Pedagogy

Dr. Nina Spada is investigating the effects of isolated and integrated form-focused instruction (FFI) on different aspects of L2 learning. The specific objective is to investigate questions related to whether it is more effective to draw L2 learners' attention to language form in ways that are isolated from, or integrated with, communicative interaction. In the first phase of the research, Spada collected questionnaire data on preferences for integrated and isolated instruction from 40 teachers and 250 adult learners in two intensive ESL programs in Canada. In addition, eight teachers (four from each program) taught two versions of an instructional unit on the passive construction: one in an integrated format and the other in an isolated format, to one class in their program. Immediately after the two lessons were taught, learners and teachers completed a feedback questionnaire seeking their opinions about the two instructional approaches. Analyses of the ESL data indicate that teachers and learners value both integrated and isolated FFI. This was observed both in the questionnaire and in instructional feedback studies. For a description and discussion of some aspects of this research see Spada et al. (Reference Spada, Barkaoui, Peters, So and Valeo2009). The second phase consisted of a quasi-experimental study in which four classes of adult ESL learners (n = 110) were given 20 hours of instruction on the ‘passive construction’ in English. Two classes of learners received integrated FFI and two others received isolated FFI. The analyses of the data collected in this quasi-experimental study are still underway. This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Spada, along with Dr. Marilia dos Santos Lima, also investigated ESL and EFL teachers' and learners' views on the isolation and integration of FFI. This research project was a follow-up to the research described above and was intended to investigate whether there are any differences between ESL and EFL teacher and learner opinions about isolated and integrated FFI. Spada and dos Santos Lima replicated the Questionnaire and Instructional Feedback studies with 58 EFL teachers and 200 learners in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The EFL data were compared with the ESL data collected to determine whether teacher and learner opinions are similar or different in these contexts. The results of the Questionnaire study indicated that the EFL and ESL teachers and students shared similar opinions regarding isolated and integrated FFI. Both had a preference for integrated FFI but both also recognized the benefits of isolated FFI. The results of the Instructional Feedback study, however, indicated that the EFL students had a strong preference for integrated FFI, whereas the ESL students had a slight preference for isolated FFI. Spada and dos Santos Lima interpret this difference in terms of the varying contexts and opportunities for L2 input and output for these learners. The EFL learners have little opportunity for exposure to English outside the classroom setting and thus prefer to have meaning as the primary focus at all times to compensate for this gap. The ESL learners, however, have considerable opportunities to listen to and use English outside the classroom and thus prefer isolated FFI because classroom instruction provides them with an opportunity to focus more on form and perfect their L2 abilities. This research was funded by the International Foundation for English Language Education (TIRF).

Within a separate research project, funded by the Bluewater District School Board, Dr. Sharon Lapkin used a case study analysis intended to assess the use of a particular instructional approach to French as a second language (FSL) in one school district. Some of the Grade 8 classes in the district have adopted the Accelerative Integrated Method (AIM) as the instructional approach in their FSL program, while others have not. AIM incorporates gestures to represent semantic concepts, and emphasizes high-frequency verbs and oral language production. The school board was interested in whether or not students exposed to this approach would stay in French beyond the required grade, how they might outperform students in non-AIM classes in French, and in both groups’ perceptions of the AIM approach and experiences in the non-AIM classes. Findings of this mixed-method study were that there was considerable variation within and across groups (AIM and non-AIM). With two minor exceptions, there were no significant differences between the groups in French test results. Ninety-four of the 260 participating students were interviewed, and the 12 participating teachers were surveyed. While most students felt positive about their learning experiences, a considerably higher proportion of AIM students claimed to be speaking French often or all of the time in class. AIM students felt more confident than non-AIM students about listening and speaking skills, while they felt less confident about their writing skills. Because AIM is really intended to be implemented at earlier grade levels, Lapkin recommended that another evaluation of the approach be undertaken at an earlier grade level.

Literacy development

Dr. Alister Cumming and Dr. Esther Geva are currently investigating the key variables associated with achievement in the literacy development of at-risk adolescents in culturally-diverse urban contexts. In addition to investigating literacy development in multi-ethnic metropolitan Toronto, Cumming and Geva are joined by teams of researchers at the University of Amsterdam (SCO-Kohnstamm Instituut) and at the University of Geneva (and SRED, Service de la recherche en éducation) who are conducting parallel studies in Amsterdam and Geneva. The purposes of this research are to describe, compare, and explain the development of literacy among ‘at-risk’ adolescents in multilingual, culturally-diverse urban schools. The design of the research is multi-method. A longitudinal component will identify the main variables associated with culturally diverse adolescents’ literacy achievement (a) according to standard tests of reading and writing at the beginning and end of the school year and (b) in reference to case study profiles of the students’ literacy practices, distinguishing combinations of these variables that contribute to students’ resilience in view of their personal, community, and educational experiences. Subsequently, a comparative component will verify these results in Toronto with parallel data from Amsterdam and Geneva. In Toronto, Cumming and Geva are gathering and analyzing in-depth data from 30 Grade 9 and 10 students at Pathways to Education Canada, an after-school tutoring and mentoring program. This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Sociocultural theory

Starting from the output hypothesis, Dr. Merrill Swain and Dr. Sharon Lapkin refined the construct so that they now talk in terms of languaging (Swain Reference Swain2007), the activity of mediating cognitively complex ideas using language (e.g., problem-solving, reminiscing). During the last three years of the grant, the research team led by Swain and Lapkin focused on two sub-studies, one in a university setting and the other in a long-term care facility. In the first study they explored the process and product of languaging as it concerns the learning of the grammatical concept of voice (active, passive, and middle) in French. Swain and Lapkin analyzed the amount and type of languaging produced by a small sample of university students as they struggle to understand the concept of voice. Students who are high languagers learn about the grammatical concept of voice in French with greater depth of understanding than low languagers. Swain and Lapkin demonstrated that there is a relationship between the quality and quantity of languaging and performance as measured by immediate and delayed post-test stages. These findings suggest that languaging is a key component in the internalization process of L2 grammatical concepts. The study is summarized in Swain et al. (Reference Swain, Lapkin, Knouzi, Suzuki and Brooks2009), and more details are found in Lapkin, Swain & Knouzi (Reference Lapkin, Swain, Knouzi, Lantolf and Poehner2008) and in Knouzi, Swain, Lapkin & Brooks (in press). In the second study Swain and Lapkin explored the effects of languaging on the cognition and affect of older adults with some memory loss. The participants for this study were five socially isolated older adults in a long-term care facility. Each participant was engaged in one-on-one languaging sessions over a period of approximately two months. Content and discourse analysis of transcript data showed improvement in memory ability and social engagement. The findings have implications for volunteers and staff in long-term care facilities, and for socioculturally-based theories of the co-construction of cognition, affect, and identity. This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Pragmatics

Dr. Julie Kerekes is leading an Electronic Interlanguage Pragmatics Project (EILP) that analyzes naturally-occurring e-mail communications between 92 students and their four university instructors. It contributes to the methodology of interlanguage pragmatics research, most of which, until now, has relied on either quasi-experimental data or qualitative, discourse-analytical data. Interlanguage Pragmatics (ILP) research has scarcely examined quantifiable but naturally occurring data, nor has it utilized e-mail data as a source of understanding interactions between speakers/writers and how meaning is jointly constructed (as opposed to examining individual speech acts in the older ILP tradition). Analysis includes comparisons between proficient English speakers’ and English language learners' speech act realizations, interpretations, and politeness strategies; considerations of social factors influencing e-mail styles; and in-depth examinations of common speech acts in the database (such as requests, expressives, and commissives).

Dr. Kerekes is also directing a project to investigate internationally educated professionals’ employment-seeking experiences (or IEPro). Canadian immigration policies and practices draw many immigrants with specialized professional training and higher education degrees from their home countries; this population also has the highest rate of unemployment in the Greater Toronto Area – 30%, in contrast to 6.4% of Canadian-born residents. The purposes of this project are, using an interactional sociolinguistic and discourse analytical approach, to describe this population's employment-seeking experiences in the Greater Toronto Area; to understand their sources of difficulties and successes, with a particular focus on L2 ability, perception, and language use; and, subsequently, to make educational and policy recommendations for improving employment opportunities for underemployed Canadian immigrants. Through interviews with employers, employees, job seekers, and job trainers in the fields of engineering, pharmacy, and teaching, analyses are uncovering areas of ideological discrepancies and miscommunication that can be improved, with implications for language instruction and employment policies. This research is being funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Assessment

Dr. Merrill Swain along with Khaled Barkaoui, Lindsay Brooks, Li-Shih Huang, and Sharon Lapkin investigated the strategic behaviors that test-takers reported using when they performed the Speaking Section of the TOEFL iBT. Second language acquisition research on learner strategies has demonstrated that learners' strategy use is associated with L2 learning and performance. However, from the language-testing perspective, test-takers’ strategic behaviors have not been given sufficient attention even though they constitute an important component of language ability and communicative competence as defined in both second language acquisition and language testing literature (e.g., Canale & Swain Reference Canale and Swain1980; Bachman & Palmer Reference Bachman and Palmer1996; Chapelle, Grabe & Berns Reference Chapelle, Grabe and Berns1997). Research conducted by Swain and colleagues responds to the acknowledgment in the language testing field that researchers need to consider the strategies that respondents use when engaging in the L2 test-taking process to provide construct-related evidence to support inferences based on speaking-test scores. The study involved collecting stimulated recall data from 30 ESL graduate and undergraduate engineering students whose first language is Mandarin. Participants watched video recordings of their speaking performance and commented on the strategies they employed. Swain and her research team examined the participants’ reported strategic behaviors, how the strategic behaviors differ across the six speaking tasks in the test, and the relationship between participants’ strategic behaviors and their test scores. The findings from both qualitative and statistical analyses provided important empirical information concerning the relationships among the strategic behaviors vis-à-vis test-takers’ proficiency and study levels (undergraduate vs. graduate level; and advanced vs. intermediate proficiency level), task types (integrated vs. non-integrated), and test scores. This is the first study to empirically examine test-takers’ strategic behaviour in relation to the L2 speaking construct. This study will be published as a TOEFL Research Report.

In the research project funded under the Connaught New Staff Matching Grant Program of the University of Toronto, Dr. Eunice Jang examined differences in the literacy skill profiles of secondary school students from different language backgrounds. While literacy has become one of the most important skills that students have to acquire for citizenship in the global world, a rapid increase in the English Language Learning (ELL) student population in Canadian urban schools charges teachers with challenging tasks to ensure the literacy development of students regardless of their backgrounds. These ELL students are most often found to be at a distinct disadvantage in comparison to English-speaking students born in Canada. Using a cognitive diagnosis modeling approach, Jang compared the literacy skill profiles of ELL students with those of L1 students who speak L1 English, based on their performance on the provincial secondary school literacy test. She also examined how well the skill profiles predict the students’ pass and fail decisions using a stepwise discriminant function analysis. The study results showed that the skill profiles determined through cognitive diagnosis modeling predicted 92 percent of the group membership. Higher-order thinking skills such as inferencing, summarizing, and writing skills showed greater contributions to predicting successful performance on the test compared to basic comprehension skills. When compared with the L1 students, the ELL students showed lower skill mastery on all of the skills. The observed differences were statistically significant for all the skills at the Bonferroni adjusted alpha level of .007. In particular, vocabulary skill showed the largest effect size of .52. Jang suggests that the study results can be used to develop instructional strategies tailored to the needs of individual students and to promote students’ self-regulated learning through ongoing diagnostic feedback.