CULI International Conference 2023

This study aimed to determine how teachersʼ online written corrective feedback (WCF) affected university studentsʼ self-regulation in writing and how the effects differed among students of different English proficiency levels. The participants were 27 second-year university students enrolled in a required online writing course. Throughout the 16-week course, the students received online WCF on their writing through Google Docs. Results from pre- and post-questionnaires and interviews revealed the positive effects of teachersʼ online WCF on studentsʼ self-regulation in writing, especially those with mid- and low-proficiencies. Results from this study provided an indication of the effectiveness of online WCF in developing L2 learnersʼ self-regulation. They also gave insight into how language proficiency levels affect learnersʼ perception of online feedback and its impact on self-regulated learning development.

Pajaree Nipaspong has a PhD in English as an International Language. She is currently a full-time English instructor at Chulalongkorn University Language Institute. She has been teaching English in mixed ability classrooms for 20 years and has over 10 years of experience teaching business English at university level. Her main fields of interest and study are corrective feedback in second language instruction, self-regulated learning, and materials development. She has extensive experience in coordinating with teams of ESL teachers to plan lessons, develop supplementary materials, deliver instruction and provide teacher’s feedback. She also believes in the significance of inclusive learning environment in second language learning.

Daisuke Kimura

Waseda University

Teaching and Researching “Competence”: Taking Stock and Moving Forward in the New Era

Pushing our globalized world into new directions, the past few years have witnessed technological innovations and sociopolitical turbulences that have exerted profound impact on how we live and relate to each other. Since this “new era” increasingly occasions communication with diverse interlocutors and in various configurations, we need to rethink what we, as teachers and researchers, understand by “competence” beyond a focus on preexisting norms. While second language teaching and research invariably concern competence of some sort, the understanding of competence itself varies greatly among researchers and practitioners, resulting in countless debates, confusions, and tensions over the years. To contribute conceptual clarity and assist language teachers and researchers, this presentation offers a glimpse into different conceptualizations of competence that have emerged in the past 60 some years (e.g. transformational generative grammar, communicative competence, and interactional competence), and then discuss newer theoretical orientations such as translanguaging and decoloniality, with particular emphasis on their potential to foreground local perspectives and reconstitute relations of power implicated in how we understand competence. Implications of these theoretical orientations to teaching and researching in the new era will also be explored.

Daisuke Kimura is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at Waseda University, Japan. Having learned, used, and taught English in Japan, Thailand, and the US, he strives to incorporate English as a lingua franca (ELF) awareness into his everyday teaching of English and other content courses. As a researcher, he studies second language and lingua franca interaction in diverse settings and configurations using a range of qualitative research approaches including conversation analysis, interactional sociolinguistics, and narrative inquiry. His recent works have appeared in Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Sociolinguistics, and Modern Language Journal.

Andrew S. Ross

University of Canberra

Emotionality in TESOL and Applied Linguistics

Until relatively recently, research and understanding of the vital role that emotions play in the experiences of language learners had received limited attention. This is somewhat perplexing given that emotions play a central role in everyday human experience, including in teaching and learning contexts. In this talk, I will trace some of the key developments of research into emotions in second language learning, drawing on some of my own research in this area and taking into consideration the differing contexts of learning internationally. Important connections will be highlighted between emotions and another psychological aspect that is critical to the language learning process – motivation. Finally, the talk will shift in focus from learners to consider the role of teacher emotions in the language learning context.

Andrew S. Ross is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of Canberra, Australia. His research interests are diverse and varied but include emotions and motivation in applied linguistics, (critical) discourse analysis, multimodality in discourse, and social media communication. His work has been published in Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching; Australian Review of Applied Linguistics; The Language Learning Journal; Journal of Pragmatics; and Journal of Language, Identity and Education.

Makiko Hirakawa

Chuo University

Processing of Tense and Aspect in L2 English by Adult Japanese and Thai Learners

This study examines the acquisition of tense and aspect, in particular past tense vs. present perfect, by Japanese and Thai adult second language (L2) learners of English. ‘Tense’ places an event on a timeline, relevant to speech time (past, present, future) (Comrie 1976), while ‘Aspect’ refers to how an event unfolds in time, focusing on the internal properties of the event such as whether it is ongoing in time or whether it has already been completed (Smith 1991). Two tasks were administered, an acceptability judgement task and a self-paced reading task. The findings from our study show that L2 learners are able to make a distinction between the simple past and present perfect. However, the source of non-target like performance on the tasks is likely due to L1 transfer effects.

Makiko Hirakawa is Professor of the Faculty of Letters at Chuo University, Tokyo, Japan, where she specializes in linguistic approaches to second language (L2) acquisition and language education. She obtained Ph.D. in Linguistics at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) in 2000. She is a former president of the Japan Second Language Association (J-SLA) (2009-2015). She is also Associate Editor of Language Acquisition. Her research interests include effects of intervention in L2 grammar development, child and adult L2 acquisition and bilingual acquisition; in particular, knowledge of argument structure of different types of verbs and adjectives, tense and aspect, and interpretations of reflexive pronouns. Most recently she has been working on processing of the Japanese reflexive by native speakers and Chinese-speaking learners of Japanese, using a self-paced reading task and an eye-tracking methodology. From April 2022, she serves as the principal investigator for the KAKENHI research project “Theoretical and Empirical Research on Linguistic Knowledge and Performance among Second/Third Language Learners and Heritage Language Speakers” (Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) 22H00680).

Featured Speakers

Pajaree Nipaspong

Chulalongkorn University

The Effects of Online Corrective Feedback on University Studentsʼ Self-Regulation in Writing