Eli Hinkel

Current Perspectives on Teaching the Four Skills

This article presents an overview of recent developments in second language (L2) teaching and highlights the trends that began in the 1990s and the 2000s and are likely to continue to affect instruction in L2 skills at least in the immediate future. Also highlighted are recent developments in instruction as they pertain specifically to the teaching of L2 speaking, listening, reading, and writing. In the past 15 years or so, several crucial factors have combined to affect current perspectives on the teaching of English worldwide: (a) the decline of methods, (b) a growing emphasis on both bottom-up and top-down skills, (c) the creation of new knowledge about English, and (d) integrated and contextualized teaching of multiple language skills. In part because of its comparatively short history as a discipline, TESOL has been and continues to be a dynamic field, one in which new venues and perspectives are still unfolding. The growth of new knowledge about the how and the what of L2 teaching and learning is certain to continue and will probably remain the hallmark of TESOL’s disciplinary maturation.

Simplicity Without Elegance: Features of Sentences in L1 and L2 Academic Texts.

A quantitative analysis of 1,083 L1 and L2 academic texts establishes that advanced nonnative-English-speaking students in U.S. universities employ excessively simple syntactic and lexical constructions, such as be-copula as the main verb; predicative adjectives; vague nouns; and public, private, and expecting/tentative verbs, at median frequency rates significantly higher than those found in basic texts by native English speakers. An examination of substantial corpus analyses carried out in the past two decades indicates that these constructions are prevalent in conversational and informal discourse rather than written academic texts. Reasons for the prevalence of simple syntactic and lexical features of text in L2 academic essays are considered. In addition, instructional techniques are proposed to deal with shortfalls in naturalistic and communicative L2 learning and instructional methods for academically bound L2 students.

Teaching Academic ESL Writing : Practical Techniques in Vocabulary and Grammar

Contents: Preface. Part I: Academic Text and Teaching Second Language Writing. The Importance of Text in Written Academic Discourse: Ongoing Goals in Teaching ESL Skills. Student Writing Tasks and Written Academic Genres. Curriculum for Teaching the Language Features of Academic Writing. Part II: Sentences and Their Parts: Lexis and Grammar. Sentences, Phrases, and Text Construction. Nouns and the Noun Phrase. More on the Noun Phrase: Pronouns. Teaching Verb Tenses and Voice in Text Cohesion. Lexical Classes of Verbs: Meanings and Text Functions. Adjectives and Adverbs in Academic Discourse. Part III: Text and Discourse Flow: The Sentence and Beyond. Backgrounding Discourse and Information: Subordinate Clauses. Rhetorical Features of Text: Cohesion and Coherence. Hedging in Academic Text in English.

Indirectness in L1 and L2 academic writing

Abstract Indirectness strategies and markers have been identified in written discourse in many languages, including English. However, in Anglo-American academic writing, explicit points and direct support are expected. In the view of specialists and ESL instructors alike, indirectness seems to characterize the writing of students raised in Confucian, Taoist, and Buddhist societies. The reasons that non-native speaker (NNS) second language writing appears vague and indirect may lie in the specific and contextual uses of indirectness devices in English writing rather than in the fact that they are used. This study, based on corpus analysis, compares specific indirectness devices employed in native speaker (NS) and NNS student essays and focuses on NS and NNS uses of twenty-one rhetorical, lexical, referential (deictic), and syntactic indirectness devices. The results of the study indicate that speakers of Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Indonesian utilized rhetorical questions and tags, disclaimers and denials, vagueness and ambiguity, repetition, several types of hedges, ambiguous pronouns, and the passive voice in greater frequencies than NSs did. However, NSs and NNSs did not differ significantly in their use of other types of indirectness devices and markers, such as point of view distancing, downtoners, diminutives, discourse particles, and understatements, as well as nominalization and conditional tenses.

Tense, Aspect and the Passive Voice in L1 and L2 Academic Texts.

This study analyses specific written discourse production in which NNSs’ usage of English tenses and voice appears to be dramatically different from that of NSs. The data for the study narrowly focuses on a small number of verb phrase features, such as tenses, aspects and the passive voice, examining how they are presented in writing instruction texts and identifying areas of L2 learning in need of intensive instruction. The main goal of the analysis is to identify the patterns and median frequency rates of L1 and L2 uses of three English tenses (the present, the past and the future), two aspects (the progressive and the perfect), and passive verb structures encountered in a NS and NNS corpus of L1 and L2 academic student academic texts (746 essays/226,054 words). The results of the study demonstrate that even after many years of L2 learning and use, advanced NNS students may have difficulty with the conventionalized uses of tenses, aspects and the passive voice in written academic discourse. The paper also offers a few practical techniques to improve NNS students’ production of passable L2 written academic prose. Therefore, the types of texts and contexts in which NNSs may choose to use particular tenses, aspects and voice (or to avoid them) represent an important research venue because such investigations can lead to new insights into learners’ real-life L2 skills. In particular, in academic writing that all NNS students in universities in English-speaking countries must produce in copious quantities, the issues of tense, aspect and specifically passive voice usage are usually seen as very important (Michaelis, 1994; Nehls, 1988, 1992; Swales and Feak, 2000). The study presented here analyses specific written discourse production in which NNSs’ usage of English tense and voice appears to be dramatically different from that of NSs. The data for the study narrowly focuses on a small number of verb phrase features, such as tenses, aspects and the passive voice, with the goal of identifying areas of L2 learning in need of intensive instruction, in light of the fact that these important features of academic text are barely even mentioned in most writing instructional texts. The paper also offers a few practical techniques to improve NNS students’ production of passable L2 written academic prose. The research goal of this study is to analyse the patterns and median frequency rates of L1 and L2 uses of three English tenses (the present, the past and the future with both will- and would-constructions), two aspects (the progressive and the perfect) and passive verb structures encountered in a NS and NNS corpus of L1 and L2 academic student academic texts (746 essays/226,054 words).

The Use of Modal Verbs as a Reflection of Cultural Values

Much research has focused on nonnative speaker (NNS) use of modal verbs of obligation and necessity, indicating that NNSs may have difficulty with these modals and use them in different contexts from those of native speakers (NSs). Research also indicates that appropriate modal verb usage relies on presuppositions commonly known and accepted in a language community. This article proposes that NNS usage of modal verbs reflects the pragmatic frameworks and norms specific to the learners L 1 environment, which may be different from those expected in L2 conceptual structures. To determine whether NNS and NS usage of modals varies in relation to each other in the contexts of different topics, 455 essays written by speakers of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, and Vietnamese were compared to 280 essays on similar topics written by NSs of American English. The results of this study indicate that the usage of the root modals must, have to, should, ought to, and need to in NS and NNS writing appears to be culture and context dependent.

Adverbial markers and tone in L1 and L2 students' writing

In the past several decades, analyses of large corpora of published written texts in English have allowed for new insights into the meanings, uses, and functions of adverbials of all types. However, far less is known about the uses of adverbials in second language (L2) text. This paper presents a quantitative analysis of deictic, modifying, and intensifying adverbials, as well as several semantic classes of adverb clauses, and compares their median frequency rates in academic essays written by first-year NS and academically-advanced NNS students. The analysis focuses on NS and NNS uses of twelve semantic and syntactic classes of adverbials. The greatest pronounced differences between the essays of NSs and those of NNSs are identified in the frequency rates of amplifiers and emphatic adverbs, both of which are very common in informal conversations. Because for most NNS academically-oriented learners, the greatest amount of exposure to L2 usage takes place in conversational discourse, the frequency rates of adverb clauses in L2 texts is determined by the frequency of a particular clause type in the conversational genre, i.e. the more common certain types of adverb clauses in conversational discourse, the greater the likelihood of their high frequency rates in L2 academic essays.

Effective Curriculum for Teaching L2 Writing : Principles and Techniques

Preface. Acknowledgements. Part I. Curriculum Foundations for L2 Writing and Language. Chapter 1. Introduction: Effective Teaching and the Curriculum. Chapter 2. Whats Valued in School Writing and Language. Chapter 3. Whats Valued in College and University Academic Writing. Chapter 4. Second Language Writing and Language Learning. Part II. Curriculum Design for L2 Writing and Language Building. Chapter 5. How to Design Effective Curricula for Language and Writing Courses. Chapter 6. Choosing Teaching Materials and Adapting Textbooks. Part III. Language-focused Curriculum Elements. Chapter 7. Language Focus: Teaching Academic Vocabulary, Collocations, and Pre-Fabs. Chapter 8. Language Focus: Teaching Academic Grammar for Writing. Chapter 9. Language Focus: From Text to Discourse. Appendix.

Cultures of Learning and Writing in the US Academy

The past several decades have seen a dramatic growth in international student enrolments worldwide and in the United States, in particular. International students can include, for instance, such sojourners as: college and university students, academically bound learners who seek to obtain language skills prior to the beginning of their careers; professionals, or employees of a broad range of organizations, as well as their family members. Those who undertake to study in the United States often learn English as a second language (L2); here, the term second language (L2) refers to English as a second, foreign, or an additional language in bilingual or multilingual contexts. Such learners can come from all walks of academic life and pursue their learning objectives in various types of colleges and universities (Altbach and Knight, 2007).