editor

Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching

Volume 13 (2022) Issue 2

Foreword to the Issue

The present issue of JLLT, which completes its 13th volume, presents five articles and deals with the teaching of English and German. In more detail, the articles investigate teaching writing, using formative assessment to support student learning, teaching and learning English in special situations like the pandemic, a pedagogy of including students’ home languages in the classroom, and emotional aspects of reading comprehension in a German context.

The first article by K. James Hartshorn (Provo, USA), Norman W. Evans (Provo, USA), Jesse Egbert (Flagstaff, USA) & Amy Johnson (Provo, USA) is about disciplinary differences that play a role in university ESL writing at undergraduate level in the USA. In this study, the perspective is that of university professors and their perceptions about writing throughout the whole of their students’ undergraduate studies. Five disciplines were investigated, i.e. biology, business, computer science, engineering, and psychology. The aspects examined in detail were the amount of writing that students were expected to perform during their studies, the intensity of feedback they received from their professors, the extent to which they were allowed to resubmit their texts for improvement, the identification and weight of exam-relevant text types, the most significant challenges with regards to writing as well as the writing purposes characteristic for each discipline. Whereas some factors could be identified as being relatively stable throughout the disciplines in question, others, among which the purpose of writing, showed remarkable differences. The findings of this study are of potential relevance not only for university instructors, but also for students, as the findings presented here clearly show in which degree programmes writing is really important and in which ones it plays a minor part. 

Another form of examination, i.e. formative assessment, is researched by James Herbach & Kinsella Valies (Shizuoka, Japan). The authors explore the potential of formative assessment for boosting Japanese students’ self-confidence and even their fluency in English. This action-research project included the clarity of instructions students were given, and the materials used for practice and for testing students’ speaking abilities, such as reading a text aloud, describing a picture and expressing one’s own opinion. Eleven freshman student groups from all the university departments took part in this study, with on-site and online teaching being included. A formative speaking-assessment module offered students clear and concise instruction, information on their strengths and weaknesses, and feedback from their instructors. The findings of this study documented a considerable improvement of students’ performance between the midterm and the final exams. On top of that, students’ confidence to express their ideas in English went up in all the groups investigated. In a broader view, these findings also imply that, if done properly, assessment, which, more often than not, evokes somewhat negative associations, can also be employed to help students develop their capacities and personalities and thus deserves a better image. 

The teaching of English during the COVID-19 pandemic is examined by Rashit Emini (Skopje, North Macedonia) & Sharon C. Lee (Dallas (TX), USA). In this case study, carried out in a North Macedonian primary school, the authors employed a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods to collect data about the views of four teachers, the school’s headmistress, and 73 pupils from different grades about the impact of teaching and learning English online. The highly negative effects of these measures on pupils’ learning outcomes could be identified, and this although, back in 2020, the school in question as well as its teachers had reacted to the new situation immediately. Consequently, teachers and students were relieved when finally being back to the on-site mode. Let us all, if this may be added here, be happy about the fact that teaching and learning are back to normal, without forgetting, however, what we have learned during the pandemic, and let us try to keep the good things of online teaching, be it the hybrid mode or different forms of blended learning. 

An insight into a practical aspect of language policy is provided by Anna Burnley (Tallahassee (FL), USA), who develops pedagogical strategies to diminish concepts of language privileging among American pre-service teachers, pleading for the inclusion of students’ respective home languages in the English-language classroom. For the author, this inclusion represents a possible way to reduce potential language endangerment. She pleads for pre-service teachers to view students’ bilingualism, or even multilingualism, as a positive influence rather than a disturbing factor, as language endangerment ultimately means cultural endangerment. She rightly sees this change of view as a positive aspect which might work in favour of the additive factors of all languages. One of the strong points of this contribution is the author’s practical insight and her time-tested advice, which are not only of help to pre-service teachers but to all instructors who teach multicultural student groups. 

The fifth article, contributed by Eleni Peleki (Flensburg, Germany), is in German and analyses the role of state emotions in the context of reading comprehension in culturally heterogeneous German primary-school classes. 79 randomly selected mono- and multilingual pupils were tested so as to find out whether there was any correlation between the pupil’s competence in reading comprehension and their (positive or negative) state emotions. The potential influence of gender and linguistic socialisation were also examined. The findings are apt for being included in the methodology of German as a first, second or foreign language.

Again, the contributions made to the present issue are varied enough to find their readers and to give them food for thought. In this vein, I thank all the authors for their trust and confidence in JLLT and wish all the readers enthralling hours of academic reflection as well as inspiration for their own teaching practice and / or further articles of their own.

Thomas Tinnefeld

JLLT

Editor

Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching

Volume 133 (2022) Issue 1

Foreword to the Issue

The first issue of JLLT’s 13th volume comes with five articles and two book reviews. The fields covered in the articles are foreign language methodology, the psychological importance of learners’ mother tongue for the learning of other languages, the teaching of pronunciation, the potential washback effect produced by language exams, and, last but not least, code-switching. The languages dealt with are English, Swedish, Vietnamese, Japanese and Albanian as native languages, and English, French, Spanish and German as target languages. This distribution points to the plurilingual character of JLLT. Four articles are written in English, and one is in German. The two book reviews, with one of them being in English and the other one in German, give attention to the use of linguistics in the foreign language classroom, and text linguistics in a German-Polish perspective.

In their study, Vi Thanh Son (Gothenburg, Sweden) & Joost van de Weijer (Lund, Sweden) investigate the potential impact of pupils’ exposure to English (as a foreign language) in activities outside the classroom, comparing a Vietnamese and a Swedish group of learners. For this purpose, demographic factors as well as children’s procedural and declarative knowledge were taken into account. Among other things, the findings suggest a significant correlation between children’s exposure to English and the development of their mental lexicon. It may be added that the results of this study support those of previous studies, which are equally promising and suggest that one of the prerequisites – if not the most important one – of language learning consists in including the language(s) to be learnt or perfected, into the learners’ lives. Inversely, this means that learning a second or third language in a classroom context alone, will not get learners very far.

The second article by Frédérique Grim (Fort Collins (Co), USA) also presents an action-research project which is placed outside the foreign-language classroom. It deals with the teaching of French pronunciation to American university students by giving them the opportunity to apply their skills through telling French stories to a general audience at an American municipal library. In the given context, pronunciation is a fruitful research field in two ways: on the one hand, together with grammar, it can be considered a highly important factor for the mastery of a foreign language; on the other, it has been attributed relatively little importance with respect to its potential contribution to the intelligibility of nonnative speakers, so that the article aims at filling this gap. Thanks to the realistic environment the project is placed in, students were given the opportunity to test their skills in an authentic environment. The article gives, then, answers to the questions of whether preparing university students to present French stories to a real-life audience can improve their pronunciation and their awareness of it, and of whether such a project motivates them and helps them understand the importance of their engagement for their community. Just like the previous one, this article also suggests that bringing foreign language teaching into the ‘real’ world can represent a fruitful way to include language learning in learner's lives.

Another success factor of language learning may be the way students consider the potential value of their mother tongue for learning other languages. This also includes the idea that if they find their native language useful for learning other languages, students' learning outcome may be better than if they do not attribute any potential  value to their mother tongue. Indeed, in the study presented by Blake Turnbull (Kyoto, Japan), Japanese university students believed that the use of their native language may improve their English reading and writing skills as well as their grammar and vocabulary learning. Additionally, it may be underlined that the question of whether students’ impressions generally correspond to reality or not may be of secondary importance: as long as they think that their mother tongue can help them learn English more efficiently, there will be a positive effect, even if it is nothing but a placebo effect. The findings of this study, then, support the idea that a learner’s mother tongue plays an important role for his or her learning other languages and cannot simply be ignored. This also means that what contrastive linguists found in the second half of the 20th century is still of importance nowadays. Thus, this idea  should be exploited more than has been the case up to the present day. 

The potential washback effect of a university admission exam, the Serial Assessment Program (PAS), on the practice of Spanish language teachers in Brazil is the topic presented by by Yasser Abdullah Al Tamimi (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), Gladys Quevedo-Camargo (Brasília, Brazil) & Rafael Sena Raposo de Melo (Brasília, Brazil). This diagnostic, summative, and formative Spanish reading-skills test particularly addresses students with limited financial means. The findings of this case study, which combines a quantitative and a qualitative approach, indeed point to a limited washback effect, which included the use of previous test examples to give students an impression of the general format of this test and a certain prevalence of bottom-up approaches to reading. It may be added that this study also implies the importance of clear differentiation between proficiency-oriented language teaching on the one hand and language courses which particularly teach test-taking skills on the other.

The only German article contained in the present issue is provided by Naxhi Selimi (Goldau, Switzerland), Basil Schader (Zurich, Switzerland) & Andrea Cantieni (Goldau, Switzerland). This article, which does not have a pedagogic background, describes the coexistence of two languages in the speakers’ minds the way it manifests itself in the form of code switching, and that in the respective Albanian communities in Germany and Switzerland. In order to give insights into the code-switching practised in these communities, the authors interviewed 120 representatives of three generations (G1, G2, and G3). The findings show that code-switching is generally and equally practised by all the three generations in both countries, with the (older) G1 displaying less frequency in this respect than the other two generations. Moreover, code-switching was used for the same reasons By all three generations: to express a certain content or certain communicative requirements, to compensate for lexical gaps in the speaker’s lexicon, and to display language identity. Additionally, in the youngest generation, code-switching occurred  more and more in public and was no longer limited to private life. The present article, then, documents a trend which is becoming more and more prevalent and which consists in considering code-switching as an important linguistic phenomenon that needs to be researched on.

The first of the two book reviews published in the present issue is by Daniel J. Nappo (Martin (TN), USA) on Judy Hochberg’s book “Bringing Linguistics into the Spanish Language Classroom. A Teacher’s Guide”. According to the reviewer, this book is highly practice-oriented and provides invaluable information and inspiration to the Spanish language teacher, who will be a better instructor after having read the book and by making good use of its infrastructure like the numerous PowerPoint slides it comes with in its different appendices.

The second book review is by Heinz-Helmut Lüger (Landau, Germany) on Zofia Bilut-Homplewicz’s book on developments, problems, and desiderata in German and Polish text linguistics, which represents the second book of the author's underlying project, with her first book having been analysed in JLLT 5 (2014) 1 by the same reviewer. According to him, this book not only comes with deep insights into topical developments in the field of text linguistics, but also represents an urgent plea for an intensification of scientific exchange between Poland and Germany.

It is clear, then, that the present issue, which, by the way, is the 25th of JLLT, has the potential to offer inspiration, stimulation and motivation to anyone who conducts research on applied linguistics and methodology or uses it in class in the endeavour of practical language teaching.

Thomas Tinnefeld

JLLT

Editor

Journal of linguistics and Language Teaching

Volume 12 (2021) Issue 2, pp. 123-125 

Foreword to the Issue

This year’s second issue of JLLT comes with five articles and one book review and is focused on Europe, with contributors coming from the UK, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, and Poland. The fields covered are students’ accent preferences, migrant speakers’ language choices as well as the teaching of grammar and students’ mastery of grammatical features. Let’s take a look at the individual contributions so as to make this cryptic description a little bit more concrete.

In their article, Gezina Christien Dorothé Huttenga (Groningen, NL) & Dick Smakman (Leiden, NL) analyse patterns and motivations of English major students’ accent choices in the Netherlands, using a multiple approach consisting of a quantitative survey, interviews, and the production of sound files. The question the authors raised was whether Dutch first-year students preferred Standard British English or General American when speaking English. The results showed that students’ choices were associated with their social identity and the image of themselves they wanted to display when communicating in English. Students' preferences showed a clear tendency towards one of these two accents - which one it was, will be revealed in the article -, and the way students evaluated these two most important accents is highly interesting. What is also highly instructive is the fact that some students adapt their accents to the respective situational context. Yet, they hardly ever use the one or the other accent consistently but mix them, with their own native accent also shining through. Teachers, in turn, may use different accents to offer students a pronunciation model, which, in addition to a basic orientation, may help them construct their own pronunciation based on the connotations and associations they may want to convey. On top of that, any (native and foreign) language user, i.e. all of us, may wonder to what end we use different accents in different situations and when communicating with different people so as to convey an image of ourselves that we find desirable or appropriate. What is obvious, then, is that pronunciation is much more than ‘just’ correctly rendering the sounds of a given language in a meaningful way: metaphorically speaking, it is the ‘dress’ that a speaker’s language wears and that will be evaluated and, in optimal situations, appreciated by this person’s interlocutors.

Covering the realm of grammar, Deak Kirkham & Milada Walková (Leeds, UK) present their 7Cs model, which is designed for highly practical and pedagogical purposes and which was developed by teacher for teachers. This model, which, in principle, is applicable to any (western) language, claims to be more accessible and much easier to understand than competing models that were developed in the field of linguistics. In this article, readers are provided with a concise description of language, which they may use to ease their students' access to grammar and offer them an overall understanding of linguistic phenomena. This approach is practically applied to the passive voice. The categories used, like combinations, concepts or contexts, are meant to help learners look through the complexity of language structures and help them understand what they may otherwise never be able to comprehend. Those readers who are active foreign language teachers may decide for themselves whether this model appeals to them and may be helpful to them. What it definitely does is to offer them an alternative to existing models, and this fact alone represents a value in itself.

A special area of English grammar is in the focus of the contribution made by Sofie Larasen (Måløy, Norway) & Kristian A. Rusten (Bergen, Norway), who present a corpus-based study of the use of the definite and the indefinite article by young Norwegian learners of English. Due to the specific systematicity of Scandinavian languages, the correct use of the articles represents an issue for Norwegian learners of English, which means that they overuse, underuse or use the English articles ungrammatically. The authors show how the use of the articles develops in the course of school education. Even if the results of this study are not to be revealed in this foreword, it can be said that article use does not only represent a potential problem for Norwegian learners, but for nearly any learner of English, and that the  correct mastery of the articles is anything but trivial. All this points one more time to the fact that much more awareness raising with respect to the teaching and learning of the English articles is necessary than many teachers and learners may think.

Another grammatical source of problems is subject-verb agreement, especially the use of the third-person-singular -s. This is the grammatical field which Kristin Killie (Tromsø, Norway) deals with in her article, in which she describes and analyses errors of this type made by young Norwegian learners of the same age groups as the ones investigated in the previous article. Whereas in other linguistic communities, like the German one, to quote an additional example, the third-person-singular -s is left out too frequently, young Norwegians learners seem to strive for hypercorrectness by overusing the third-person-singular -s in contexts where it is neither appropriate nor necessary. Due to the high complexity of the problem, which is also caused by sentence and utterance types in which subject and verb are clearly separated from each other, the author finds it necessary to conduct longitudinal studies so as to provide more reliable data than are available today, and thus points to the necessity of even more intensive research on this topic to be conducted. Here again, a well-defined grammatical area proves to be more difficult for learners than many may think, and, what is more, this phenomenon represents a problem for an uncountable number of learners of English world-wide.

In the only German article in the present issue, Naxhi Selimi (Goldau, Switzerland) describes and analyses language profiles of third-generation Albanian migrants in Germany and Switzerland. Employing a multi-method approach, the author presents an empirical study, in the framework of which he also proposes a complex profiling model for spoken Albanian, thus filling a research gap. The survey - interviews and questionnaires - carried out lays the groundwork for developing language materials at the different proficiency levels examined, i.e. beginner, semi-advanced and advanced. The article offers a multitude of facets of the problem which may inspire further studies including other linguistic communities.

This issue of JLLT is rounded off by a review on Greta Gorsuch’s & Dale. T. Griffee’s “Second Language Testing for Student Evaluation and Classroom Research by Monika Sobejko (Krakov, Poland), who provides a functional insight into this book.

The present issue doubtlessly offers our readers some inspiration with respect to foreign language teaching and learning. Even if its focus predominantly is on English, the studies published here go far beyond the scope of this language and can easily be extended and transferred to other languages - either for reasons of plausibility or by way of conducting further research that looks into similar aspects of French, Spanish or German, for example. It is in this vein that I wish readers some hours of intensive reflection on what we love most - i.e. languages and their teaching and learning - during which they may forget time and space, figuring out new research questions and planning new research designs.

Thomas Tinnefeld

JLLT

Editor

Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching

Volume 12 (2021) Issue 1, pp. 7-8

Foreword to the Issue

The first issue of JLLT‘s 12^th volume comes with five articles in two languages (English and Spanish) and on three languages. The authors whose papers are published in this issue come from the USA, the UK, Mexico, Sweden, and Germany. The fields covered are historical linguistics, foreign language methodology, mobile apps, grammar, and sign language.

The issue is opened up by Dallin D. Oaks (Provo (Utah) USA), who presents Mother Goose nursery rhymes as a suitable source for teaching historical linguistics. This subject, which, as one might expect, is oftentimes regarded as ‘boring‘ by students is presented here in such a way that it stands good chances of enhancing the latter‘s interest in this field, also because it may evoke childhood memories. The fact that these nursery rhymes are not so remote from modern English usage as no longer to be intelligible makes them an attractive object of teaching language change. The author gives an overview of some of the most important subfields of historical linguistics, such as voicing, phonological change or changes in morphology, syntax and  semantics, to name but these, pedagogically supporting them by giving numerous examples.

In an opinion article, Thomas Tinnefeld (Saarbrücken, Germany) describes and analyses the development of the role of the teacher from the 1950s up to the present day. This period of around seventy years has brought dramatic changes in the teacher‘s role and in his or her practical work and importance in the classroom. The grammar-translation method and the audio-lingual method required a totally different type of teacher as compared to the subsequent communicative and constructivist approaches, not to mention the latest developments of virtual and / or hybrid or hyflex teaching. The teachers‘ daily classroom work has not always reflected the complexity of his or her work. Yet, the latest developments seem to be promising in this respect because nowadays, it cannot be denied that the teaching profession is an extremely complex and flexibility-oriented one so as to best respond to students‘ present  and future demands.  

Within an action-research oriented approach, Ángel Osle (Exeter, UK) investigates the use of mobile learning applications for developing learners' speaking skills, using the Telegram app for a group of Chinese natives learning Spanish. Featuring the relatively modern field of Virtual Learning Environments (VLE), the study - even if based on a comparatively small sample of students - shows some positive outcome of VLE for the learning of foreign languages, some of which may even lie in the use of the corresponding app itself. The results also imply - this may be added - that in the modern and virtual time we live in, it is as important as ever, if not even more important, to offer students instruments that naturally belong to their lives and to make the best use of these instruments for language teaching and learning.

In their Spanish contribution to the present issue, Sara Quintero Ramírez & Sonny A. Castro Yáñez (both Guadalajara, México) research upon teachers' ideas and praxis in the teaching of Spanish in Mexico. Their qualitative study aims to identify teachers' ideas about teaching Spanish grammar and to compare them with the methodology they use in class. The consistency - and especially the inconsistencies - found between these teachers' beliefs and the way they organise their instruction may make any language teacher rethink his or her daily practice. Even if this is a qualitative study with the numbers of teachers taking part in it being rather small, every reader is invited to make some personal deductions from the findings presented in this paper so as to reflect on his or her teaching practice from a different perspective.  

The last but, of course, not least contribution made to the present issue is made by Ingela Holmström (Stockholm, Sweden) and looks into a special type of language, i.e. Swedish sign language. In this context, a central problem consists in the fact that sign language communication does not happen in the same modality as verbal languages do. This means that, unlike a text orally expressed in a given language that is interpreted into another language (e.g. French into English), in sign language, the ideas that need to be expressed have to be transferred from the verbal / oral modality (i.e. that of words) to the visual-gestural modality, with interlocutors using their hands, their arms, their faces and their whole bodies to express what they would like to communicate. On top of that, linguistic features that are different from spoken language, such as spatiality, iconicity and simultaneity, need to be learnt. The author describes and analyses the teaching of such features to a group of hearing L2-students learning Swedish sign language at the university. Due to the specific requirements of sign language, a largely different teaching context and totally unfamiliar language learning processes are presented.

Coming up with a relatively wide range of topics dealt with in the various articles, the present issue promises to be a captivating read and might generate numerous ideas that, in turn, might advance research in this way or that. Should this process be triggered, this would not only make our authors happy, but also the members of our Editorial Advisory Board, not to mention the editor.

Thomas Tinnefeld

JLLT

Editor

 

Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching
Volume 9 (2018) Issue 2
pp. 147-148

Foreword to the Issue

The present issue, which completes JLLT's ninth yearly volume, comprises five articles which cover the field of pragmatics in the realm of linguistics, and those of language use in the English language classroom, reading research, grammar teaching, and the teaching of French legal language in the domain of methodology. Four of the subsequent articles are in English, one is in French.

In a linguistic, or, more precisely, pragmatic approach, Gerald Delahunty (Fort Collins (CO, USA) analyses international appeal letter by Amnesty International in terms of the tenor used, the ideology expressed and the participants' positioning embodied in them. The central speech act here is persuading, and it addresses government officials who are thereby incited to act in conformity with human rights, and also the general public, i.e. AI members and people who aim to act in favour of those ideals and to financially contribute to them. In the article, the wording and style of such appeal letters are analysed, with the direct form of addressing the target group using the second person you, representing one of the most important linguistic device here. Another relevant speech act used in these let­ters is presupposition. The ultimate effect attributable to this type of letters consists in forming a strong identity for addressees wiklling to belong to a well-defined social group. This article thus represents an enlightening read for those who are (professionally) inter­ested in pragmatics and also for those who have come to recognise the ultimate impor­tance of this field of linguistics.

The first article covering methodological issues is the one by Georgios Neokleous & Anna Krulatz (both Trondheim, Norway), who detail the results of an empirical study whose purpose it was to analyse the opinions of Norwegian EFL teachers in view of their students using their own mother tongue in class and the efforts these teachers make to predominantly implement the foreign language in the classroom. The results found and discussed here are of interest in the context of the multilingual classroom, which presently has recently become more and more en vogue in modern language methodology.

The importance of leisure time reading performed by learners of English is the topic of the contribution by Ghania Ouahmiche (Oran, Algeria) & Khalid Ziad (Mila, Algeria). The authors investigate the potential benefits of this type of read­ing, in particular with regards to writing, which is not primarily performed in the classroom, but represents part of students private activities. The findings show that reading performed outside the classroom and on learners' own accord is viewed positively by students, especially as far as its beneficial effects on the content of their written texts is concerned. The findings of this study also show that even more importance should be attached to motivating students of whatever foreign language to integrate it into their every-day lives and to use it in whatever context they might find appropriate, with extensive reading being just one of them.

The mastery of a grammatical phenomenon, i.e. that of the Spanish verbal as­pect, acquired in the context of service-learning is investigated by C. Cecilia Tocaimaza-Hatch (Omaha (NE), USA) & Ashwini Ganeshan (Athens (GA), USA). The empirical study performed in this context referred to oral narration and was based on a classical research scheme. It comprised a certain amount of awareness-raising because students were requested to discuss their choice of aspect after having re-narrated the underlying fictional story employed. In addition, students were asked to evaluate their own use of Spanish verbal aspect. The findings show some improvement in students' narration capacity and point to the importance of service-learning as an environment in which theory and practice can easily be combined, allowing learners to develop their affective and cognitive skills. The article shows that the learning of foreign languages while doing community service can enhance students' personality building.

Another approach to teaching is focused on by Karl-Heinz Eggensperger (Potsdam, Germany), who describes the teaching of legal French within the framework of a double-degree programme between a German and a French uni­versity. In his article, written in French, the author analyses a special type of lan­guage course which is based on the assumption that linguistic competence represents a combination of skills that are necessary for mastering well-defined com­municative tasks. The diversity of these skills is shown in a specific model, and the differences that exist between the legal curriculum and the curriculum of teaching legal French are exemplified, whereby concrete suggestions are made with regards to teaching materials in view of LSP lexis, of note-taking skills to be applied during lectures, and to the written preparation of student presentations. The author's reflections point to the very necessity to teach languages for specific purposes in a way which is distinctly different from those ways in which foreign languages are generally taught.

The presented issue is completed by a book review of The Essential Hyland by Thomas Tinnefeld (Saarbrücken, Germany), which represents a collection of articles by Ken Hyland on academic writing, reprinted and commented on by prominent scholars.

As usual, I would like to thank the aforementioned authors for their contributions to this issue of JLLT, look forward to further contributions of theirs in the future, and wish all our readers a pleasant and instructive read.

Thomas Tinnefeld

JLLT

Editor

Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching

Volume 9 (2018) Issue 1

Foreword to the Issue

The first issue of this year comes with five articles, three of them in English and two in German, the fields dealt with being language policy, writing research, contrastive analysis, pragmatics, and teaching German as a foreign language. These articles are complemented by one book review.

The first article by Ines De Florio-Hansen (Kassel, Germany) covers the “aims and effects of the language policy of the Council of Europe (CoE)“, with the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) recently having been complemented by the so-called Companion Volume with New Descriptors. A short description of the overall language policy of the CoE taken as a basis, the pros and cons of the CEFR are analysed and the general function of the CEFR – to serve for ‘reference’ and not to establish any kind of instructional obligation nor limitation - is stressed. The problem of putting the different proficiency levels described in the CEFR into classroom practice is identified as one of the major deficiencies of the CEFR. The Companion Volume with New Descriptors, then, offers improvements, but still does not sufficiently treat intercultural discourse competence, the descriptions of plurilingualism and pluriculturalism not sufficiently complying with multilinguality and interculturality. Next, the European Language Portfolio (ELP) is described with reference to one of its main goals, i.e. to foster learner self-assessment. In the same vein, chances are shown of how to train students to make the best possible use of the ELP and other comparable portfolios.

Focusing on French taught to American university students, Thomas Tinnefeld (Saarbrücken, Germany) & Frédérique Grim (Fort Colins (CO), USA) present a case study on Constrastive Analysis and discuss the question of whether the contrastive approach represents a functional option to improve students' foreign language command. A research design consisting of a pretest, a teaching phase and a posttest was carried out, all this being done in sophomore classes at a medium-sized American university. Findings showed that the sole use of contrastive analysis approximately had the same positive effects on students' learning progress as the contrastive approach used with reference to cognition and awareness-raising.

The third article in this issue being more specific in scope, Anna Wing-bo Tso & Winnee Siu-yee Ho (both Hong Kong) address academic writing, which of utmost importance for any university student. As the development of academic literacy is increasingly in the focus of interest and as university writing courses often fail to bring about successful outcomes, in their empirical study, the authors focus on the principal problems that occur to students when attending first-year writing courses. Challenges teachers face in these courses are also discussed.

The two subsequent articles are in German, the first of them being situated in a Macedonian and the second one in a German context. Biljana Ivanovska (Štip, Republic of Macedonia) & Gëzim Xhaferri (Tetovo, Republic of Macedonia) examine an interview with the Macedonian president published by the German daily Bild in its online edition. The authors analyse this interview which deals with the current political situation in the region and that of refugees on the Macedonian-Greek border. In their pragmatic approach based on Searle, the authors found that in this interview situation, in which some speech acts were deliberately conceived in such a way as to express meaning that was different from what was actually said, some linguistic means played an especially important role for achieving the desired effect.

In the last (but not least) article of the present issue, Eleni Peleki (Lüneburg, Germany) presents an empirical survey focusing on special-needs students who participated in a remedial training project for young migrant learners in Germany. The author's findings lead to a set of recommandations both for the training and the daily practice of teachers of German as a second language.

The book review that completes the present issue is on Frank Kostrzewa’s latest book on the acquisition and teaching of German as a foreign language, which is predominantly, but by far not exclusively, targeted at Korean learners of German and also covers language acquisition and teaching in a far more general perspective than just with regards to German.

Finally, editor and editorial advisory board cordially thank the authors for their contributions and wish our readers – regular and new ones – an informative reading.

Thomas Tinnefeld

JLLT

Editor