L2 Journal: An Open Access Refereed Journal for World Language Educators

The new editors of the L2 Journal, Emily Hellmich and Kimberly Vinall, introduce themselves and re-introduce the journal.

The editors of L2 Journal are grateful to the following individuals who reviewed manuscripts in 2023. Peer review is a cornerstone of scholarship and relies on the contributions of reviewers who are willing to give of their time to support other scholars in the shaping of their work.  

This article explores one second language Spanish learner’s development of sociolinguistic perception in Peru involving target language variation and social indexicality in a study abroad context. Specifically, it investigates the perceptual mechanism that evolves in this context and enables L2 learners to interpret dialectal target language forms by linking them with elements of character, group traits, and other social attributes. An analysis of ethnographic data revealed two phases in this development. While the initial phase was characterized by the learner’s formation of contrastive social and linguistic categories and first-order sociolinguistic indices linking ways of speaking to kinds of people, the latter phase involved a rationalization and justification of these links. I claim that this produced an ideological field in which the learner located specific morphosyntactic variants as indexing social qualities like ‘licentiousness’ and ‘ineptitude’ via their association with brichero and cholo social types from the host society. These findings implicate language ideologies as the fundamental perceptual mechanism that enables L2 learners to interpret the social meaning of TL practices. This case study recommends critical pedagogies and innovative curricula to bolster L2 learners’ development of sociolinguistic competence during study abroad.

This case study reports a pedagogical approach informed by Concept-Based Language Instruction, which aimed to orient English as a second language learners to a systematic conceptual understanding of rhetorical skills in five-paragraph essay writing. The 12-week pedagogical intervention focused on teaching the organizational structure of the five-paragraph essay and modes of persuasion through SCOBAs (Schemas for a Complete Orienting Basis of Actions) in a test preparation course for the writing tasks in the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). Six participants completed three writing assignments and one analytic essay of a writing sample across the 12 weeks and received one-on-one individual tutoring sessions in the last week. The results demonstrate a holistic quality improvement in students’ five-paragraph essays and an observable improvement in the use of rhetorical appeals of Ethos and Logos strategies. In addition, the student-generated SCOBAs showed learners’ abilities to intentionally manipulate the SCOBAs to serve their internalization processes of the target concepts.

In the field of second language pedagogy, it has become increasingly common to consider the real-world usage for language when strategizing goals and curriculum development for language instruction. Emerging from a reverse design perspective, which prioritizes desired outcomes as a starting place for curricular design, language instructors identify and define the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) they aim for their students to acquire. In cases in which existing proficiency guidelines are not well aligned with the real-world language use that a particular course is targeting, it is becoming increasingly common for instructors to design Languages for Special Purposes (LSP) courses that reflect the unique uses certain bodies of students may have for the language. This paper considers one such case, that of Yiddish for Academic Purposes. Using domain analysis, a multidimensional research framework that supports and undergirds the development of new LSP courses in an assessment-driven proficiency-oriented reverse design framework and evidence-centered design (ECD), this study presents a series of target KSAs for Yiddish for Academic Purposes, on the basis of which curriculum developers could build assessments and subsequently curricula aligned with one another and with the specific language usage unique to the real-world language use domain of graduate academic Yiddish. This process of domain analysis could be replicated for other languages when academic usage is considered as a specific purpose for which an LSP course could be developed. This study is particularly relevant to the development of LSP courses for less commonly taught languages (LCTLs), which tend to be under-resourced and under-researched. Examining academic applications of LCTLs is particularly essential for those languages for which there are fewer, or more constrained, other “real world” applications for the language outside of academic use than there are for more commonly spoken languages.

As we strive to improve speaking skills in the L2 classroom, we often aim at “correct,” standardized language over the actual meaning of the spoken words. With less investment in the content, it is difficult for L2 students to appreciate the interactions and enjoy, for example, humor using the target language as they tend to remain continuously passive in the learning process under the pressure to speak accurately. In order to motivate students to communicate with their own voices in a relaxed learning environment, this report introduces a new way of expression and communication using a target language, that is, the use of linked poetry, in which students follow the rules of a mora/syllable pattern and exchange written poetic expressions with one another. This exercise of student-driven word choice in a stress-free setting triggers laughter and enjoyment that increase students’ incentive to appreciate the meaning of each word and the possibility of word combinations in the target language.