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

Nowadays, many second language (L2) courses comprise a mix of online learning and face-to-face activities. As a result, this incorporation of blended learning and class instruction has allowed L2 students to learn more autonomously, become more engaged with the language learning process and achieve better results. However, blended L2 instructional strategies are mostly intended for young and traditional college-age students without considering the older learners. This article investigates the suitability of the blended L2 learning format for this latter student population and seeks to establish guidelines for the design of an L2 language course well adapted to the specific weaknesses and strengths of older adults. To this end, the early effects of aging on L2 acquisition and cognitive processes are first reviewed. Next, good practices in the use of technology-enhanced language learning (TELL) tools with older students are discussed. Finally, recommendations for blended L2 course design are provided.

Prólogo de ELIA 18.

Revista ELIA

This article involves an empirical study of pre-service primary school teachers’ essays on primary school students’ awareness of grammatical forms of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in online communication. 10 pre-service primary school teachers (hereafter – participants) were matched with their respective control group of 10 non-teacher students enrolled in the same EFL course at a large university in Norway. The specific aim of the study was to analyse the participants’ reflective essays and to juxtapose them with the essays written by the controls in order to reveal possible differences between the two groups. The participants’ and the respective controls’ reflective essays about primary school students’ awareness of EFL grammatical forms in online communication in English were further analysed by means of a mixed- method design comprised of a quantitative analysis with the computer software program WordSmith (Scott, 2012) and a qualitative framing analysis. The results of data analysis indicate that the frames found in participants’ reflective essays fall within 6 categories, namely “Attention to Grammar”, “Encouragement”, “Individual Differences”, “Informal Language”, “No Attention to Grammar”, and “Subjective Opinion”. These findings are further discussed in the article.  

With the growing number of English language learners throughout the United States enrolled in the foreign language class representing their heritage language, it is increasingly important for foreign language methodology courses to address how to plan for, instruct, and assess the diverse needs of these students in the K-12 foreign language classroom. Their needs as heritage language learners are different than those of second language learners. Therefore, in order to teach these language learners, teachers should possess specific competencies, not typically evident in foreign language teaching methodology courses. The present study is a preliminary effort to integrate a module on teaching heritage language learners into a foreign language teaching methodology course and to evaluate the development of teacher candidates’ declarative knowledge, beliefs, and conceptualizations about heritage language learners and heritage language instruction. Participants (N=30) are pre-service 9-12 Spanish teachers at two postsecondary institutions in the Eastern United States. The results demonstrate that teacher candidates move beyond conceiving heritage language learners as similar to second language learners and proceed toward perceiving them as culturally and linguistically diverse learners of Spanish, as evidenced through surveys and lesson plans.   

This study examines, from a diachronic-comparative perspective, the applicability and variation of the Create a Research Space (CARS) model to informative abstracts of empirical applied linguistics research articles (RAs) in English published in two high impact academic journals (TESOL Quarterly and Reading Research Quarterly). A pilot study of a smaller sample of 20 abstracts chosen from the 92-abstract corpus published in a twenty-year period (1981–2001) with a five-year interval between each year of publication showed that CARS was applicable to only part of the data and that there were also other rhetorical categories not captured by this framework. The move-step analysis of the 92-abstract corpus indicated that ‘Announcing present research’, within the move ‘Occupying the niche’, was the most commonly used step and with the most variation over time. As regards the categories not captured by CARS, it was found that the step ‘Drawing conclusions’, within the move ‘Discussing the research’, was employed in almost half of the abstracts of the corpus and it also varied in the years analyzed. The moves ‘Occupying the niche’ and the sections not captured by CARS, i.e., ‘Describing the methodology’, ‘Summarizing the results’, and ‘Discussing the research’, were the most commonly used and with most variation in the corpus over time. These results suggest that most authors from both journals announce the present research and to inform about the rest of the RA, they include the rhetorical sections ‘Describing the methodology’, ‘Summarizing the results’, and ‘Discussing the research’. 

There are not many studies which use the term translational writing (Bruton, 2006; Fageeh & Mekheimer, 2011) and the intention here is to give an exact definition of this term and explain its main differences with traditional translation as well as its applications in the field of EFL teaching.

The content analysis is at the core of a large number of social studies. On the other hand, the stakeholder analysis has been widely used in the study of local development processes from different approaches. However, this paper aims to show the potential and advantages of content analysis based on the actors’ discourse involved in local development processes. Primary information obtained from interviews conducted with a sample of social, economic and institutional actors linked to the starting up and operation of Villonaco Wind Farm (Loja, Ecuador), has been taken as a starting point. According to the Ecuadorian government, this wind farm should have a clear projection in local development, hence the interest in the analysis of these processes using this methodological approach. Software MAXQDA is used to show the potential of content analysis. This tool allows, after the encoding process of information, to analyze the various topics and subtopics that define the positions adopted by the actors and their appraisals of the studied processes.

The analysis of inequality in cities has a wide tradition, from the analysis of urban areas through factorial ecology of the Chicago School to contemporary studies on 'urban vulnerability'. From an operative point of view, its main objective has been to elaborate a synthetic index that allows to place to the urban areas in a continuum with respect to the resources that own its residents and / or the risks that they face. This paper presents a proposal to measure the socio-economic level of urban areas and its validation. First, some basic aspect in the analysis of urban inequalities are reviewed. Then, the proposal is presented and validated, and finally, some few conclusions about the proposal and its limitations are included.

Goal: To explore the age pattern of the relationship between self-perceived health and mortality at ages beyond youth (35-79) for men and women in six European countries with different with different patterns of morbidity: Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Poland and Hungary. Methods and data sources: Descriptive analysis of the patterns of both the prevalence of poor self-perceived health and the difference between the logarithmic transformations of the mortality probabilities and the prevalence of poor health in 2005 and 2009. The data about self-perceived health come from the European Union statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC), whereas mortality data come from Human Mortality Database (HMD). Results: Both indicators show a growing pattern by age though the relative value of this increase is not equal in mortality and poor self-perceived health. Poor self-perceived health prevalence rises by age with a lower intensity than mortality for both sexes in all the analysed countries. This change by age in the relationship between both health outcomes shows similar values for women and men, with the exception of Poland and Hungary. Conclusions: The change in the relationship by age between self-perceived health and mortality would be explained by the process of standardization of individual’s morbidity. Different age changes between sexes seem to be related with higher levels of gender inequalities in countries where this difference is observed, though this must be confirmed in future research.