Journal of Language Teaching

How Educational Intercultural Bilingualism has shaped indigenous people language learning in Mexico: Decolonial challenges

Xushan Wei — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0800

Educational Intercultural Bilingualism (EIB), this approach to language education in multi-ethnic integration countries has received attention from a wide range of experts and scholars. This is because the right to be educated in one's mother tongue and to speak a dialect based on indigenous people often does not coexist with the official language of cultural identity at the national level. Better inclusion and valuing the place of indigenous people in the national cultural identity makes language education a social movement for equity and adaptation progress.

This paper will focus on the EIB in Mexico, through a multi-level analysis of the historical processes and challenges encountered in language education for indigenous populations decolonization. The richness of Mexico's linguistic diversity and changing social relations will be useful in helping to build on-board experience in language teaching around the world.

A CiteSpace-based review of cross-cultural communication in international Chinese language education in China (1994-2022)

Chunyan Ma, Shuang Zhang, Ruixin Wang, Ting Yi, Chili Li — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0800

This paper applies bibliometrics visualization analysis software CiteSpace-6.1.6 and CNKI as the data source and analyzes the literature published in domestic journals during 1994-2022, in order to understand the development trend and main issues of cross-cultural communication in the field of international Chinese education. The results of bibliometric cluster analysis show that in the past 30 years, the research topics in this field mainly focus on 17 clusters, including “culture”, “Chinese language”, “cultural communication”, “differences”, “international students”, “cultural differences”, “Chinese as a foreign language”, “cultural connotation”, “foreign language teaching” and “cross-cultural”. According to the analysis of cited information, “cultural difference”, “pragmatic mistakes”, “Chinese as a foreign language”, “cultural communication”, “cross-culture”, “cultural teaching” and “cultural difference” are the most concerned topics. “Case study” and “teaching design” are the research trends and hot spots in this field in the past two years. This paper not only reviews the history of cross-cultural studies in international Chinese education, but also looks forward to the future development of cross-cultural studies in international Chinese education.

A critical understanding of second language acquisition from two sociolinguistic strands: The Variationist approach and the Investment Perspective

Chang Liu — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0800

This review explores how sociolinguistics expands our understanding of second language acquisition (SLA) by drawing upon two typical sociolinguistic strands: the variationist approach and the investment perspective. Accordingly, two empirical studies are used to illustrate the contributions of each strand, with Han’s (2019) study adopting a variationist approach and Sung’s (2020) study taking an investment perspective. Through a critical analysis, this paper argues that both theoretical strands contribute to the “social turn” of SLA by providing different insights into the social shaping of second language (L2) knowledge and learning, as well as the interplay between identity construction and L2 learning. Implications, limitations, and suggestions for future studies are discussed at the end.

A corpus-based study to evaluate the generativist explanation of children’s error patterns in questions

Yiran Du — Wed, 01 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0800

This study explores whether the generativist account, specifically the integration theory, could explain children’s percentage of errors in questions in general and whether it also applies to yes-no and non-subject wh-question. The current study adopts a corpus-based method to compare 2-to-3-year-old children’s percentages of errors in questions (and in yes-no and wh-question separately) including auxiliary DO and auxiliary HAVE. The results show that children’s rate of errors in questions including auxiliary DO is higher than that including auxiliary HAVE, which is also applicable to yes-no and non-subject wh-questions. The findings indicate that the generativist theory of child language acquisition could successfully explain children’s patterns of errors in questions. This study also emphasises the impact of the question type which should be carefully considered when constructing and improving the generativist theory of child question formation. The study provides empirical evidence for improving and refining the generativist account of child language acquisition generally and language question acquisition specifically.