Foreign Language Learning - Science topic

I completely agree with you and wonder if this is perhaps the reason why "language learning" has been neglected in this kind of categorization.

It can be better to strike a balance between reinforcing current knowledge and challenging students slightly beyond their level. Recommending content that addresses weaknesses is essential for targeted improvement, while introducing slightly advanced material can foster growth and motivation. Consider a mix of both tailored reinforcement and slightly challenging content to promote a comprehensive learning experience.

Your efforts are appreciated

As an e-learning developer, we use the Moodle platform, which also uses Zoom as an educational resource, as it allows the storage, management, and reuse of educational content. One of the advantages offered by the e-learning training platform is the individualization of the learning process - each participating actor has his own assimilation of a rhythm and relies in the learning process on auditory memory quickly controlling their progress, benefiting from fast and permanent feedback.

Statistics show that 70-80% of educational material presented online is memorized through listening, viewing, and interactivity. Zoom is easy and efficient in the interaction between tutors and trained staff to understand the knowledge taught and received. In my opinion, the answer to using dynamic technologies like Zoom, including language learning, is real-time feedback.

Andreas K. If we combine VR/AR with glasses, we can do whatever we want, and your use case can also be covered. The biggest problem will be connected to the projected information, how it will be processed by our brain, and what side effects are caused.

You can search google scholar or research gate: For the analysis follow these series of videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DvHhYhHlJw&list=PLa8aw6JqIW1YTH91MRqxGKridsYkAZkB3

Dear Samaher, I did not know that "language learning mindset" was an established term (or, rather, an established learner variable) in SLA research at all. I agree with Ting He that it sounds like a collection of other learner features, such as their L2 aptitude, L2 motivation, or L2 competence. I suppose that "self-efficacy" for L2 learning would be a student's belief in their capacity to act in the ways necessary to learn the L2. In any case, you may want to look up both terms in any available SLA Handbook's index to find more clear-cut definitions.

MY dear

According to my point of view and in relation to the Iraqi situation

maybe no more than 30 percent

warm regards

Language is culture and culture is language. However, using the interlinguistic approach to teach a foreign language (EFL/ESL) can be used to a certain extend if there are effective results (production of written/spoken discourse) especially if L1 and L2 are cognates (French/English for instance). So all is fair to learn a language.

Truly speaking this kind of test does not exist in our Country, neither in our Universities. Note that we are in a Portuguese speaking Country. Apart from Portuguese which is the official language, our Country tries to promote other foreign languages such us English, French and Chinese(Mandarin). Thanks

Thanks!

It should be harmony between the literature review, theory, and methodology.

You should not select the technology first. You should use an "Educational Engineering" process to first identify your outcome goals for the class, and their measurements of success...and then the kinds of learning activities that can allow students to achieve those goals. Only after that should you select the technology by which those learning activities can be performed. See this book chapter:

The four language skills make the core of a foreign language learning process. However, their effectiveness is conditioned by transferring passive knowledge into the functional active use of language. This would come as the result of sustained exposure to the language and practice on the part of the learner.

I 've never heard of it before.

Following.

http://www.multilingualliving.com/2010/05/31/does-bilingualism-multilingualism-cause-language-delay/

Nice Dear Harshvardhan Singh

Nice Contribution Arif Jawaid

I agree with Moohebat Shoyukhi

Good Answer Maziyyatul Muslimah

Following.

Gladly! And I'll convey your questionnaire to my students as well.

Interesting questionnaire although quite long, but I hope your project will benefit from that.

I wish you good luck with your research!

I think miscommunication originally based on the indivual differences among those learners.Some are at a high level of language development mastering all the fundamental skills fully while on the other hand some are so poor and inexperienced concerning the basics of lang.

In combination with communicative language learning, I think ICT can foster learning. Several years ago, I saw an interactive story telling program for children learning Ukrainian. The activities, geared toward reinforcing language (reading, hearing) were fun...even as an adult learning. :-)

Isabel,

I have no research for you to cite, but I think that we need to reflect on the common assumption that native speaker teachers are always better, at least with respect to English.

In the past, I think it was the assumption that people learn English in order to be able to interact with native speakers. Today, however, the reality is that whenever people who speak different languages meet, English is likely to be a common second/foreign language in which they can interact.

This means being able to understand a wide range of accents and understand variable grammar/vocabulary. So being able to speak exactly like a native speaker is maybe not the ultimate goal of learning English today. Maybe the ultimate goal is to be able to function effectively across many cultures, or what Dörnyei (2005) called the "cosmopolitan international society."

Suggestopedia is more ralated.

Yes. Very nice and effective effort

Language acquisition is a multi-factorial, multi-dimensional and multi-stratal phenomenon. If you focus on one aspect, the approach is at the expense of excluding other aspects. A big question as is asked entails a vast reply, the whole scholars in the universe are trying to answer just a portion of what is considered as the most complicated faculty of human species_language. Don't dismay. Btw, plasticity is sth that belongs to pre-puberty. After puberty it is claimed that the plasticity vanishes. Man is stuck in a hard shell rather than a flexible all-absorbing ability. They can master lexico-grammar and also discoursal aspects yet for people after puberty acquiring native-like pronunciation is claimed to be very hard, out of reach or impossible. Notions and factors such as the individual psychology, neurology, physiology, internal motivation; social , cultural, historical factors; power distribution; class, age, gender, ethnicity; natural vs classroom environment, authenticity real life example vs artificial classroom exposure, learning styles and learning strategies; input, intake, and output and still a longer list of factors all have an impact on SLA. We are all on the route to know just part of the system or mechanism , yet there is no conclusive answer. We can easily pose a very short question such as "What is the treatment for cancer?" but the answer is neither conclusive, nor utterable. It involves a huge pile of information concerning numerous factors inspected through various perspectives, "signifying nothing." Yet, as human beings we try to quench our curiosity. In this activity, we are fortunate enough to have a collective curiosity; that is, all the thinkers in applied linguistics collectively try to find a way to better understand SLA. From antiquity, Plato, and Aristotle , to F Saussure, Chomsky, Hymes, Halliday, Gass, Ellis, and many other important scholars they have tried to grasp some aspect of SLA and expand human knowledge on the quest for language learning /acquisition. ... you see, this is not yet finished.

Best wishes. Dr Babak Majidzadeh (PhD)

Hakan Ringbom's (2007) Cross-linguistic Similarity in Foreign Language Learning is devoted to this issue. He mentions that the degree of congruence between the systems determines how much facilitation there will be in language learning.

you may want to check these items http://depts.washington.edu/augcomm/00_general/references.htm

Information is data. Knowledge is the understanding that results from analysis of the data and fitting the new information in with what we already know (as described in cognitive psychology).

Dear sir,

You may implement CLT in your classroom. CLT is one of the current most effective methods/approaches of language learning. Good luck.

Le tecniche on line ti permettono di ripetere tantissime volte le stesse frasi .Prova con Intelligenza digitale Acro-Word

I follow

I know Gürel (2016) - unfortunately the studies in this volume do not focus on language learning strategies (such as intercomprehension). However, thank you for your advice!

To conceive my games (gameplay, characters...), I use the typology of players by Richard Bartle. In his texts, you will learn that motivation depend of each people (explorer, social...). It's an excellent design aid.

Hello,

Generally speaking, measurements whereby human perception or interpretation is an important factor have long been used as a basis for decision-making in different qualitative studies. The following links can hopefully satisfy what you are looking for:

https://www.researchgate.net/.../262105606_English_as_a_Lingua_Franca_Attitude_a...

www.ipedr.com/vol33/015-ICLMC2012-L00039.pdf

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6a41/0d96a2f4029e7d6a4edca042780ed0db6493.pdf

www.theses.ulaval.ca/2013/30155/30155.pdf

digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1038&context=sociologydiss

Best of luck

R. Biria

Extroverted learners are certainly more like to take advantage of oportunities to speak English outside the classroom and will find it easier to participate in large group activities inside the classroom. However, most introverted learners are able to function as well as extroverted ones in small group activities once they get to know their class colleagues. Because introverts tend to be more inclined  to reflection and to working on their own, they are better able to perform analytical activities and more likely to try to learn English independently. 

It is important to take into account where learners are on the introversion-extroversion continuum alongside other considerations relating to learning style and personalities. However, we should not fall into the trap of "black or white", "either/or" labelling. Most people have a mixture of introverted and extroverted traits and will therefore not benefit from activities aimed too much towards the extremes of the continuum. 

Today, as a reflection of society and the wider educational context, language classes sometimes show a bias towards extroversion. This imbalance will need to be redressed by incorporating more activities that take into account the needs of people who lean towards introversion. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that the language classroom is often the only opportunity that students have for spoken output in the target language. For this reason, most individualized tasks should be "set for homework".

Hi all 

I think we should use them both paradigms  to complement each other and to be more accurate. 

Liqaa 

Basically, learning is a conscious process, and it is used for L2 learning as instruction and conscious attention/effort are needed

Acquiring mostly refer to L1 for which no instruction is needed and the language competency is believed to be activated in the environment without any conscious effort or instruction. 

Dear Llaudia Krammer,

Notably, English as the world lingua franca plays a pivotal role in hearing societies because language learning effectively paves the way for the fulfillment of educational aims in modern communities.In Bilingualism and Bilingual Deaf Education in general and language education among deaf learners in particular, as you have rightly observed,  paying attention the learners with disabilities is crucial.  In point of fact, using  sign language and the written/spoken vernacular - and  focusing on bilingual deaf education involve issues with regard to language acquisition, language functioning, social-emotional functioning, and academic outcomes. To provide you with the literature pertinent to the issue your working on, I introduce the following links, which can hopefully satisfy what you are looking for.

Best regards,

R. Biria

https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/96878/.../SWANWICK%20FINAL%20SoA%20LT%20Paper.

Dear Kamila, 

maybe som of the ideas from the study Television programmes in the acquisition of English pronunciation. In: Communications, vol. 12, 2010, no. 3, pp. 35-39 could help you.

Best wishes, Zdena

Some of instruments have been recommended by our friends. However, I think you also need to ensure the specific knowledge and skills that you wish to measure when it comes to language learning and CCTS. In a study I carried out among high school teachers, for example, I focused on the content knowledge and procedural knowledge, in line with the syllabus the teachers taught. I guess it  is also important that you take into consideration of  the education policy that enclaves the incorporation of CCTS in language learning so that the measurement tools will provide a more accurate result according to your target respondents.

James makes a very important point about L1 abilities. From my own experience over decades of ESL teaching, I can honestly state that the research into the influence of L1 in regards to ability is significant in the ability to learn another language.  And if that target language is radically different from the L1 ( like Arabic, Chinese, Japanese are radically different from English), this factor of L1 ability is even more important. Because much of ESL teaching relies upon what a student knows of his/her own language, if that knowledge is limited, learning a new language grows much more difficult.

For the more advanced language learner, the L1 impact is still great, but at this level, I have found the difficulty lies in cultural and social differences that can make reading and writing more academic essays very difficult.  For instance, I prepare foreign university graduates for the admission exams to American graduate schools.  Most of these students are quite skilled in their first language and have a good speaking ability, but when it comes to writing essays in American rhetorical style, these students encounter dramatic difficulties. But because they are skilled in their own language, a teacher can use that knowledge and build on it to explain the American demands of argument, for instance. There are just so many factors at play in learning another language that it is difficult to determine which factors are at play in different students. 

Dear Nozipho Gwebu,

From my experience, the first challenge is how to get students to put aside their urge to use L1 while practicing L2. To overcome this, to me, is quite complicated as long as students know that when going outside, the second language they're practicing will become secondary. But it doesn't mean that acquisition is impossible; many learners I've met can become bilingual as a result of their daily exposure to the L2 mass media as well as their taking L2 intensive courses in school. 

I also observed that students were less motivated to learn the culture of L2. My attempt to introduce such culture didn't seem to receive serious attention from students. So I integrated L1 culture into the lessons, and allowed interference of language styles of their native tongue in the classroom as long as that didn't impair communication.  

Sincerely,

Cameen

Language sampling is a good way to measure language. Using a standardized elicitation protocol, you ask the subject to tell the story of a wordless picture book such as Frog, Where Are You? (Mayer, 1969). You record their story and then transcribe the language sample into the software program. The software that I used is called SALT (Systematic Analysis of Language Transcripts). You use the same story pre and post. This software uses a scoring method called the Narrative Scoring Scheme. Here is an article that explains it better than I am: Heilmann, Miller, Nockerts & Dunaway (2010). Properties of the Narrative Scoring Scheme Using Narrative Retells in Young School-Age Children, American Journal of Speech-Language Pathology, 19, 154-166. File is attached.

Learning to reflect is a vital skill that needs to be exercised to improve. James is correct in saying Donald Schon came up with the concepts of reflection in action and reflection on action. I believe that if the teacher is not a reflective practitioner it is difficult to get students to engage in reflection. I keep reflective journals and I share entries from time to time. when it is relevant , Journals can be on line or in paper form. I had one student draw her reflections rather than write them. I often start by focusing entries. For instance, I might get students to reflect on questioning. What kinds of questions were asked?  Were the questions asked speculative, open ended?Who asked them? How did the responses to the question take the students further? I often got the students to stop adding to their journal and reread some of their entries and then respond to one with new understanding. 

Interesting point regarding the CFA point above, quite a few linguistics papers that have done MDA via EFA have NOT then gone on to do CFA to confirm the model, e.g. Hardy & Romer (2013), http://uteroemer.weebly.com/uploads/5/5/7/7/5577406/hardy_and_roemer_2013_cor2e20132e0040.pdf.  

That said, I did a PCFA myself on the data, and got quite poor normed-fit and comparative fit indices, although RMSEA was appropriate.  It was interesting to attempt something like this, however, so thanks for the suggestion.

Top-down listening skills, such as predicting, inferencing, summarizing and using background knowledge will be the same for all languages. However, the importance of specific bottom-up skills related to sound and word recognition, and to grammatical processing, will vary from language to language. For example students of English will benefit particularly from teaching techniques which raise their awareness of the various sound changes-vowel reduction, changing consonant sounds, etc- which words undergo in continuous speech. Such changes are not exclusive to English, but they are especially problematic for learners of English. Learners of German on the other hand are likely to benefit from training which focuses on "parsing" German word order. 

When discussing the role of language specific factors in listening, it is also important to bear in mind the learners' L1 and its similarity to the target language. In this regard, one interesting question is whether the linguistic ceiling-the proficiency level at which comprehension strategies can transfer from the L1 to the L2 -will depend on the learners' L1 and its relationship to the L2. When two languages are more similar and pose similar listening difficulties, students may be able to transfer listening skills at a lower proficiency level. There may be studies which attempt to provide an answer to this question. Perhaps some other RG contributors can help us here.

Hope the attached articles help you in your literature.

Personal observation, interaction, behavioral pattern and communication capability of the pupil.

Hello Hiep,

I don't know if it is exactly what you are looking for, but anyway I am sending you some links:

H. J. Lee & D. O. Pyun (2015). Vocabulary learning strategies of learners of Korean as a foreign language: A case study. Journal of Korean Language Education, 26, 29-53.Link: http://210.101.116.28/W_files/kiss10/88402124_pv.pdf

Regards,

Francisco Barrera

Maybe you'd search for "ethnography" and "language acquisition" or "second-language acquisition."

Dear Hardik (if I may),

The complaint is one that I have heard many times in other places. Hong Kong, Singapore, China, Japan, etc. I haven't looked at all of them, but I am at least familiar with two cases. Let me refer to Hong Kong as a case reference.

The complaint that HK students are poor in English is a sentiment that is made across the entire spectrum of the society, including the students themselves, government officials, foreign visitors, teachers, etc. At first blush this seems to be an undeniable "truth".

However, the facts are that there are now more speakers of English in HK than any other point in history. The facts are that speakers of English in HK can communicate with other speakers in general, but perhaps not effectively.

The apparent paradox is reconcilable if one recognises the following issues:

1. Effective communication with others require more than vocabulary, grammar and phonology. It requires also familiarity with culture and a common ground for idioms, metaphors and references. HK students are considered poor speakers, and sometimes even Singaporean students when they are not familiar with non-local issues or when the foreigner engaging with these students are not familiar with local issues.

2. The assessment of standards need to be qualified. Often, the standard is taken to be British or American standard varieties. Singapore students have a very rich grasp of their local English, but Singapore English is not BBC English. Claiming that Singapore English is poor because it isn't BBC English is like saying Italian is poor because it isn't French.

3. The direction we look at is important too. I am sure there are more Gujarat students who speak English and learn English to a higher level today than in the past. We must not forget that. It takes time. However, if one expects the Gujarat speaker to sound British or American, we will never win because the English in the UK and the US are changing too.

Concerns about the standard of English in any place is probably best addressed by making explicit our goals. Do we want to sound British or do we wish to communicate effectively. If we wish to communicate effectively, do we look only towards grammar and vocabulary? Do we need to? Is the standard of English to be measured against US and UK varieties (when even these places have huge variations internally), or against effectiveness in communication?

Language serves three functions: Medium of communication, Carrier of culture, and Expression of identity. It is important to recognise all three, and also to see that in none of these three is there any need to set our standard using a British or American reference.

Best,

Lian-Hee

P/S. I'm sharing links to two articles that might be relevant, albeit obliquely.

Dear Carolyn,

    This is one of the best questions I have ever seen! You could definitely earn a PhD by doing a careful study of such students. There are intervening variables that would have to be examined, such as what the languages are, the degree of literacy in the homes (and in what languages with what orthographies), which languages are used with whom and for what purposes at home, and the extent that children are given support and direction in their homework by caregivers. A major problem in the schools is that languages other than English are often disvalued rather than used as important media for learning, so the sociolinguistic situation in the classroom can also be an affective variable. I was interested in George Payton's observation that Kenyans who are educated in their mother tongue do best. One of my students demonstrated that children who had two years of schooling in Mexico before coming to the US did better in school by the 6th grade than their younger siblings who had the advantage of more exposure to English, but had no opportunity to develop literacy skills in Spanish before starting school here. 

   For general information on research in second language acquisition (SLA), I recommend Muriel Saville-Troike, Introducing Second Language Acquisition, 2nd ed., Cambridge University Press (a 3rd edition is due out this year). I hope you will continue to do what you can to carefully document the situation you describe, as we really need to understand this issue better. 

Try "implications of Interference theory and Error Analysis' by A. Raffick Foondun, MA thesis, University of Kentucky, USA. You will find interference problems from French.

Good Luck

The material should cover various intelligences as proposed in Multiple Intelligences by H. Gardner. Having identified the different intelligent modes of the cohort, the teacher would be able to group them into different intelligent clusters and work with their learning style(s) separately if you subscribe to the one size doesn't fit all principle.

Dear Anna,

I think everything depends on a certain language. Please, google the keywords "mother tongue influence", "test results" ,and so on, and you will find many interesting works (for ex., "http://jeteraps.scholarlinkresearch.com/articles/Effect%20of%20Mother%20Tongue.pdf).    

Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)

This theoretical perspective has many researches on ELS.

Harshvardhan,

Thank you. It's amazing to find someone to help from Panjab University. Thank you again. I will check the sources you suggest.

I have been working on a related topic, the number of words linked to each CEFR level. This article may be of your interest: "The development of vocabulary breadth across the CEFR levels. A common basis for the elaboration of language syllabuses, curriculum guidelines, examinations, and textbooks across Europe," by James Milton from Swansea University, UK. You can find it here: http://eurosla.org/monographs/EM01/211-232Milton.pdf  

Thank you David, this seems very promissing indeed.

Popularization and translation

Min-Hsiu Liao

Heriot-Watt University

Handbook of Translation Studies, Volume 4 (2013, pp. 130–133). DOI: 10.1075/hts.4.pop1

To borrow Widdowson’s (2015: 359 - JELF) words, the specifications of the CEFR never question “the old orthodoxy that the objective of learning can only be the acquisition of competence defined as conformity to native speaker norms”.  Baker (2015: 135 - Lang. Teach.), for example, quotes the following specification among many similar ones: “Can sustain relationships with native speakers without unintentionally amusing or irritating them or requiring them to behave other than they would with a native speaker” (Council of Europe 2001: 122).  It may be argued that such specifications make it difficult to prepare students for real-world international and intercultural communication in a multilingual setting.

You might need to try out the program first. There's a trial session when I signed up in the past. Apart from tryiing it, you can read the review paper on duo lingo program http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15434303.2015.1061530?journalCode=hlaq20 

Hope this can help. 

This may be a little late, but Sparks, Ganschow and colleagues did a series of studies on training phonological/orthographical abilities using a multisensory structured language teaching approach to L2 phonology. They found that it even improved L1 phonological/orthographical skills! 

Also, in addition to Antonella's comments about aptitude, Carroll also puts forward a model of school learning where motivation mediates the effects of aptitude. In other words, if motivation is high, the effects of aptitude are fully apparent (for high- or low-level learners), but if motivation is low, aptitude will not make any discernible difference to L2 achievement.

First off, it is useful to distinguish four "skills" and at least three areas of form: grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. It is certainly possible to become highly knowledgeable in any or all of the formal areas without becoming proficient in the language itself, as is common among linguists. The opposite is also possible: quite commonly very proficient speakers still retain a strong accent ( e.g. Henry Kissenger). As to the skills, those based on orthography are relatively recent inventions in human history, and it is not difficult to find examples of people whose "letters" are not up to the level of their oral abilities. Speaking and listening are oldest, of course historically, and listening is primal in terms of human development, but can the one be learned without the other?Again you can find cases, among the deaf, for example, but for those without a disability, it is exceedingly rare. The normal case is that these two skills develop together in L1 and L2 acquisition, though not at exactly the same rate. Likewise the orthographic skills develop together, but at greatly different rates. In both cases, the receptive skills ( listening and reading) develop ahead of the productive skills ( speaking and writing) in L1 acquisition. It is not clear that this sequence holds for SLA. 

So, what does this have to do with the validity of and interpretation of the TOEFL? ETS in its design of the basic TOEFL is making the claim that the receptive skills are enough to extrapolate an overall proficiency level from. Many disagree, but the question of practicality often trumps those concerns. As difficult as it is to assess listening and reading, it is more time-consuming and tedious to assess writing and - heaven forbid - speaking on a large enough scale with any reliability. So, I believe that the answer to your question is that, no, we cannot assume that a level of proficiency at one skill determines the level of proficiency at another, but you may be stuck with that shortcut for practical reasons, anyway.

 Hi Felicia

In general, once any L2 learner gains a certain level of ability in processing the L2, which inevitably depends upon acquired L2 knowledge and skills, we could define them as having "bootstrapped" their language learning. However, I don't think this is often the perspective taken by L2 and SLA researchers and I have never seen any SLA research framed this way.

I am also very interested in this idea of "bootstrapping" in SLA, but am currently taking it from the perspective of language learning aptitude and language learning aptitude enhancement. The research is early days yet.

If you hear anything, please let me know!

Dobry den!

The ability to learn a foreign language is most easily predicted by measures (tests) of language learning aptitude. The research shows that, as might be expected, language aptitude and intelligence seem to be overlapping but also independent constructs. Considering both are measured using psychometric tests, it is not that surprising that they seem to be related. However, your observations that good language learners do not have to be particularly good at other subjects, although normally they are. A key area of overlap here is verbal intelligence, which seems to measure the ability of learners to profit from instruction, ie they more readily understand the words of those instructing them, be they a teacher or textbook, etc.

I've attached some links to some seminal papers looking at the link between intelligence and language aptitude and hope they help.

Some other references worth following up are:

Dörnyei, Z. (2005). The psychology of the language learner: Individual differences in second language acquisition. Lawrence Erlbaum.

Sasaki, M. (1996). Second language proficiency, foreign language aptitude, and Intelligence: Quantitative and qualitative analyses. New York: Peter Lang.

Sternberg, R. J. (2002). The theory of successful intelligence and its implications for language-aptitude testing. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Individual differences and instructed language learning (pp. 13–43). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Hope that helps!

PS Say hi to Profesorka Hartanska for me! 

I'm not sure if this is totally relevant, but Sparks, Ganschow, and colleagues look specifically at language learners with learning difficulties. In a couple of studies they used multi-sensory structured language as the basis of explicit instruction in the L2 phonological/orthographical system and actually found that it also improved L1 phonological/orthographical skills.

I guess I would suggest having a look at their linguistic coding differences hypothesis (LCDH) for some help with your students.

Children may be grouped ; familiar contexts or scenarios are to be planned; guided conversation for dialogue delivery in frequently experienced situations will make it really natural and easy for communication. A graded pattern of this kind will ensure quick acquisition of communication-both verbal and nonverbal.

Dear Laimdota,

it’s better to use the direct method (it is a keyword, please, look https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/direct-method ) with the visual dictionaries like http://www.visualdictionaryonline.com/  (or published editions, smth like McMillan’s “Visual Dictionary”) that are very helpful. I'm not a specialist in the EFL, but I'm sure, there should be somewhere the EFL textbooks used this direct method (we have similar for the multilingual groups who study Russian).

One way to avoid L1 pragmatic interference in L2 learning is a full immersion into L2 culture and rules of conversation. Of course there're  basic rules of conversation which I believe are universal. Yet, every language has its own cultural specific norms in conversation. A second way to avoid L1 pragmatic interference is to wisely raise learners' awareness of these cultural specific rules. 

Hi Sara,

I'd also recommend this article:

Lu, Xiaofei (2010), Automatic Analysis of Syntactic Complexity. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 15(4), 474–496.

It also evaluates English, but discusses 14 different text based metrics and addresses syntactic complexity in particular, which is ignored by vocabulary based measures. For some of the methods you'll need to parse the data, but at least for Italian that should be possible (not sure about the situation for Slovenian, I think there's a dependency parser for it though).

Hope this helps!

Amir

To go back to definitions, Romanization relates to writing a word, in our case Arabic, using the Latin alphabet. In itself, the process is laden with hurdles that relate, among other things, to the linguistic system to implement as a basis for Romanization. Following UN recommendations to adopt a unified, scientifically-based, Romanization system (Resolution No 9, UNGEGN, 1967), Arab countries are still facing implementation issues despite agreement on the now called Beirut System.

Reaching a consensus concerning Romanization would in itself represent a sizeable achievement. However, Romanization is confined to producing script. It has no control over how Romanized words are pronounced. Extending Romanization to actual pronunciation, if at all desirable, would imply the inclusion of diacritics that would have a negative impact on readability, and would depend on how important pronunciation accuracy is. Adding diacritics may sound reasonable for cartography, but not necessarily so for road signage.

I'm not completely clear about these terms, but it's possible that vocal instruction is focused on teaching a language learner to produce sounds close to those of a native speaker whereas oral instruction is more general, meaning using oral (as opposed to written) production to teach.  Might this help to clarify the distinction?