Category Archives: New publication

Open access article: Chinese EFL learners’ use of mobile dictionaries in reading comprehension tasks

Zhang, D. and Pérez-Paredes, P. (2024). Chinese EFL learners’ use of mobile dictionaries in reading comprehension tasks. System, 121, 103221.

URL: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0346251X24000034?via%3Dihub

Abstract

Although mobile dictionaries are widely used in English as a foreign language (EFL) education, few studies have examined the different types of mobile dictionaries that Chinese students use. This study looks at monolingual, bilingualised and bilingual mobile dictionaries used by Chinese university EFL learners when completing a reading activity. Mixed methods were used to investigate the engagement of 125 learners with three different dictionary apps. A self-report questionnaire and semi-structured interviews were used to understand learners’ uses and motivations when using mobile dictionaries. Results of the questionnaire show that most learners look up almost exclusively the first entry definition, the Chinese translation of the target word and, to a lesser degree, part of speech information. Spelling, example sentences and other aspects of vocabulary knowledge were largely ignored by the participants in the study. The interview data allowed us to hypothesise that three strategies are shared by the participants across the three study conditions: (1) the “so-called relevance” strategy, (2) the “choose the first definition” strategy, and (3) the “availability principle” strategy. This study addresses gaps in mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) research, providing language teachers, researchers and policymakers with ways to understand how mobile dictionaries are used in English language learning.

New book The Education of a Lawyer @ABAesq

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The American Bar Association has published “The Education of a Lawyer”. The book is mostly advice from an attorney to college and law students as well as beginning lawyers, about the study of law and how to succeed in the legal profession. According to author Gary Muldoon, “it is by no means about forensic linguistics. Although, I do manage to get in a few digs about that subject, trying to let a broader readership know that Forensic Linguistics is an important and emerging area that they should attend do. (One essay in the book is “It all started with William the Conqueror.” And it acknowledges the work of Peter Tiersma.)

The book at present is available through the American Bar Association:
http://shop.americanbar.org/eBus/Store/ProductDetails.aspx?productId=213293

According to author Gary Muldoon (Muldoon, Getz & Reston) “The Education of a Lawyer” is a fairly easy read, and not overly academic. Though, one group of law students that read a draft of the manuscript commented that it was clearly written by somebody older.

Journal Language and Law/Linguagem e Direito

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Language and Law/Linguagem e Direito

The journal Language and Law / Linguagem e Direito is an international online journal edited at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto, Portugal, and the Federal University of Santa Catarina ­ UFSC, Brazil.

The journal is published twice a year, and includes articles in all varieties of both Portuguese and English , with abstracts in both languages. The editorial board of the journal includes renowned international researchers from the fields of linguistics, law and criminology, computer science, among others. The journal has a rigorous system of blind peer reviewing. The journal is published by the Faculty of Arts of the University of Porto, and is hosted by the Faculty¹s Digital Library.

Language and Law / Linguagem e Direito is an academic journal that aims to encourage the dissemination of research conducted in the field of Forensic Linguistics / Language and the Law, while at the same time contributing to the work of practitioners by publishing state of the art articles on theoretical and methodological tools useful for this interdisciplinary field. It is therefore aimed at established academics and researchers, students and practitioners, from all over the world.

The first issue of the journal will be published in September 2014. Each issue will contain articles, book reviews and PhD abstracts covering all topics related to Legal Language, Interaction in Legal Contexts and Language as Evidence.

There will be regular special issues. The second issue will be devoted to Forensic Phonetics and related issues and will be guest edited by membersof the ³Estudos dos Sons da Fala² Research Group, at the Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná – UTFPR.

Those who wish to submit articles to be included in the next issue (first semester of 2015) are invited to submit them no later than October 1st, 2014 to llldjournal@gmail.com

The Editorial Team

Editors:
Malcolm Coulthard Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina
Rui Sousa-Silva Universidade do Porto

Contact details

Journal Editors:
Malcolm Coulthard r.m.coulthard@bham.ac.uk
Rui Sousa-Silva r.sousa-silva@lflab.pt

Volume 1.1 – Contents

ARTICLES:
Multilingualism and Morality in Statutory Interpretation
Lawrence M. Solan

A Fonética Forense no Brasil: Cenários e Atores
Maria Lúcia de Castro Gomes & Denise de Oliveira Carneiro

Identifying idiolect in forensic authorship attribution: an n-gram
textbite approach
Alison Johnson & David Wright

Detecting Œtranslingual¹ plagiarism: the backlash against translation
plagiarists
Rui Sousa-Silva

Death Penalty Instructions to Jurors: Still Not Comprehensible After All
These Years
Gail Stygall

A atitude em boletins de ocorrência de crimes de linguagem contra a honra:
um estudo da ofensa verbal na perspectiva do sistema de avaliatividade
Marcos Rogério Ribeiro & Cristiane Fuzer

When is a lie not a lie? When it¹s divergent: Examining lies and deceptive
responses in a police interview
Elisabeth Carter

Discurso, gênero e violência: uma análise de representações públicas do
crime de estupro
Débora de Carvalho Figueiredo

Linguistic Minorities in Court: the Exclusion of Indigenous Peoples in
Brazil
Edilson Vitorelli

PHD ABSTRACTS:
The Atypical Bilingual Courtroom: An Exploratory Study of the
Interactional Dynamics inInterpreter-mediated Trials in Hong Kong

Eva Ng

Linguistic Identifiers of L1 Persian speakers writing in English. NLID for
Authorship Analysis
Ria Perkins

REVIEWS:
A comparative review of The Routledge Handbook of Forensic Linguistics and
The Oxford Handbook of Language and Law
Reviewed by Samuel Larner

Linguagem e Direito
Reviewed by Rita Faria

Forensic Linguistics. John Olsson and June Luchjenbroers
Reviewed by Ria Perkins

IN MEMORIAM:
In Memoriam ­ Maria Teresa Turell Julià
Núria Gavaldá & Malcolm Coulthard

Remembering Peter Tiersma
Lawrence M. Solan

Researching uses of corpora for language teaching and learning, Guest Edited by Alex Boulton and Pascual Pérez-Paredes

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The latest issue of ReCALL is a Special Issue on Researching uses of corpora for language teaching and learning, Guest Edited by Alex Boulton and Pascual Pérez-Paredes.

Access the entire issue without charge until 31st May 2014

Special Issue Contents

Ana Frankenberg-Garcia provides an extension or semi-replication of an earlier study comparing single and multiple concordance lines and dictionary definitions as a language reference resource.

Yukio Tono, Yoshiho Satake and Aika Miura report on how Japanese learners of English can use corpora to help revise their own writing.

Zeping Huang focuses on awareness of the patterning of abstract nouns among 40 Chinese students majoring in English.

Jonathan Smart compares different types of corpus-based instruction, using paper-based materials derived from Mark Davies’ corpora for the passive voice.

Elena Cotos examines the effects of corpora in noticing, exploring and reusing linking adverbials among graduate students.

Joe Geluso and Atsumi Yamaguchi attempt to integrate corpus use into an original course design with the focus on spoken fluency.

Ji-Yeon Chang provides an introduction to corpus use for post-graduates in engineering and computer science in Korea to help with writing.

Agnieszka Leńko-Szymańska describes a course designed for Master’s students including trainee teachers in Poland, the objective being to promote corpus literacy for a variety of uses.