Text 6

The sociolinguistics of English as Lingua Franca (EFL) pronunciation. 

As far as sociolinguistics is concerned, the first task is to problematise the notion of standard accent. Essentially there is no such thing as a ‘standard’ accent, merely prestige accents, primarily RP and General American English (GA), stigmatised accents both native and (more often) non-native (see Lippi-Green, 1997; Bonfiglio, 2002), and a range of variously tolerated regional and social accents between the two extremes. The so-called BritishEnglish standard accent (RP) is claimed nowadays to be used by a mere fraction of British Native Speakers (NSs), possibly only three per cent in its unmodified form (see Trudgill, 2002: 171). The vast majority of NSs of English speak with regionallyand/or socially-modified accents, whether tolerated or stigmatised. Clearly, then, the RP accent cannot be ‘standard’ in the sense of being a widely-used norm. Instead, ‘standard’ refers accent-wise to a level of pronunciation assumed by many to be better in some way than the others, and is thus standard only in the sense of a level of excellence to be aspired to. Excellence, however, is not something that can be measured linguistically: it is not intrinsic to an accent, but merely reflects the value judgements of the elitist group who habitually use it or would if they could.

It should be a matter for teachers and their learners to decide whether they wish to subscribe to the (linguistically-unsound) belief in the superiority of RP. In some communication contexts an RP accent will undoubtedly provide them with a social advantage. This is more likely to be the case if learners intend to use their English to communicate and blend in largely with NSs, especially if the communication will take place in NS countries. Even here, though, their awareness should be raised to the fact that the majority of NSs with whom they communicate will not have an RP accent. At the most, it will probably be regionallymodified RP. On the other hand, having been apprised of the facts of sociolinguistic variation, learners may prefer to project their own (L2) regional and social identity through their accent. In this case their goal is more likely to be an accent that retains a clear trace of their L1, provided that it does not threaten the intelligibility of their pronunciation in their target (probably ELF) communication contexts.

JENKINS, J. Teaching Pronunciation for English as a Lingua Franca: A Sociopolitical Perspective. In GNUTZMANN, C.; INTEMANN, F. (Org.) The Globalization of English and the English Language Classroom. Oxford: OUP, 2005. p. 145-158.

Text 4 

Help students to learn vocabulary in context

The best internalization of vocabulary comes from encounters (comprehension or production) with words within the context of surrounding discourse. Data from linguistic corpora can provide real-world actual language that has been printed or spoken. Rather than isolating words and/or focusing on dictionary definitions, learners can benefit from attending to vocabulary within a communicative framework in which items appear. Students will then associate new words with a meaningful context to which they apply. For example, for a beginning level of students, pictures, realia, and gestures can be used to describe meaning in context. For a more advanced level of students, encourage them to consult online corpora (e.g., the British National Corpus, or the Corpus of Contemporary American English: COCA) to gain knowledge of patterned sequences, particularly collocations or words that go together (Liu & Jiang, 2009).

Encourage students to develop word-learning strategies

Included in the discussion of teaching reading were such strategies as guessing vocabulary in context. A number of clues are available to learners to develop word-attack strategies.

Considering that only a small fraction of the word list can be covered inside the classroom, it is necessary for students to develop effective strategies for learning vocabulary on their own. Word-learning strategies refer to “the planned approaches that a word-learner takes as an agent of his or her own word learning” (Zimmerman, 2014, p. 297). Once they encounter unknown words, they can try to figure out how the words are used by asking questions such as:

• Is the word countable or uncountable?

• Is there a particular preposition that follows it?

• Is it a formal word?

• Does it have positive or negative connotations? (Zimmerman, 2014, p. 298) 

An effective way to encourage word-learning is to urge students to use vocabulary notebooks to enter new words, and to review them daily, once they identify their learning goals. Studies show that in order to understand television shows learners need to know about 3,000 word families and have knowledge of proper nouns (Web & Rodgers, 2009). If they wish to read novels and newspapers comfortably, they need to have a vocabulary size of 8,000–9,000 word families (Nation, 2006). The fact that increasing vocabulary size will influence the degree to which they can understand and use language may motivate them to be determined to expand their vocabulary notebooks.

Unfortunately, professional pendulums have a disturbing way of swinging too far one way or the other, and sometimes the only way we can get enough perspective to see these overly long arcs is through hindsight. Hindsight has now taught us that there was some overreaction to the almost exclusive attention that grammar and vocabulary received in the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. So-called “natural” approaches in which grammar was considered damaging were equally overreactive. Advocating the “absorption” of grammar and vocabulary with no overt attention whatsoever to language forms went too far. We now seem to have a healthy respect for the place of form-focused instruction — attention to those basic “bits and pieces” of a language — in an interactive curriculum. And now we can pursue the business of finding better and better techniques for getting these bits and pieces into the communicative repertoires of our learners.

BROWN, H. D.; LEE, H.. Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy. Fourth Edition. New York: Longman. 2015.

Text 3

Assessment and Testing

Assessment is “appraising or estimating the level or magnitude of some attribute of a person” (Mousavi, 2009, p. 35). In educational practice, assessment is an ongoing process that encompasses a wide range of methodological techniques. Whenever a student responds to a question, offers a comment, or tries a new word or structure, the teacher subconsciously appraises the student’s performance. Written work — from a jotted-down phrase to a formal essay — is a performance that ultimately is “judged” by self, teacher, and possibly other students. Reading and listening activities usually require some sort of productive performance that the teacher observes and then implicitly appraises, however peripheral that appraisal may be. A good teacher never ceases to assess students, whether those assessments are incidental or intended.

Tests, on the other hand, are a subset of assessment, a genre of assessment techniques. They are prepared administrative procedures that occur at identifiable times in a curriculum when learners muster all their faculties to offer peak performance, knowing that their responses are being measured and evaluated.

In scientific terms, a test is a method of measuring a person’s ability, knowledge, or performance in a given domain. Let’s look at the components of this definition. A test is first a method. It’s an instrument — a set of techniques, procedures, or items — that requires performance on the part of die test-taker. To qualify as a test, the method must be explicit and structured: multiple-choice questions with prescribed correct answers, a writing prompt with a scoring rubric, an oral interview based on a question script, or a checklist of expected responses to be completed by the administrator.

BROWN, H. D.; ABEYWICKRAMA, P. Language Assessment: principles and classroom practices. New York: Pearson, 2018. 3r ed.

TEXT 2

Best language learning apps in 2024, tested by our editors

By Wayne Rash, CNN Underscored

Updated 6:31 PM EST, Fri December 29, 2023 

IStock

1. If you’re traveling soon to a place where you don’t know the language well (or at all), then you’ll want to download a language learning app to your smartphone before you embark on your journey. These apps can help you whether you’re on your latest family vacation, an unforgettable trip with friends or even a honeymoon.

2. “I always advise clients who book trips with us to use a language learning app if they don’t already know the language where they’re going. I’ve done it myself on my vacations,” says travel agent Liz Harnos, co-owner of Burr Travel, a Northport, New York-based travel agency. “These apps can help you learn enough that you’ll be able to order food, ask for directions and other basic things during your trip.”

3. Even if you have no travel plans in the near future and you just want to learn a new language for your own betterment, then using a language learning app on your smartphone or laptop can be the right choice for you. To find the best one, we tested five candidates over the course of five weeks. On our list were the premium (i.e., paid) versions of Babbel, Busuu Premium Plus, Memrise, Rosetta Stone and Super Duolingo. We tested each of them for easy of setup, design and features.

4. We learned two important things during testing: 1) some of the apps are easier to use than others, and 2) these apps can teach you the basics for up to 38 different languages, depending on the app. When all our testing was done, we found that Rosetta Stone emerged as the winner because of its easy-to-use design and the way it presented its lessons in the most logical manner.

RASH, W.; UNDERSCORED, C. N. N. Best language learning apps in 2023, tested by our editors. Disponível em:https://edition.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/reviews/best-language-learning-apps