Active learning approaches and critical thinking (CT) are crucial in modern higher education systems, for example within US and UK, particularly in the post-digital era of online platforms and ubiquitous Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) tools; however there remains a gap in our understanding of whether and how to teach CT effectively in online settings. To evaluate potential pedagogic benefits of using active learning raise awareness of basic concepts in CT, we examined ( n = 344) from a 2-week Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) introducing basic concepts of CT, offered by a leading UK university via the FutureLearn platform. Thematic corpus analysis on participants’ comments generated on the MOOC platform at mid and end points of the MOOC explored whether this MOOC stimulated learners’ confidence in developing some basic awareness of CT and of their own CT capabilities. The results suggest that online CT awareness raising could be successful, if based on effective active learning principles, including good self-regulation, autonomy, willingness to offer peer-feedback and curiosity. We argue that CT capability is most effective through interdependence between learner confidence and curiosity. We propose the Curiosity-Confidence Crank framework to educators to help foster the awareness and development of critical thinking capabilities in active learning environments, as a key tool for supporting student success in a GenAI-ubiquitous world.

This chapter evaluates current questions in researching L2 French fluency and understanding the implications for SLA more broadly. Traditionally, research investigated fluency in narrow temporal terms of smooth production without undue pauses or repetitions, often comparing L2 speakers to English prestige norms in decontextualised monologic tasks. However, recent studies focus on broader discourse-level models of fluency, recognising sociopragmatic demands of authentic dialogic interaction in plurilingual contexts, whether face to face or online. L2 French research provides an excellent basis for adopting this more diverse, authentic view of L2 fluency, using a broad range of empirical and corpus-based methods, including data gathered in seminal residence abroad projects. We explore how to conduct future studies in an ethical, inclusive and transparent way, which will both redress the imbalance of the current focus on L2 English, and provide reliable data to enrich our understanding of the new global digitally adept L2 French speaker.

There is broad consensus that a reader's background knowledge on a reading topic affects both their reading processes and comprehension in their first language and also in a second language. However, it is unclear whether a reader's background knowledge specifically affects reading comprehension accuracy and reading rate. The extent to which background knowledge facilitates second language reading when compared to a reader's L2 linguistic knowledge is also unclear. Moreover, the mental process accounting for the interaction between general background knowledge, type of linguistic knowledge such as vocabulary or writing system, and L2 reading abilities also need to be identified. Using texts in Mandarin Chinese, this paper investigates these problems with an eye-movement study administered to 40 L2 Chinese learners with Indo-European L1s. Results illustrate that an L2 reader's background knowledge about the text can positively impact both their reading comprehension and reading rate; however, the influence on the latter could be topic-dependent. In more challenging topics, the contribution of background knowledge to reading comprehension could outweigh any single type of linguistic knowledge, even if the target language uses a more cognitively demanding writing system. The connectionist account proposed by the construction-integration theory is suggested to be currently the best theoretical explanation for the mental process behind developing second-language reading abilities. Pedagogical implications are also considered based on these findings.

The present study investigated the effects of processing instruction (PI) on the processing and production of verbal inflectional morphology in English with varying redundancy: third person singular -s, regular past form -ed, and present progressive -ing. Ninety-three adult L2 English classroom learners in Saudi Arabia were divided into three groups receiving different teaching interventions over eight weeks: one based on standard PI, another with a novel modified PI approach including communicative activities (MPI), and a control group. Participants completed an offline interpretation task, an online self-paced reading (SPR) task and online elicited imitation (EI) task before and after intervention, then 12 weeks later in a delayed post-test. Results showed that both groups had similar performance in the offline interpretation task, but the MPI group outperformed the PI group on both online SPR and EI tasks The SPR task results also showed that the MPI intervention equally affected all the target inflections despite their differing redundancy levels. We therefore claim that MPI can be an effective classroom method for acquisition of L2 English verbal morphology.

This study explored whether beginner-level learners use radicals to learn written Chinese characters in making form-meaning paired-associate mappings, one of the key components in written character acquisition and word learning (Chan et al., 2020; Kintsch, 1988). Eyegaze patterns during new word-learning was measured to indicate visual focus, along with visual working memory (VWM) capacity, hitherto unexamined at beginner-level for Chinese (Chen et al., 2018; Godfroid, 2019). The experiment compared ease of recall across three groups of characters with different semantic radicals (nominal and verbal) and different visual salience. Greater visual salience rather than semantic class was predicted to foster ease of recall (Bax, 2013; Godfroid, 2019). Thirty-five adult Anglophone ab-initio learners of Chinese took part, recruited after five weeks at a language institute in China. Participants completed a computer-based self-paced character learning test and a VWM shape recall test. They then took a randomized character recall test; eyegaze patterns measured fixations on target radical areas during learning and testing phases. During testing, nominal recall was significantly the fastest and most accurate of the three types (p < .001). There were no significant correlations for accuracy of recall with VWM or eyegaze patterns. These findings, although tentative, suggest that some linguistic element of noun-learning comes “for free” (e.g., Gentner, 1982) even at beginner-level level. The study has timely implications for theoretical and pedagogical understanding of Chinese word learning processes, given the rapidly expanding area of Mandarin Chinese language learning in both taught and self-study app-based contexts.

In globalised higher education, strategies to build academic interactional competence can be key to international students' success, e.g. in seminars and oral assessments. Linguistically, academic interaction requires meaning-focused, other-oriented oral skills, which can be challenging for international second-language (L2) students to acquire, even with specific training. This study reports on data from 230 postgraduate students of mixed L1s, comparing use of L2 listening and speaking strategies at the start and end of a 5-week English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programme at a UK university. We found a moderate significant improvement over time in meaning-focused listening strategies, and some evidence in increased use of a wider range of speaking strategies. Further factor analysis revealed a subtle but clear shift towards more other-oriented stance in both listening and speaking strategy use, although with much individual variation, and no significant correlation with proficiency. This study, one of the first to use speaker stance analysis in studying L2 academic communication, shows that even short-term EAP courses can have valuable potential in boosting strategies and skills, particularly in listening, which are needed for successful academic interactional competence.

This in-depth study evaluated motivation, learning strategies and demographic factors among earlylevel Chinese HSK test-takers, predicting differences at higher test levels when Chinese character knowledge is required.71 UK-based HSK test-takers from beginner (1/2) to intermediate (3) levels were recruited; using quantitative survey and qualitative interviews, test-taker characteristics were analysed.However, findings revealed similar patterns at all three levels, and few effects of demographic factors.Higher levels of intrinsic than extrinsic motivation, and higher use of meaningfocused learning strategies were found across levels, although learners may start with structurebased priorities at beginner levels, especially in female learners.Including pinyin made beginnerlevel HSK exams seem more accessible, but commitment to learning characters was also evident at beginner stages.Noting limitations in the HSK exam format as a test of linguistic abilities, the findings are evaluated for wider pedagogical implications for effective early-stage L2 Mandarin Chinese language development.

During the past two decades, Chinese for Specific Purposes (CSP) has emerged as a new trend and quickly become a sub-field of International Chinese Education, while drawing increasing attention among Chinese learners as well as teaching professionals. A main reason for the increasing relevance of CSP is that many, if not all, Chinese learners, have more-or-less specific and sometimes immediate language needs that require more than generalized knowledge alone. The courses of CSP are designed to meet specified needs of the learner. Once a specific purpose has been identified, a well-designed CSP course aims to be built around three main components: (a) the acquisition of the Chinese language skills for the specific communication use; (b) exposing learners to Chinese cultures with focus on the specific area; and (c) fostering an appreciation of different ways of thinking when dealing with the specific subject. By striving for these outcomes, CSP courses can provide an invaluable alternative or supplement to general Chinese language courses. This special issue of IJCLT focuses on research into different pedagogic approaches towards Chinese for Specific Purposes (CSP). There are a total of seven papers selected as the best submissions across a wide range of work. The following are summaries of these papers.

This paper reports on a detailed thematic analysis of learners' evaluative comments at the end of a five-week academic writing MOOC run by a university in the UK which used a novel content+process MOOC approach. The authors wanted to identify whether this innovative approach to a MOOC course worked in terms of student satisfaction and achievement in mastering both the content and process of critically-based academic writing in second language (L2) English. The MOOC use of peer feedback, and limited availability of detailed expert feedback from educators and mentors, were the primary sources of negative evaluation. However, in general, they found an overwhelming delight in taking the course, demonstrating a clear sense of pride, achievement, and satisfaction of mastering an unfamiliar and difficult skill that many saw as crucial to their future life plans.

Second language (L2) fluency is an exciting and fast-moving field of research, with clear practical applications in language teaching. This book provides a lively overview of the current advances in the field of L2 fluency, and connects the theory to practice, presenting a hands-on approach to using fluency research across a range of different language-related professions. The authors introduce an innovative multidisciplinary perspective, which brings together research into cognitive and social factors, to understand fluency as a dynamic variable in language performance, connecting learner-internal factors such as speech processing and automaticity, to external factors such as task demands, language testing, and pragmatic interactional demands in communication. Bringing a much-needed multidisciplinary and novel approach to understanding the complex nature of L2 speech fluency, this book provides researchers, students and language professionals with both the theoretical insights and practical tools required to understand and research how fluency in a second language develops.

The chapter focuses on psycholinguistic perspectives of temporal evaluations of fluency, based on skill development, usually comparing L2 fluency to smooth, automatic processes used by native speakers in conceptualising, formulating and articulating speech. We aruge this deficit model of L2 speech is limited, and needs to move to a more dynamic bilingual contextualised view of fluency. We evaluate Segalowitz’s multicomponent model of cognitive fluency, utterance fluency and perceptions of fluency, and current analyses of utterance fluency, in terms of speech rate, breakdown and disfluency, noting how speed, silence and repair may be rated as both negative and positive aspects of fluency. We emphasise the interdependence of individual speech processes across both L1 and L2, the relationship between fluency and different linguistic domains (particularly vocabulary and the role of formulaic sequences or multiword expressions). The chapter also discusses individual differences and psycho-social factors, such as working memory, personality traits, willingness to engage in interaction or not. Also noted are more interactional context-based views of fluency, fluency strategies and perceptions of fluency.

This study explores task effects on fluency development in second language (L2) Mandarin during study abroad (SA) in China, given linguistic and pedagogic challenges facing western learners of Mandarin ( Zhao, 2011 ). Data from 10 adult English learners of Mandarin were compared pre/post 10 months’ SA in China. Performance was measured in 4 tasks with different task loads (rehearsed vs. spontaneous speech, in monologic and dialogic mode). Significant differences between the rehearsed monologue and other tasks found pre-SA were generally not found after SA. Some differences remained between monologues and dialogues, suggesting that task load effects may override SA impact. Claims about the impact of SA on L2 oral development should take more account of different task demands, to help further illuminate our understanding of how SA may benefit L2 fluency.

This chapter’s main focus is on fluency research ‘in the wild’, particularly looking at the challenges of developing fluency during immersion in the target language setting, e.g. during Study Abroad. The chapter includes the need for research and practice to move away from standard monolingual native speaker norms, towards use of L2 or multilingual raters as reference norms for evaluating fluency development. We refer to cross-linguistic work on fluency in languages other than English, to see how learners’ and teachers’ expectations can be more realistically framed to fit social contexts and task demands. We include evidence from learner corpora across a variety of languages, which could help develop more robust cross-linguistic theories, methods and evidence of fluency development from a wider multilingual interactional perspective. The final section explores these themes in the context of fluency development through residence abroad, even over short periods such as Study Abroad; evidence is presented from a recent case study of learners of Mandarin Chinese within a more nuanced view of specific task constraints, to highlight the varied nature of fluency development.

To highlight the significant implications of L2 fluency research for language teaching, this chapter is dedicated to four aspects of L2 teaching practice: L2 policy documents, L2 textbooks, classroom practice and teacher cognition. This chapter aims to provide an analysis of how fluency is represented in each of these four aspects, and in what ways fluency research can help practitioners in these areas with everyday practices. After presenting a background to the role of fluency in L2 pedagogy, examples of L2 policy documents, e.g. the UK curriculum for teaching Modern Foreign Languages will be evaluated. We then provide a summary of research examining fluency in L2 textbooks, and discuss teaching activities that are reported as central to promoting fluency in the L2 classroom. Teacher understanding of fluency and the impact it has on promoting fluency in the language classroom will also be discussed.