Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Autor/s Nuria del Campo MartínezUniversidad de La Rioja, Spain   ABSTRACT This article addresses the motivation and constraints of illocutionary meaning production. Within the framework of the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM), I explore how our knowledge of illocution is understood in terms of high-level situational models which are activated to produce speech act meaning and the way such operations motivate the conventionalized value of linguistic expressions. In so doing, I analyze the realization procedures of the Aux NP construction in relation to their potential to exploit the semantic base of requestive acts. I will study the most conventional linguistic realizations of the construction and explore the way in which such realizations are used to produce a requestive meaning. The resulting account provides a comprehensive understanding of the constructional nature of illocutionary meaning on the basis of naturally occurring data.

Reviewed by Annemieke MeijerUniversity College Utrecht, The Netherlands   1. INTRODUCTION This collection of articles is an interesting and timely addition to the growing literature on the use of English as the language of instruction at universities in non-native contexts. In the past two decades, EMI (English-Medium Instruction, as the educational practice tends to be called when referring to the tertiary level, as opposed to the more thought-through pedagogical approach of Content and Language Integrated Learning or CLIL at secondary level) has caught on in many different countries and settings.

Autor/s Vicent Beltrán PalanquesUniversitat Jaume I, Spain   ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to explore the task effect of two different research methods, namely those of interactive discourse completion tasks/tests (IDCTs) and role-play tasks (RPTs). The two research methods employed in this study adopt an interactive approach that allows participants to freely interact not only in the oral mode but also in the written mode. This paper compares the apology strategies elicited by means of IDCTs and in RPTs in terms of strategy length, amount of strategies and classification of strategies across the two elicitation techniques. Results from this comparison will be presented and discussed, and pedagogical implications suggested.

Autor/s María Juan-GarauUniversitat de les Illes Balears, Spain   ABSTRACT The present article sets out to provide an overall picture of the acquisition of speaking abilities in a given second language acquisition (SLA) learning context, namely study abroad (SA), so as to ascertain whether SA can indeed ‘do the trick’, as it is popularly assumed, and, if so, under which conditions. Section 1 will characterise the SA context and look at how it can affect oral performance, bearing in mind the opportunities for target language contact and practice it offers learners. Section 2 will focus on the specific linguistic benefits in the oral domain that can accrue in this learning context. In this regard, we will present an overview of empirical research findings with special attention to the SALA (Study Abroad and Language Acquisition) and COLE (Context, Contact and Competence Level) research projects. Section 3 will concentrate on individual variables that may affect oral development abroad in combination with external variables such as SA programme conditions. Finally, Section 4 will provide a summary of the main ideas presented and draw some conclusions.

Autor/s Cristina Pérez-GuillotJulia Zabala-DelgadoUniversitat Politècnica de València, Spain   ABSTRACT The development of a language exam is not a linear process but rather a round cycle in which, by using the test, we obtain information that will in turn be applied to improve each of the steps in the cycle. The goal of our study was to analyse students’ beliefs about their performance in the speaking section of a language proficiency exam and compare them with their actual results in the exam, in order to determine whether their beliefs were based on their actual level of competence or if they were based on other factors, such as anxiety or stress due to the particular characteristics of this section of the exam.

Autor/s Gary J. OckeyZhi LiIowa State University, USA   ABSTRACT The assessment of oral communication has continued to evolve over the past few decades. The construct being assessed has broadened to include interactional competence, and technology has played a role in the types of tasks that are currently popular. In this paper, we discuss the factors that affect the process of oral communication assessment, current conceptualizations of the construct to be assessed, and five tasks that are used to assess this construct. These tasks include oral proficiency interviews, paired/group oral discussion tasks, simulated tasks, integrated oral communication tasks, and elicited imitation tasks. We evaluate these tasks based on current conceptualizations of the construct of oral communication, and conclude that they do not assess a broad construct of oral communication equally. Based on our evaluation, we advise test developers to consider the aspects of oral communication that they aim to include or exclude in their assessment when they select one of these task types.

From the Editors RESEARCH ON NEW METHODS FOR TESTING LANGUAGE SKILLS: A FOCUS ON SPEAKING PERFORMANCE The current issue has speaking performance as a conducting thread, specifically, the research undertaken on new methods to test it. Testing language skills and defining the constructs under which tests need to be constructed is a complex task. Particularly, assessing speaking performance is a rather intricate process with many agents and variables involved and many factors affecting the final outcome. Subjectivity, fairness, anxiety, cognitive and metacognitive aspects, particular features of speech, individual abilities, and social constraints among others make the mastery of speaking in a foreign language and its subsequent assessment a definitely arduous task. Critical reflection and research on the part of educational institutions, researchers, test developers or any person undertaking assessment is of paramount importance to guarantee the adequacy, reliability and success of the whole testing process and results.

Table of Contents From the editors Mari Carmen Campoy-CubilloNuria Edo Marzá Articles  New and not so new methods for assessing oral communication. Gary J. OckeyShi Li Comparing candidates’ beliefs and exam performance in speaking tests. Cristina Pérez-GuillotJulia Zabala-Delgado Speaking an additional language: Can study abroad do the trick? María Juan-Garau Revisiting pragmatic tests in the FL context: Towards interactive tests to examine speech act performance. Vicent Beltrán Palanques Book and Multimedia Reviews  Ángela Cora García. An Introduction to Interaction: Understanding Talk in Formal and Informal Settings. Raquel Lázaro Gutiérrez Jane Spiro. Changing Methodologies in TESOL. Elena Martín Monje

Autor/s Ignasi Navarro i FerrandoUniversitat Jaume I, Spain   ABSTRACT In this paper, we firstly present a tentative formalization of a Lexical Template (LT) and a meta-language for spatial particle semantics within the framework of the Lexical Constructional Model (LCM). The semantic module consists of a set of Lexical Functions, which operate on a semantic primitive in order to produce a hyponym by elaborating topological, dynamic and functional information. The syntactic module expresses situations (positions or states) plus the argument structure. Secondly, we illustrate and discuss several LTs with the purpose of exploring spatial particle subsumption constraints with constructions such as caused motion and intransitive motion, as well as the types of verbal Aktionsart that might fuse with them. The COCA is used as a data source. We conclude that spatial particles contribute meaning to the extent that they partially determine the type of Aktionsart of the verb licensed by the motion construction.

Autor/s Siaw-Fong ChungF.Y. August ChaoTien-Yu LanYen-Yu LinNational Chengchi University, Taiwan   ABSTRACT This paper investigates twenty-two prepositions in two different lexical bundles – [PREPOSITION the NOUN of] (at the point of, from the perspective of, etc.) and [VERB PREPOSITION the NOUN of] (shouted above the noise of, suffering from the effects of, etc.), the only difference being that the former does not include the head verb that is present in the latter. Strings of constructions were extracted from the British National Corpus and the types of possible verbs, prepositions, and nouns in each possible combination were analyzed. The paper also details an experiment in which the types of nouns under each of the twenty-two prepositions were coded by human subjects in terms of their semantic features. Finally, a computer program was also utilized to calculate the shared meaning of the different VERBs and NOUNs. The results showed that the nouns in [(VERB) PREPOSITION the NOUN of], though they might form clusters of meanings, may not behave in the same way with and without the presence of the verbs.