WA Friday Lectures (now called WA Friday Lunch Talks) are monthly meetings with presentations of current research results or research in progress by WA faculty, staff, or PhD students. They are usually held in room 316A on Fridays at 1:30 PM. Each talk is of 30 minutes (+ 10 minutes for discussion).
‘L1 use in the EFL classroom: Polish teachers’ practices and attitudes”
Abstract
Until very recently, learners’ own-languages were either completely ignored or marginalized in the EFL classroom. For SLA researchers, learners’ language background was not relevant to the subconscious process of second language acquisition: teachers were supposed to focus on providing learners with L2 input and opportunities for interaction in the new language.(e.g. G. Cook 2010, Scheffler et al. 2017).
However, a number of studies published recently present multiple benefits of using pupils’ L1 in different aspects of foreign language teaching (e.g. Butzkamm and Caldwell 2009, Ammar, Lightbown and Spada 2010, Zhao and Macaro 2016). There is also some evidence that English teachers are uncertain about the usefulness of L1 in their classrooms (Hall and Cook 2013), and that their use of students’ own language differs depending on their teaching experience and group level (Lynch 2015).
This presentation is a report on my in-progress doctoral research project which focuses on English school teachers in Poland. The study investigates the teachers’ practices and attitudes regarding L1 use in the instruction process in relation to their work experience and the language level of their student. The study was conducted using an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, where, as the first step, a group of 515 teachers and 90 students in an EFL teaching programme completed a three-part questionnaire on how they assess the usefulness of Polish in relation to various aspects of teaching English. Preliminary ANOVA analyses of two parts of the questionnaire will be presented during the talk.
References
Ammar, Ahlem, Patsy M. Lighbown and Nina Spada. 2010. “Awareness of L1/L2 differences: does it matter?” Language Awareness 19/2: 129-46.
Butzkamm, Wolfgang and John A. Caldwell. 2009. The Biligual Reform: a paradigm shift in foreign language teaching. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Cook, Guy. 2010. Translation in Language Teaching. Oxford University Press.
Cook, Vivien. 2001. “Using the first language in the classroom”. Canadian Modern Language Review 57/3: 402-23.
Hall, Graham and Guy Cook. 2012. “Own-language use in language teaching and learning”. Language Teaching 45/3: 271-308.
Hall, Graham and Guy Cook. 2013. “Own language use in ELT: exploring global practices and attitudes”. ELT Research Papers 13-01. London: British Council.
Lynch, Michael. 2015. Target language use in Modern Language classrooms: Perception and change among newly qualified teachers in Scotland. Unpublished PHD The University of Edinburgh.
Scheffler, Paweł. 2013. “Learners’ perceptions of grammar-translation as consciousness raising”. Language Awareness 22/3: 255-69.
Scheffler, Paweł, May O. Horverak, Weronika Krzebietke and Sigrunn Askland. 2017. “Language background and learners’ attitudes to own-language use”. ELT Journal 71/2: 197-217.
Zhao, Ting and Ernesto Macaro. 2016. “What works better for the learning of concrete and abstract words: teacher’s L1 use or L2-only explanations?” International Journal of Applied Linguistics 26/1: 75-98.
Dutch as a contact language in Tokugawa Japan (1603-1868)
Abstract: After providing a brief introduction to the history of the Dutch in Tokugawa Japan, I discuss the various language processes that resulted from contact between Dutch and other languages as a result of the Dutch presence in Japan. The first of these is language competition. As well as competing with Japanese, Dutch competed with Chinese and Portuguese. Another process was language contact and here I focus on the Dutch loanwords such as those for ‘beer’ and ‘milk’ appropriated by Japanese as a result of language contact.
Some individuals who knew Dutch were bilingual, with a knowledge of other languages such as Japanese, Portuguese and Latin. I consider when they used which language and why they used a given language in a particular social context. These bilinguals often switched between languages and so it will also be useful to consider their motivation for code switching from Dutch to another language.
A very important language process in this story is the translation of Dutch texts into Japanese. Here, I discuss what texts were translated, how they were translated, what the relationship between source and target text was, and the influence of this translation on Japanese syntax as well as on Japanese culture and society more broadly.
Finally, in the years following 1854, when Japan was forced to open up to other Western countries, there were a gradual shift away from Dutch to other European languages, which led to the recession of Dutch in Japan.