research paper foreign language

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

The effect of language learning strategies on proficiency, attitudes and school achievement.

• Institute of Education, University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary

This study examines language learning strategy (LLS) use in connexion with foreign language attitude, proficiency and general school achievement among lower secondary students in Years 5 and 8 ( n = 868) in Hungary. An adapted version of the Strategies Inventory for Language Learning questionnaire was used for data collection. The results showed that Hungarian students mainly engage in metacognitive strategies in both years. Differences between more and less proficient language learners’ strategy use have also been found. With regard to the effect of LLS on foreign language attitude, the foreign language mark and school achievement, path analysis indicated a good fit in both years. The metacognitive, social and memory strategies primarily influenced foreign language attitudes and marks in Year 5. The metacognitive strategies had a slight impact on school achievement as well as on foreign language marks. We demonstrated the dominant effect of metacognitive strategies and the low effect of memory strategies in Year 8. In addition, metacognitive strategies also influenced foreign language marks. The effect of foreign language marks on school achievement was also remarkable. There was a strong impact on the children’s attitudes through these variables.

Introduction

In recent decades, a number of studies have focused on foreign language learning, with the emphasis often having been placed on language learning strategies (LLS; Wong and Nunan, 2011 ; Oxford, 2016 ). Several studies have confirmed that these strategies aid students in becoming more effective learners inside the classroom and foster more efficient development of students’ mastery of the target language after leaving school ( Wong and Nunan, 2011 ). However, less is known about the structure and relationship between LLS, foreign language attitude, the foreign language mark and general school achievement (GA). Recent studies have mainly dealt with LLS among university students and upper secondary students, with only a few investigations having been conducted among lower secondary students. In the present study, we aim to examine young Hungarian students’ LLS use and its connexion to foreign language attitude, the foreign language mark and school achievement at the beginning and end of lower secondary school. We believe that it adds value to the article that we have investigated a young age group, as the beginning period of language learning can establish the success of the entire process. Another advantage of our research is that we analysed the whole language learning process in connexion with several other factors to represent the complexity of the language learning process.

Theoretical Background

Studies on LLS in recent decades have identified a large number of strategies which are employed by English as a foreign/second language (EFL/ESL) learners and several strategy categorisation patterns have also been established. The most frequently used taxonomy was developed by Oxford (1990) . She identified three direct and three indirect strategy types. Direct strategies are specific means of language use: memory, cognitive and compensatory (or compensation) strategies. Indirect strategies, such as metacognitive, affective and social strategies, support LLS indirectly. Recently, Oxford revisited her strategy categories and developed a model with four different strategy categories: cognitive, affective and sociocultural-interactive as well as a master category of “metastrategies.” Metastrategies comprise metacognitive, meta-affective and meta-sociocultural-interactive strategies ( Griffith and Oxford, 2014 ; Oxford, 2016 ). However, she did not elaborate on this strategy classification, and thus our study relied on her original taxonomy.

Various studies have focused on LLS use and aimed to identify the strategies most frequently employed by language learners ( Chamot, 2004 ; Magogwe and Oliver, 2007 ; Wu, 2008 ; Chen, 2009 ; Al-Qahtani, 2013 ; Charoento, 2016 ; Alhaysony, 2017 ; Dawadi, 2017 ). Overall, it can be concluded that the most commonly used LLS in these studies were metacognitive, compensation and cognitive strategies. However, Chamot (2004) pointed out that different strategy preferences were reported by students in different cultural contexts. Chinese and Singaporean students reported a higher level preference for social strategies and lower use of affective strategies than European students.

Some studies have dealt with the implementation of the SILL with a focus on school-aged students ( Magogwe and Oliver, 2007 ; Chen, 2009 , 2014 ; Gunning and Oxford, 2014 ; Platsidou and Kantaridou, 2014 ; Pfenninger and Singleton, 2017 ). The overall conclusion of these studies has been that young learners mostly used social, affective and compensation strategies. The use of memory strategies was relatively low ( Doró and Habók, 2013 ). The attitudes of learners at this age toward language learning are particularly important since they can greatly determine motivation, learning outcomes and later success in language learning ( Platsidou and Kantaridou, 2014 ; Platsidou and Sipitanou, 2014 ).

As the purpose of investigating LLS is to foster learning processes and improve language level, research projects often deal with LLS use in relation to language learning proficiency ( Khaldieh, 2000 ; Magogwe and Oliver, 2007 ; Wu, 2008 ; Chen, 2009 ; Liu, 2010 ; Al-Qahtani, 2013 ; Platsidou and Kantaridou, 2014 ; Charoento, 2016 ; Rao, 2016 ). The notion of proficiency has been defined and involved in analysis in a multitude of ways by various researchers. Charoento (2016) involved self-ratings, Wu (2008) used the results from language proficiency and achievement tests, Magogwe and Oliver (2007) incorporated language course grades into their analysis of their results. Most studies have shown a positive relationship between LLS and proficiency, but the direction of their connexion was often different. Some researchers have stressed that strategy use was mainly specified by proficiency. More proficient students engaged in LLS more frequently and also employed a broader range of strategies overall compared to less proficient students ( Khaldieh, 2000 ; Wu, 2008 ; Rao, 2016 ). Al-Qahtani (2013) and Charoento (2016) demonstrated that successful students mainly used cognitive strategies, while Wu (2008) emphasised significant utilisation of cognitive, metacognitive and social strategies among more proficient university students. Chen (2009) pointed to the use of fewer communication strategies among proficient learners, but noted that they employed them more efficiently than less proficient learners. In addition, Magogwe and Oliver (2007) also established that the basic difference in LLS use between proficient and less proficient learners was that more successful students not only used certain LLS significantly more often, but were also able to select the most adequate strategies depending on the goal of their task.

Some studies have dealt with the effect of LLS use on language proficiency. Both Liu (2010) and Platsidou and Kantaridou (2014) pointed out that learning strategy influences language use and that it plays a significant role in anticipating perceived language performance. Wu (2008) noted that cognitive strategies have the most dominant influence on proficiency. Rao (2016) found that students’ English proficiency significantly affected their learning strategy use and also observed that high-level students avail themselves of more strategies more frequently than low-level students.

Another essential area of LLS research is the study of strategy use in relation to affective variables, such as attitude and motivation ( Shang, 2010 ; Jabbari and Golkar, 2014 ; Platsidou and Kantaridou, 2014 ). Most of these studies have found that learners with a positive attitude employed LLS more frequently compared to learners with a negative attitude. Platsidou and Kantaridou (2014) reported that attitudes toward second language learning influence both direct and indirect strategy uses and that changing learners’ attitudes toward language learning can thus foster their strategy practises. Jabbari and Golkar (2014) established that learners with a positive attitude employ cognitive, compensation, metacognitive and social strategies more frequently.

It can be concluded that LLS use has been studied extensively in recent decades. Most research has found that LLS cannot be analysed separately; it must be examined in relation to certain other factors, among which foreign language attitudes and proficiency play a central role ( Griffiths and Incecay, 2016 ). However, most previous studies preferred university students or adults to primary or secondary school-aged students. Furthermore, a limited amount of research has investigated the relationship of LLS with attitude toward foreign language learning and the foreign language mark. There has also been a dearth of scholarship on how language proficiency and school achievement are determined by LLS use and attitude. Our study aims to fill this gap and attempts to present a comprehensive view of the relationship between LLS use and language attitude and between proficiency and general school achievement by focusing on school children at the beginning and end of lower secondary school. Our specific research question we focus on in this paper is the following:

What are the lower secondary school children’s strategy use preferences and how these are connected with their foreign language attitude, proficiency and general school achievement? Based on the relevant literature we assume that students of this age mainly employ indirect strategies, such as affective, metacognitive and social strategies and these have a significant impact on their foreign language learning attitude, proficiency and general school achievement.

Materials and Methods

Participants.

The participants in the present study were lower secondary students (11- and 14-year-olds) in Hungary ( n Year5 = 450, n Year8 = 418). Participation in the study was voluntary both for schools and students. This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the University of Szeged, the Hungarian law and the municipalities that maintain the schools. The IRB of the Doctoral School (University of Szeged) specifically approved this research project. The agreements are documented and stored in written form in the schools.

Our target group generally started learning a foreign language in Year 4. As one portion of our sample have been learning a foreign language for at least four years, they must have experience of how they learn language. In Hungary, the primary level of education is composed of the elementary and lower secondary school levels; hence, the transition occurs with relatively few major changes, and children have the same language teacher during these school levels. While the foreign language teacher does not change, the other school subjects are taught by specialist teachers as of Year 5. Learning difficulties and differences among children grow considerably from the beginning of lower secondary school; hence, diagnosing language learning attitude is particularly essential.

Instruments

The Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL, Oxford, 1990 ) was administered to investigate the children’s LLS use. The SILL is a standardised measurement tool, and it is applicable to various foreign languages. The complex questionnaire is clustered into six strategy fields: (1) memory (9 items); (2) cognitive (14 items); (3) compensation (6 items); (4) metacognitive (9 items); (5) affective (6 items); and (6) social strategies (6 items). The participants were asked to respond to each statement on a five-point Likert scale. The answers ranged from ‘1 = never or almost never true of me’ to ‘5 = always or almost always true of me.’ The reported internal consistency reliabilities of the questionnaires ranged between 0.91 and 0.94 (Cronbach’s alpha) ( Oxford and Burry-Stock, 1995 ; Ardasheva and Tretter, 2013 ). The questionnaire was conducted in Hungarian to eliminate differences in English knowledge and make it suitable for the language levels in these age groups. The reliability of the Hungarian version was confirmed in previous research ( Doró and Habók, 2013 ). In addition, the children were asked to self-report their foreign language attitude, foreign language mark (indicating students’ foreign language knowledge) and general school achievement (grade point average, which includes students’ achievement in all subjects) on a five-point scale. In Hungarian schools, the different proficiency levels are rated on a five-point scale: 1 is the weakest mark, and 5 is the most excellent.

Design and Procedure

Quantitative research design was employed through online survey methodology. The SILL questionnaire was administered via the eDia online testing platform, which was developed by the Centre for Research on Learning and Instruction for assessing Year 1–6 children’s foreign language knowledge and attitudes. One school lesson was provided for data collection; however, the children needed approximately 20 min to hand in their ratings. Both the children and teachers are familiar with this system because the online platform has been in use since 2009.

Data were handled confidentially during the testing procedure; the children used an identification code provided by research administrators. The researchers were only able to see the codes, and only the teachers were able to identify their students with the codes. All the instructions were in the online questionnaire, so the children were able to answer the questions individually. The teachers were also requested to report the children’s questions, remarks and difficulties during testing. Finally, the teachers reported no misunderstandings or problematic items during data collection.

The data analyses were twofold. First, SPSS for Microsoft Windows 20.0 was employed for classical test analysis, which included an estimation of frequencies, means and standard deviations. The significance of differences among the variables was determined by ANOVA analysis. Second, path analysis was managed by the SPSS AMOS v20 software package to analyse the effect of strategy use on the variables under observation ( Arbuckle, 2008 ). The model fit was indicated by the Tucker–Lewis index (TLI), the normed fit index (NFI), the comparative fit index (CFI) and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) ( Byrne, 2010 ; Kline, 2015 ).

Descriptive Analysis

General strategy uses among lower secondary school children.

The mean scores and standard deviations showed moderate LLS use, with the use of metacognitive, affective and social strategies being the highest in Year 5 (Table 1 ). Compensatory strategies were employed significantly the lowest. In Year 8, besides metacognitive and social strategies, cognitive strategies were relied on the most. Metacognitive strategy use was similarly high in both age groups. Significant differences were found between the age groups in memory, compensation and affective strategies ( p ≤ 0.01). While the use of affective strategies was relatively high in Year 5, it was the least frequently employed in Year 8.

TABLE 1. The strategy use results for the sample.

Differences in Strategy Use among Students with Different Proficiency Levels

One of our goals was to identify students’ LLS use preferences according to their proficiency levels. To implement this goal, we grouped the children into categories according to their proficiency, which was derived from their foreign language marks.

We combined the foreign language marks for those children who were evaluated with a 1 or a 2. These children showed a very low knowledge level and demonstrated a large number of difficulties and misunderstandings in foreign language learning. The next group was formed of children who were assessed at mark 3. This mark indicated an average knowledge level with gaps. Children who were evaluated with a mark 4 had fewer significant deficits. Children who received a mark 5 were the highest performers in school. Tables 2 , 3 summarise our results on strategy use according to foreign language marks. The number of children is also indicated according to each category.

TABLE 2. Means of strategy users according to their foreign language mark in Year 5.

TABLE 3. Means of strategy users according to their foreign language mark in Year 8.

Multivariate Analyses

The relationships between lls and foreign language attitude, lls and foreign language marks, and lls and general school achievement.

Our results demonstrated that the sample was evaluated at an approximate level of mark 4 ( M Year5 = 3.84, SD Year5 = 1.17; M Year8 = 3.62, SD Year8 = 1.17); however, Year 5 children achieved significantly higher ( p < 0.01). As regards children’s attitudes, we found no significant differences between the years ( M Year5 = 3.53, SD Year5 = 1.35; M Year8 = 3.43, SD Year8 = 1.23; p < 0.05). On the whole, it can be stated that children’s foreign language marks are higher than their attitude toward foreign language. The average school achievement showed significantly higher means than foreign language marks in both years ( M Year5 = 3.82, SD Year5 = 0.87, p < 0.001; M Year8 = 3.62, SD Year8 = 1.17, p < 0.001).

We also examined the correlation between LLS and attitude toward foreign languages, LLS and the foreign language mark, and LLS and general school achievement. We observed the most significant estimates between language learning strategy use and attitude in Year 5 ( r = 0.53–0.20; p < 0.001–0.05). The correlational coefficient between attitude and the foreign language mark was also significant ( r = 0.37; p < 0.001). We noted that children who achieved higher in foreign languages showed a more positive attitude toward them. We also noticed a significantly strong effect for the foreign language mark and strategy use ( r = 0.49–0.13; p < 0.001–0.05).

In Year 8, we found significant ( r Year5 = 0.70–0.12; p < 0.001–0.01; r Year8 = 0.82–0.66; p < 0.001–0.01) relationships between overall strategy use and foreign language marks, attitudes and general school achievement. However, the relationship between affective strategies and school achievement was not significant. We observed that children who use LLS have positive attitudes toward language learning, except for compensation and affective strategies.

The Effect of Language Learning Strategies on Attitude, School Marks and General School Achievement

We analysed the effect of LLS on foreign language attitude, school marks and general achievement using AMOS. We were looking for causalities between questionnaire fields and further variables by constructing a theoretical model on the basis of Oxford’s strategy taxonomy and children’s background data. We hypothesised that strategy factors largely influence children’s attitude toward language learning and through this the other variables. The model we created showed appropriate fit indices for the final model and indicated a good fit to our data in both years (Figures 1 , 2 ).

FIGURE 1. The path model for LLS influence on foreign language mark through foreign language attitude and general school achievement (GA) in Year 5.

FIGURE 2. The path model for LLS influence on foreign language mark through foreign language attitude and general school achievement (GA) in Year 8.

Year 5 : χ 2 (13) = 18,309, p = 0.146; Year 8 : χ 2 (13) = 23,893, p = 0.18. An analysis of the hypothesised path model indicated a comparative fit index (CFI) of 0.998 in Year 5 and 0.994 in Year 8. The RMSEA (root mean squared error of approximation) was also good in both years, 0.030 in Year 5 and.049 in Year 8. Both the Tucker–Lewis index (TLI Year5 = 0.992; TLI Year8 = 0.981) and the normed fit index (NFI Year8 = 0.992; NFI Year8 = 0.989) confirmed that the model we constructed was a good fit to our data.

The main aim of the present study was to investigate our understanding of LLS in a foreign language learning context. Therefore, first, we identified the strategy use preferences in the sample and specified the most and least often used strategies among children with different proficiency levels. Second, we examined the children’s LLS use in connexion with their foreign language attitude, proficiency and general school achievement. Our results confirmed some results from previous studies and also established new relationships among the variables.

Regarding the general strategy use preferences of the sample, the students reported moderate use of the six strategy categories. The use of indirect strategies, more precisely, metacognitive, affective and social strategies, was the highest in Year 5, while metacognitive, cognitive and social strategies were the most frequently employed in Year 8. These findings shed light on the different preferences among the different ages and proficiency levels. While affective strategies play a significant role in Year 5, cognitive strategies become more dominant later. Metacognitive and social strategies remained the most frequently used in both Years. Our result is consistent with those reported by Dawadi (2017) who discovered similar strategy preferences. We can also reinforce Alhaysony’s (2017) results that high school sample did not engage in affective strategies, and Charoento’s (2016) findings about the low use of memory strategies.

We also examined the differences in strategy use among students with different proficiency levels in both Years. In Year 5 the research findings analysis demonstrated significant differences among strategy uses in four areas: the memory, cognitive, metacognitive and social fields. We noted no significant differences among children in compensation and affective strategies. As regards memory strategies, we observed that low-achieving children rarely employed them. Low achievers used cognitive strategies significantly less often than good and high performers. As our results showed, the most excellent learners are also metacognitive strategy users, and they engage in social strategies significantly very often. In Year 8, we observed significant differences in every field among children with different proficiencies. As in Year 5, the use of metacognitive and social strategies was the most frequent among the high-achieving students; however, cognitive strategy use was also relatively high. Charoento (2016) and Rao (2016) reported the same results, so we can confirm his previous research outcomes that high achievers avail themselves of strategies significantly more frequently than low-performing learners.

We also investigated the relationship between LLS and foreign language attitude, LLS and the foreign language mark, and LLS and general school achievement. According to our results, we found that children who prefer foreign language learning reported significantly higher strategy use. As regards foreign language marks, the relationships between different kinds of strategy users and their foreign language marks were low. Children with high proficiency did not necessarily employ each of the strategies at a higher rate. The same result was reached by Chen (2009) . The relationship between affective strategies and school achievement was not significant. We observed that children who use LLS have positive attitudes toward language learning. So our findings partly confirmed previous results reported by Jabbari and Golkar (2014) and Platsidou and Kantaridou (2014) .

Concerning the impact of strategy use on foreign language learning attitudes, proficiency and general school achievement. In Year 5 the effect of the questionnaire fields on foreign language attitude was considerably high; attitudes were strongly influenced by metacognitive strategies, and the effect of social strategies was also high. While memory and cognitive strategies showed positive paths to attitudes, compensation and affective strategies indicated negative effects on attitudes. Foreign language attitudes signified the same effect on foreign language marks as these marks did on general achievement. A lower but significant effect of metacognitive strategies was found on general school achievement in Year 5.

In Year 8, we found similar tendencies. The effect of metacognitive strategies on foreign language attitudes was very high, while that of memory strategies was low. The effect of social strategies was lost in Year 8. The impact of foreign language attitude on the foreign language mark was almost the same as in Year 5, but that of the foreign language mark on general school achievement was twice as high. Shawer (2016) likewise highlighted what our results have also shown: strategy use has a significant effect on general school achievement. Metacognitive strategies also had a direct effect on foreign language marks. On the whole, not only did we observe a strong use of metacognitive strategies, but the effect of metacognitive strategies on attitudes was also dominant in both years. Moreover, metacognitive strategies influenced school achievement in Year 5 and foreign language marks in Year 8.

To sum up, our results demonstrated that like other studies, our Hungarian sample showed significant preferences for metacognitive strategy use. Compensatory strategies were the least frequently preferred in Year 5 and memory strategies were the least common in Year 8, a finding which also reinforced previous research outcomes ( Doró and Habók, 2013 ). We observed significant differences between more and less proficient students in strategy use. In line with other research ( Platsidou and Kantaridou, 2014 ), we conclude that more proficient learners avail themselves of a broader range of strategies than less proficient students and strategy use has a significant effect on foreign language marks.

The research focused on the whole language process in connexion with several other factors among young students. The added value of our research is not only that we discovered relationships between factors required for foreign language learning, but direct and indirect underlying effects have also been brought to light through path analysis. These analyses provide a comprehensive view both of the dominant role of metacognitive strategies and of the foreign language learning process generally.

In spite of its value, the study has certain limitations. First, we employed a self-report instrument for data collection which does not address students’ deeper views on learning. Qualitative methods would make it possible to gain a more detailed understanding of foreign language learning through interviews, including think-aloud procedures and classroom observations. Second, the current research into LLS and proficiency among Hungarian students was conducted with participants from two different years at the lower secondary school level, so generalisation of the results is limited. In addition, our sample was not representative. Further research would be necessary to fully examine the relationship between language learning strategies, language learning attitudes, foreign language proficiency and general achievement among Hungarian students in a variety of years and in a larger sample.

Third, the current research only used two measurement points of proficiency, the foreign language mark and general achievement, which are evaluated by different teachers. In future, we will collect a wider range of language proficiency data, including language proficiency test and interviews. Fourth, a comparison of LLS and general learning strategies would produce a more nuanced overview of students’ strategy use.

Conclusion and Pedagogical Implications

The main purpose of the present study was to ascertain the effect of LLS on other variables, such as foreign language attitude, foreign language proficiency and general school achievement among secondary school children in Hungary at the beginning and end of lower secondary school. In the beginner phase of learning foreign languages, it is important to better understand the relationship between language learning and related factors. Hence, our main objective was to provide a complex overview of these measurement points and to examine how LLS can support children in the first phase of the language learning process.

We used the Hungarian translation of Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning questionnaire and supplemented it with the children’s self-reports of their foreign language attitudes and proficiency indicated by their foreign language mark and school achievement. This provided the basis for our research.

Past research has demonstrated that students with more frequent LLS use have better chances to become more proficient language learners. It has been pointed out that students that are more proficient engage in a wider range of strategies and select learning strategies dependent on learning tasks. Thus, teachers are encouraged to introduce a range of strategies for children to be able to select those that are most appropriate to features of their personality and relevant to learning tasks. At this age, introducing LLS is significant, particularly for children with low and average foreign language marks. It would be essential to motivate children to discover a variety of ways to practise their foreign language and find opportunities to read and engage in conversations with others. Children who are able to recognise the significance of language learning and use a broad range of strategies can find new ways and opportunities to practise language and to improve their proficiency. Hence, it would be highly recommended to integrate LLS consciously into foreign language lessons.

Ethics Statement

This study was carried out in accordance with the recommendations of the University of Szeged. According to these recommendations participation in the study was voluntary both for schools and students. The participating schools had consent with the parents in allowing their students’ engagement in the research. According to the Hungarian law, the schools’ responsibility to conduct a written agreement with the parents about their consent to allow their children to take part in researches. The whole process is permitted and coordinated by the school holding municipalities. The agreements are documented and stored in written forms in the schools. The authors declare that data collection and handling strictly adhered to the usual standards of research ethics as approved by the University of Szeged.

Author Contributions

AH and AM substantially contributed to the conception and design of the study, data collection, analysis and interpretation of data for the research. Both have written the manuscript and reviewed all parts of the manuscript. AH and AM have given final approval of the final version to be published. AH and AM agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

The research was founded by the University of Szeged.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords : language learning strategy, foreign language attitude, foreign language mark, general school achievement, lower secondary students

Citation: Habók A and Magyar A (2018) The Effect of Language Learning Strategies on Proficiency, Attitudes and School Achievement. Front. Psychol. 8:2358. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02358

Received: 06 July 2017; Accepted: 26 December 2017; Published: 11 January 2018.

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*Correspondence: Anita Habók, [email protected]

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Princeton Correspondents on Undergraduate Research

Research Papers in Foreign Languages

As the simultaneously dreaded and much-awaited Dean’s Date comes around again, many of us find ourselves writing final research papers for our foreign language classes. Conducting research and writing a long paper in a language in which we are not fully fluent is both harder and very different from writing one in our native language. Personally, I have spent the past few days writing a paper for French 307 discussing the ethics of weapons development, a fairly technical subject which presented a number of challenges.

The first challenge was conducting the research in French. As a beginner in this area, I found it difficult to launch directly into Google.fr searches for exclusively French texts. I was lacking the relevant technical vocabulary for my subject, so I simply did not know what keywords to search and oftentimes could not entirely understand the papers I found. After floundering a bit, I found that the best way to go about the research was to alternate between French and English sources—initially, I might read an English source to get an idea of what I was looking for, and then I would search for a similar one in French. Reading the two in parallel allowed me to develop a better understanding of the French vocabulary required. As I built up my knowledge, I was able to use fewer and fewer English sources to guide me. While I still relied on English sources to give me ideas for what I wanted more in-depth information on (after all, there aren’t too many articles in French about US Department of Defense projects), I found myself using them just as a jumping-off point, rather than as a crutch to help me understand the French sources.

The next challenge was writing the actual paper. Most people in the early stages of learning a foreign language will simply write the paper in their native language and then translate it directly. However, as we reach proficiency, we tend to become more comfortable writing directly in the language. Nevertheless, this is no easy task, even if it produces better results than a direct translation. As such, it is very important to write a good outline—in either language—so that you have an organized plan for your writing. Then, it is a matter of slowly piecing together the general concept of what you want to say and the vocabulary and nuances of the foreign language that most accurately convey your message. It is important not to adhere too strictly to a certain phrasing you might have in your head, as this may not directly translate in the other language and will instead obscure the meaning you wish to convey. Rather, construct the message first, and then figure out, directly in the foreign language, how you can best describe it.

Writing a paper in another language is challenging, but ultimately extremely rewarding. It forces you to expand your vocabulary and comprehension in that language, and to think more creatively and flexibly about your own writing. It is an exercise that can improve your writing in your native language as well, as you learn to find more creative and subtle ways to express a message. The skills learned through this process can be very useful in the future—you never know when the perfect source for your topic might be in another language, and mastering the ability to find and comprehend foreign language sources now can help you tremendously in the future.

–Alexandra Koskosidis, Engineering Correspondent

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Learning a Foreign Language: A Review on Recent Findings About Its Effect on the Enhancement of Cognitive Functions Among Healthy Older Individuals

Currently, there is an increasing number of older population groups, especially in developed countries. This demographic trend, however, may cause serious problems, such as an increase in aging diseases, one of which is dementia whose main symptom consists in the decline of cognitive functioning. Although there has been ongoing pharmacological research on this neurological disorder, it has not brought satisfying results as far as its treatment is concerned. Therefore, governments all over the world are trying to develop alternative, non-pharmacological strategies/activities, which could help to prevent this cognitive decline while this aging population is still healthy in order to reduce future economic and social burden. One of the non-pharmacological approaches, which may enhance cognitive abilities and protect against the decline in healthy older population, seems to be the learning of a foreign language. The purpose of this mini-review article is to discuss recent findings about the effect of foreign language learning on the enhancement of cognitive functions among healthy older individuals. The findings, divided into three research areas, show that the learning of a foreign language may generate a lot of benefits for older individuals, such as enhancement of cognitive functioning, their self-esteem, increased opportunities of socializing, or reduction of costs. However, as Ware et al. ( 2017 ) indicate, any intervention program on foreign language learning should be well thought of and tailored to the needs of older people in order to be effective and avoid accompanying factors, such as older people’s anxiety or low self-confidence. Nevertheless, more empirical studies should be done in this area.

Introduction

The population is aging. For example, in Europe, older people aged 65+ years form 18% of the whole population. It is expected that by 2050, the older population will outnumber the young population in many developed countries (Statista, 2017 ). This demographic trend, however, may cause serious problems, such as an increase in aging diseases, one of which is dementia whose main symptom consists in the decline of cognitive functioning. This is connected with the brain atrophy, particularly in the temporal cortex, the region that is related to declarative memory (see Buckner, 2004 ), which is encoded by the hippocampus, entorhinal cortex and perirhinal cortex, loss of synaptic connections (Maston, 2010 ), and the occurrence of neuropathological symptoms associated with dementia (see Antoniou and Wright, 2017 ). Although there has been ongoing pharmacological research on this neurological disorder, it has not brought satisfying results as far as its treatment is concerned (Karakaya et al., 2013 ).

Therefore, governments all over the world are trying to develop alternative, non-pharmacological strategies/activities, which could help to prevent this cognitive decline while this aging population is still healthy in order to reduce future economic and social burden (Maresova et al., 2016 ). These alternative, non-pharmacological intervention therapies can be divided into several groups, which have a positive impact on the enhancement of cognitive functions: physical activities, cognitive training, healthy diet (see Klimova and Kuca, 2015 ), as well as social enhancement interventions (see Ballesteros et al., 2015 ), including the use of modern information and communication technologies (Peter et al., 2013 ; Ballesteros et al., 2014 ). One of the cognitive training activities, which may enhance cognitive abilities and protect against the decline in healthy older population, seems to be the learning of a foreign language (see Antoniou et al., 2013 ; Kroll and Dussias, 2017 ). As Connor ( 2016 ) points out, learning a foreign language can promote thinking skills, increase mental agility and delay the aging of the brain. However, as Kurdziel et al. ( 2017 ) explain, the retrieval of new words among older people is harder since their fluid intelligence (i.e., the ability to reason and solve things), as well as the working, short-term, memory (i.e., management of immediately available information) are getting affected in the course of aging. On the contrary, their crystallized intelligence (i.e., the ability to use experience, knowledge and skills) remain intact in the aging process (see Kavé et al., 2008 ). Kurdziel et al. ( 2017 ) also state that the decline in language ability among older people is slower than the decline in global memory. In addition, older individuals possess a superior raw vocabulary even if compared with well-educated adults of young generation. In addition, foreign language learning does not have any side effect (Bak, 2016 ) and can help reduce country’s economic burden (Bialystok et al., 2016 ). Simply, it does not do any harm (see Strauss, 2015 ). Abutalebi and Clahsen ( 2015 ) present that knowledge about language processing in older individuals and about the potential factors that prevent cognitive decline is currently very much desirable since it may contribute to preparing for the demographic changes which our society faces.

The purpose of this mini-review article is to discuss recent findings about the effect of foreign language learning on the enhancement of cognitive functions among healthy older individuals.

The methodology of this mini-review article is based on Moher et al. ( 2009 ). Studies were selected on the basis of the following keyword collocations: healthy aging and foreign language learning ; healthy older individuals and foreign language learning , healthy older individuals and bilingualism , found in the world’s acknowledged databases: Web of Science, PubMed, Scopus and ScienceDirect. The search was not limited by time since the studies on the research topic were scarce. Altogether 43 studies, including both review and original articles, were detected, most of them were identified in ScienceDirect and Web of Science, followed by PubMed and Scopus. The analysis was done by identifying the key words and checking duplication of available sources in the databases mentioned above. Afterwards, the studies were assessed for their relevancy, i.e., verification on the basis of abstracts whether the selected study corresponds to the set goal. After the exclusion of such studies, 26 studies remained for the full-text analysis. Out of 26 studies, 12 were empirical or randomized control studies, which are in detail described in Table ​ Table1. 1 . The review studies (e.g., Antoniou et al., 2013 ; Lee and Tzeng, 2016 ; Kurdziel et al., 2017 ), the studies dealing with the younger adults (e.g., Schlegel et al., 2012 ; Bellander et al., 2016 ) and the studies with patients suffering from dementia, respectively Alzheimer’s disease (e.g., Woumans et al., 2015 ; Bialystok et al., 2016 ) were used for comparison reasons. Moreover, the author also explored websites connected with the research topic, e.g., SeniorsMatter ( 2017 ).

An overview of the detected empirical studies on the effect of foreign language learning on the enhancement of cognitive functions among healthy older individuals.

Findings and Their Discussion

As it has been stated in the “Methods” section, there is a lack of studies on the learning of a foreign language and its effect on the enhancement of cognitive functioning in older people, apart from those on bilingualism (see Klimova et al., 2017a ). Overall, the identified studies can be divided into three main areas: studies concerning the brain plasticity in the old age and foreign language learning; studies focused on foreign language learning among healthy older individuals; and studies aimed at bilingualism and healthy aging, including the electrophysiological studies. All of them also discuss the cognitive aspects.

Plasticity of the Brain in the Old Age and Foreign Language Learning

The brain remains with considerable plasticity even in the old age. Although there is some neural deterioration that rises with age, the brain has the capacity to increase neural activity and develop neural scaffolding to regulate cognitive function (Park and Reuter-Lorenz, 2009 ; Reuter-Lorenz and Park, 2014 ). For example, Cheng et al. ( 2015 ) maintain that both short-term and long-term period of foreign language learning may lead to the changes in the structure of the brain, which consequently may contribute to the promotion of the cognitive reserve, i.e., the resilience to neuropathological damage of the brain (Stern, 2013 ). This has been also confirmed by Lee and Tzeng ( 2016 ), who claim that foreign language learning results in effective structural as well as functional connectivity in the brain due to neural plasticity. They indicate that the effective connectivity due to foreign language learning enhances the capacity for language processing and general executive control by reorganizing neural circuitries. Furthermore, research shows that foreign language learning has a positive impact on both white and gray matter structures (see Bellander et al., 2016 ). For instance, Schlegel et al. ( 2012 ) in their randomized controlled study with 11 English speakers (average age of 20 years) who took a 9-month intensive course in written and spoken Modern Standard Chinese and 16 controls who did not study a language reported that the plasticity of the white matter played a significant role in adult language learning. Although their adult learners showed progressive changes in white matter tracts, associated with traditional left hemisphere language areas and their right hemisphere analogs, the most important changes appeared in frontal lobe tracts crossing the genu of the corpus callosum-a region, which is not generally involved in current neural models of language processing. Tyler et al. ( 2010 ) in their study on preserved syntactic processing across the life span, argue that this is caused by the shift from a primarily left hemisphere frontotemporal system to a bilateral functional language network. In addition, Connor ( 2016 ) described a study of retired people doing an intensive language course of 5 h a day on the Isle of Skye to learn Gaelic (see Bak et al., 2016 ). After finishing the course, the scientists discovered these people were more mentally agile than those doing a course on something else. As Antoniou et al. ( 2013 ) indicate, foreign language training may engage a larger brain network than other forms of cognitive training that have been investigated (e.g., math and crossword puzzles), and it is likely to require long distance neural connections. However, not all the findings on the plasticity o the brain and aging process are positive. For instance, the controlled study by Ramos et al. ( 2017 ) maintains that the switching ability (i.e., the ability to shift attention between one task and another) was not enhanced by learning a foreign language, in this case Basque language, among elderly Spanish people.

Foreign Language Learning Among Healthy Older Individuals

In the most recent study on foreign language learning and its effect on cognitive functioning, Ware et al. ( 2017 ) developed a technology-based English training program for older French adults. The program was based on the assumptions provided by Antoniou et al. ( 2013 ). These assumptions involved various factors, such as that computer-based language training can be administered anywhere and at any time to suit learner’s needs, the content can be adjusted and items can be repeated. In addition, learners can socialize. The average age of the participants was 75 years. The course lasted for 4 months and consisted of 16 2-h sessions. The researchers used standardized tests for measuring cognitive functions (Montreal Cognitive Assessment), as well as University of California Loneliness Assessment for measuring subjective feelings of loneliness and social isolation, both of which did not significantly change after finishing the course. Nevertheless, the researchers found out that their program was feasible for this age group and the participants enjoyed it. Similarly, research performed by Bak et al. ( 2016 ) on a short 1-week Scottish Gaelic course on attentional functions among 67 adults aged between 18 years and 78 years reveals that even a short period of intensive language learning can modulate attentional functions and that all age groups can benefit from this effect. The results showed that at the beginning there was no difference between the groups. However, at the end of the course, a considerable improvement in attention switching was detected in the language group ( p < 0.001) but not the control group ( p = 0.127), independent of the age of subjects. In addition, they also suggested that these short-term effects could be maintained through continuous practice, but the minimum study period should be 5 h a week.

Research also indicates that the age in second language acquisition is not such a significant factor, but the length of exposure to the target language is important (Bialystok, 1997 ). In fact, on the one hand, it might take older people longer and more practice to learn a foreign language in the old age because of difficulty distinguishing new sounds and retrieve novel words, but on the other hand, they are more relaxed and motivated to learn (see SeniorsMatter, 2017 ). As it has been already pointed out, the main problem for older people is to retrieve new words (see Kurdziel et al., 2017 ). However, they are able to retain these new words easily if they are provided in the context. Kurdziel et al. ( 2017 ) also revealed that newly learned words were stored in hippocampus during encoding and then integrated into lexicon in the course of sleeping. Nevertheless, the quality of sleeping is often negatively affected in the old age and therefore older people are not able to retain as many words as their younger counterparts whose sleeping period is higher and unbroken.

Diaz-Orueta et al. ( 2012 ) report that the main stimulation for older people to learn a foreign language is a challenge, socialization, fun, providing learning opportunities and escape from daily routine. Moreover, the older individuals might also have experience of learning a foreign language, which can help them in acquiring a new language (see Singleton and Lengyel, 1995 ).

Kurdziel et al. ( 2017 ) expand by suggesting that learning throughout aging should be a must because older people who keep mentally and physically active are less likely to be cognitively impaired and depressed. In fact, depression seems to be one of the most serious comorbidities in the aging process (Popa-Wagner et al., 2014 ; Sandu et al., 2015 ). Furthermore, foreign language learning increases self-confidence, enables older people travel and communicate with their peers in foreign countries.

Bilingualism and Healthy Aging

The theory of bilingualism states that people acquiring a second language in their adulthood may prevent cognitive decline in later life by approximately 4.5 years (see Bialystok et al., 2007 , 2016 ; Bak et al., 2014 ; Wilson et al., 2015 ; Woumans et al., 2015 ). In their recent study, on the basis of measures of cognitive function and brain structure, Bialystok et al. ( 2016 ) show that bilingualism can delay cognitive decline. As Bialystok et al. ( 2004 ) and Bialystok ( 2006 ) state, bilingualism contributes to compensate age-related losses in certain executive processes. Furthermore, bilingual people possess better mental flexibility because they are used to adapting to constant changes and processing information in a more effective way than the monolingual individuals. However, these results especially concern the retrospective studies on bilingualism since the prospective studies on bilingualism, such as Lawton et al. ( 2015 ), Sanders et al. ( 2012 ), Yeung et al. ( 2014 ), or Zahodne et al. ( 2014 ), have not exerted significant results in this respect (see Klimova et al., 2017a ). For instance, Mukadam et al. ( 2017 ) in the most recent study revealed that retrospective studies inclined to confounding by education, or cultural differences in presentation to dementia and are thus not relevant to set causative links between risk factors and results. However, the electrophysiological studies on bilingualism indicate that bilingualism may enhance cognitive functions among healthy older individuals (i.e., Kousaie and Phillips, 2017 ). Moreover, as Ansaldo et al. ( 2015 ) state, healthy older bilinguals deal with interference control without recruiting a circuit that is particularly vulnerable to aging.

Table ​ Table1 1 below then summarizes the main findings of the studies on the effect of foreign language learning on the enhancement of cognitive functions for healthy older individuals.

The limitations of this mini-review study mainly involve a lack of relevant studies on the research topic. This fact may cause the overestimated effects of the results, which may have an adverse impact on the validity of these reviewed studies (see Melby-Lervåg and Hulme, 2016 ).

Overall, some of the findings in Table ​ Table1, 1 , as well as from other mentioned studies indicate that the learning of a foreign language may generate benefits for older individuals, such as enhancement of cognitive functioning (Bak et al., 2014 , 2016 ; Ansaldo et al., 2015 ; Kousaie and Phillips, 2017 ) their self-esteem (Ware et al., 2017 ), or increased opportunities of socializing (Diaz-Orueta et al., 2012 ; Ballesteros et al., 2015 ). Bialystok et al. ( 2016 ) also emphasize that second-language learning has long-term implications for public health in terms of cost-effectiveness. In addition, as Ware et al. ( 2017 ) indicate, any intervention program on foreign language learning should be well thought of and tailored to the needs of older people in order to be effective and avoid accompanying factors, such as older people’s anxiety or low self-confidence.

In comparison with the intervention studies focusing on physical activities (see Klimova et al., 2017b ), there is still smaller evidence of the effect of foreign language learning on the enhancement of cognitive functions among the healthy aging population. This is especially caused by a lack of research in this area.

Author Contributions

BK drafted, analyzed, wrote and read the whole manuscript herself.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Funding. This article is supported by the project Excellence (2018) at the Faculty of Informatics and Management of the University of Hradec Králové, Czechia.

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The foreign language effect on decision-making: A meta-analysis

• Theoretical Review
• Published: 08 February 2021
• Volume 28 , pages 1131–1141, ( 2021 )

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• Riccardo Circi   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8842-5462 1   na1 ,
• Daniele Gatti 2   na1 ,
• Vincenzo Russo 1 &
• Tomaso Vecchi 2 , 3  

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In recent years, a growing body of literature has shown that being in a foreign language (FL) context affects the way in which people make choices. This phenomenon is known as the foreign language effect (FLE). The FLE affects both moral decision-making and risk-aversion tendencies, but no cumulative evidence is available. Herein, we aimed to estimate, through a meta-analytical approach, the effect of being in an FL context as compared with that of a native language (NL). We found 17 studies matching our criteria and, in total, 47 experiments were included ( N = 38 investigated the FLE in the moral decision-making domain; N = 9 investigated the FLE in the risk-aversion domain). Results showed that FL affects participants’ decisions as compared with NL in both the moral decision-making and risk-aversion domains, inducing participants to be more willing to accept harm in order to maximize outcomes in the former and reducing risk aversion in the latter. In addition, two metaregressions were performed on the studies that investigated the moral decision-making domain in order to assess whether participants’ proficiency in the FL, or NL–FL similarity, moderated the observed effect. Our findings indicate that proficiency in the FL does not moderate the observed effect, while NL–FL similarity does. Our results support previous findings on the FLE and provide suggestions for future research.

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Introduction

In recent years, a growing body of literature has shown that being in a foreign language (FL) context affects people’s decision-making (for a review, see Hadjichristidis, Geipel, & Keysar, 2019 ). This phenomenon was first described by Keysar, Hayakawa, and An ( 2012 ) and is known as the foreign language effect (FLE). The authors found that a group of participants who answered the Asian disease dilemma in an FL exhibited less framing effect than those who answered the dilemma using their native language (NL). The Asian disease problem, first proposed by Tversky and Kahneman ( 1981 ), describes an epidemic which, without treatment, would have severe consequences (e.g., death of 600 people). Generally, in the Asian disease problem, participants have to choose between a safe option and a risky option to deal with an epidemic. Interestingly, Tversky and Kahneman ( 1981 ) found that participants’ judgements are influenced by how the two options are presented. That is, options could be presented in a gain frame (e.g., “If you choose Option A, 200 people will be saved; if you choose Option B, there is 1/3 probability that 600 people will be saved, and 2/3 probability that no people will be saved”) or in a loss frame (e.g., “If you choose Option A, 400 people will die; if you choose Option B, there is 1/3 probability that nobody will die, and 2/3 probability that 600 people will die”). In the gain frame condition, participants tend to choose the safe option (i.e., Option A); on the contrary, in the loss frame condition, participants tend to choose the risky option (i.e., Option B; Tversky & Kahneman, 1981 ). It is important to point out that expected values of Options A and B are the same in the gain frame and in the loss frame. Therefore, the different pattern of responses in the two framing is considered a violation of the rules of rational choice, according to which the choices should be based only on the expected values and not on the framing in which options are described (Von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1947 ). Critically, manipulating language presentation, Keysar et al. ( 2012 ) found that when the Asian disease problem is presented in an FL, the framing effect is reduced, and in both framing participants tend to choose the safe option in similar extent.

Several other studies have investigated the FLE, both by replicating the phenomenon on the framing effect (Costa, Foucart, Arnon, Aparici, & Apesteguia, 2014a ; Winskel, Ratitamkul, Brambley, Nagarachinda, & Tiencharoen, 2016 ) or by addressing the impact of the use of an FL on other aspects of decision-making: It has been shown that using an FL reduces risk aversion (Costa, Foucart, Arnon, et al., 2014a ; Hayakawa, Tannenbaum, Costa, Corey, & Keysar, 2017b ), longevity of the repetition truth bias (Nadarevic, Plier, Thielmann, & Darancó, 2018 ), self-serving bias (Van Hugten & van Witteloostuijn, 2018 ), causality bias (Díaz-Lago & Matute, 2018 ), and the hot-hand fallacy (Gao, Zika, Rogers, & Thierry, 2015 ). Similarly, participants who use an FL have a lesser tendency to lie and dishonestly inflate their earnings as compared with participants who use their NL (Bereby-Meyer et al., 2018 ). Furthermore, reading the descriptions of disgusting but healthy and sustainable products (e.g., biscuits made with worm meal) in an FL increases the declared willingness to consume them (Geipel, Hadjichristidis, & Klesse, 2018 ).

In addition, many studies on the FLE have addressed how being in an FL context can affect decision-making when there is the possibility to accept harm in order to maximize outcomes. It has been shown that presenting participants with an FL version of the footbridge dilemma leads participants to be more willing to sacrifice one life in order to save five in a hypothetical scenario (Costa, Foucart, Hayakawa, et al., 2014b ) . Many other studies have shown that people are typically more willing to accept harm in order to maximize outcomes when encountering dilemmas written or spoken in an FL (Brouwer, 2019 ; Cipolletti, McFarlane, & Weissglass, 2016 ; Costa, Foucart, Hayakawa, et al., 2014b ; Geipel, Hadjichristidis, & Surian, 2015a , 2015b , 2016 ).

The growing interest in literature on the FLE has led to the formulation of several explanatory hypotheses. In the following sections we discuss some of the main ones.

The role of cognitive control

Although robust evidence has been reported for the FLE, the underlying cognitive mechanisms are not yet clear. It has been proposed that two systems are involved in decision-making processes—a fast, intuitive, automatic, and affective system (System 1), and another which is deliberate and rational but also more effortful (System 2; Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom, & Cohen, 2008 ; Kahneman, 2003 ; Stanovich & West, 2000 ). Within this perspective, one of the possible explanations of the FLE is related to a reduced reliance on System 1 and/or an increased reliance on System 2. Indeed, Kahneman ( 2011 ) argued that every element that increases cognitive tension, such as processing dilemmas in an FL, could favor the processes of System 2, reducing the impact of System 1. Thus, the reduced tendency to be influenced by cognitive biases when reading dilemmas in an FL would be explained by an enhanced cognitive control. However, other studies have shown that being in an FL context does not reduce cognitive biases when participants are presented with emotional neutral tasks (e.g., the cognitive reflection test; the Moses illusion task; Costa, Foucart, Arnon, et al., 2014a ; Geipel et al., 2015a ; Mækelæ & Pfuhl, 2019 ), and can make people more prone to outcome bias (Geipel et al., 2016 ; but cf. Costa et al., 2018 , which found no evidence of increased outcome bias in moral judgments using an FL). Within the moral decision-making domain, the FLE could be interpreted as a greater preference for utilitarian options (driven by controlled cognitive processes) over deontological options (driven by automatic emotional responses) when moral dilemmas are presented in an FL. Nevertheless, through employing a process dissociation approach (Conway & Gawronski, 2013 ; Jacoby, 1991 ) to independently assess deontological and utilitarian response inclinations, it has been shown that reading dilemmas in an FL reduces deontological tendencies without enhancing utilitarian tendencies (Hayakawa, Tannenbaum, et al., 2017), or reduces both deontological and utilitarian inclinations (Muda, Niszczota, Białek, & Conway, 2018 ).

It has also been shown that language switching can enhance cognitive control (Wu & Thierry, 2013 ), leading to the hypothesis that the FLE could be due to the language switching required in order to comprehend instructions in one language and perform the task in another (Oganian, Korn, & Heekeren, 2016 ). However, other studies have failed to replicate this finding (Corey et al., 2017 ; Driver, 2020 ).

The role of emotions

Another possible explanation is that the FLE is caused by a dampened emotionality of scenarios when these are presented in an FL. This perspective is consistent with a large body of literature, according to which an FL is perceived as less emotional than an NL (for a review, see Caldwell-Harris, 2015 ; Pavlenko, 2012 , 2017 ). While the NL is acquired in an emotionally rich and naturalistic context, an FL is often acquired in a classroom context, therefore, in an emotionally neutral context and beyond that critical period within which the emotions are associated with the morphological, orthographic, and semantic aspects of words. Similarly, it has been proposed that the reduced emotionality of the FL might concern words with a negative value, as conversations in the FL are generally centered on emotionally positive exchanges, leading to greater probability of being incorporated during the acquisition of an FL (Boucher & Osgood, 1969 ; for recent experimental evidence, see Foroni, 2015 ; Jończyk, Korolczuk, Balatsou, & Thierry, 2019 ; Sheikh & Titone, 2016 ; Wu & Thierry, 2012 ). Thus, frequency of use, acquisition order, linguistic dominance, context of acquisition, age of acquisition, and proficiency are considered as key aspects affecting the perceived emotionality of language (Boucher & Osgood, 1969 ; Dewaele, 2004 ; Pavlenko, 2004 , 2012 ). Consistent with this theory, it has been shown that moral judgments are harsher in people with a higher FL proficiency (Geipel et al., 2015a ) and early bilinguals show no FLE (Brouwer, 2019 ; Čavar & Tytus, 2017 ; Wong & Ng, 2018 ), probably because higher linguistic competence and earlier age of acquisition increase the emotional impact of the FL, making it closer to that of the NL. Nevertheless, the absence of the FLE in early bilinguals is debated (Białek & Fugelsang, 2019 ; Brouwer, 2020 ). The modality in which dilemmas are presented (written or auditory) can influence the extent to which the FLE occurs in highly proficient bilinguals (Brouwer, 2019 , 2020 ).

The role of social norms and linguistic similarity

It has been proposed that the FLE in the moral decision-making domain could be due to a reduced activation of social and moral norms and not only by an attenuation of emotions, since dampened emotionality related to the use of an FL also occurs in dilemmas not affected by the FLE (i.e., trolley dilemma; Geipel et al., 2015b ). That is, the use of an FL could limit the access to relevant autobiographical memories (including normative knowledge) that keep traces of the linguistic context in which they were learned (i.e., NL). Thus, participants could be more willing to violate a social norm (e.g., “Do not cause harm to anybody”) in order to maximize outcomes (e.g., causing a one-person death in order to save five people). This explanation is supported by recent work that demonstrated that sensitivity to norms is reduced while reading moral dilemmas in an FL (Białek, Paruzel-Czachura, & Gawronski, 2019 ).

Recent studies have also shown that NL–FL similarity could be another relevant factor in determining the FLE (Dylman & Champoux-Larsson, 2020 ; Miozzo et al., 2020 ): When the FL has a strong cultural influence (e.g., the English language in Sweden) or the NL and FL are linguistically similar (e.g., the Norwegian language and the Swedish language), the FLE does not occur, despite a significant difference in proficiency between NL and FL.

Many other studies are required to shed light on the FLE and underlying mechanisms, given the implications that this phenomenon could have in all those international contexts in which crucial decisions are made using an FL. However, any discussion on the implications of the FLE should also take the effect size into consideration. To the best of our knowledge, there are no published meta-analyses on the FLE that has addressed issues like effect size, heterogeneity, and publication bias. Herein, we cover this lack in the literature, giving both a contribution to future research and insight on the implication of the FLE outside of the laboratory environment.

Material and methods

Study selection and inclusion criteria.

To identify potential studies for inclusion in the meta-analysis, we first conducted a systematic literature search using the scientific online database Scopus. The time window of our literature search was from January 2012 to December 2020. Search criteria were set as: ((FLE) OR (foreign language effect)) AND ((moral dilemma) OR (decision making)).

The inclusion criteria adopted were (a) between-subject study design; (b) direct comparison between the NL group and FL group Footnote 1 ; (c) sample composed by bilinguals living in their L1 country; (d) proficiency level explicitly reported; (e) absence of switching between instruction and materials language; (f) experiments that compared risk aversion or moral decision-making in the NL group and FL group. It should be noted that in the moral decision-making domain we included personal dilemmas that assessed the willingness to violate a social norm in order to maximize utility.

The literature search identified 125 articles. After full-text examination, we found 17 studies matching our criteria. If a study included more than one experiment, in our data set that study had as many rows as experiments. The effect size was calculated separately for each experiment. In total, 47 experiments were included (see Table 1 ).

The studies included in our meta-analysis were conducted between 2012 and 2020. The sample size varied from 18 to 800. Of the 47 experiments included, 38 investigated the FLE in the moral decision-making domain and nine in the risk-aversion domain. Participants’ NL was Spanish in 12 experiments, English in seven, German in five, Polish in five, Italian in three, Korean in three, Chinese in three, Dutch in three, Swedish in three, Thai in one, Norwegian in one, and Spanish/English with mixed sample in one. By contrast, the most frequently used FL was English (in 32 experiments), while the other languages were: Spanish in six, French in three, German in two, Swedish in one, Norwegian in one, Hebrew in one, and English/German in one.

Effect size calculation

Answers related to risk aversion and outcome maximization obtained in an FL condition as compared with an NL condition were our dependent variables of interest for “risk domain” and for “moral decision-making” meta-analyses, respectively. From each study we extracted NL, FL, sample size, participants’ proficiency in the FL, and the mean and standard deviation of participants’ performance in the various conditions for the variable of interest.

The effect size used was Hedges’s g (Borenstein, Hedges, Higgins, & Rothstein, 2009 ), which is a standardized mean difference that accounts for sampling variance difference between conditions. Effect size and variance calculation were performed using RStudio (RStudio Team, 2015 ) and its package compute.es (Del Re, 2013 ). The package compute.es uses as conversion formulas those reported by Cooper, Hedges, and Valentine ( 2009 ).

When more than one NL or FL per study were employed, the experiments were separated in multiple rows, (i.e., multiple NL vs. multiple FL), where possible. If, within one experiment (i.e., with the same sample), more than one effect was reported, the effect sizes were aggregated using RStudio (RStudio Team, 2015 ) and its package MAd (Del Re & Hoyt, 2014 ) using the function agg .

Data analysis

In order to assess whether performing a task in an FL modulates participants’ answers, and to quantify the effect of the modulation, we performed two separate meta-analyses with a random-effects method, one for each domain (i.e., moral decision-making or risk). We also performed two meta-regressions on the studies that investigated the moral decision-making domain in order to assess whether participants’ proficiency Footnote 2 in the FL or if NL–FL similarity (cf. Dylman & Champoux-Larsson, 2020 ; Miozzo et al., 2020 ) moderated the observed effect. In particular, those languages that belonged to the same linguistic branch were considered similar (i.e., English and German are both Germanic languages).

We decided not to add the FL as moderator, due to the low number of studies that employed languages different from English. We also chose not to perform a meta-regression on the studies that investigated decisions in the risk domain, due to the low numerosity of each language group.

The within studies heterogeneity was evaluated using the Q test. A significant p value of the Q test implies that the observed within-studies variance can be explained by other variables besides the FLE. In addition, we used Higgins’s I 2 as the index of heterogeneity (Higgins, Thompson, Deeks, & Altman, 2003 ); this provides the percentage of the total variability in the effect size estimation that could be attributed to heterogeneity among the true effects (heterogeneity is considered high if I 2 > 75%; Higgins et al., 2003 ).

The publication bias was evaluated using funnel plots and the trim-and-fill method (Duval, 2005 ). The trim-and-fill method provides an estimate of the number of studies missing from the meta-analysis due to the suppression of the most extreme results on one side (generally the left; i.e., nonsignificant results) of the funnel plot. To further explore the publication bias, the Egger’s test (Egger, Davey Smith, Schneider, & Minder, 1997 ) was performed. The Egger’s test examines the correlation between the various effect sizes and their sampling variances (i.e., if the funnel plot is asymmetric), and a significant p value indicates publication bias (Lin & Chu, 2018 ). To explore the robustness of the results, a fail-safe number of studies was computed to obtain an estimate of how many null studies should be included in order to render the observed effect nonsignificant (Rosenthal, 1979 ). We also performed a leave-one-out analysis; this procedure evaluates the robustness of the effect excluding one study at a time.

The meta-analyses and meta-regressions performed, along with the related plots, were computed using the R-package metafor (Viechtbauer, 2010 ).

Moral decision-making domain

The random effect analysis ( N = 38) showed a small to medium mean effect size, g = .22, 95% CI [.14, .30], z = 5.44, p < .0001, meaning that, compared with the NL, the FL induces participants to be more willing to accept harm in order to maximize outcomes. Total heterogeneity was significant, Q T = 109.19, p < .0001, I 2 = 64.74%, suggesting moderate variance across studies (see Fig. 1 ). However, it should also be noted that Higgins’s I 2 value can be considered medium. The Rosenthal’s fail-safe number was 1,175.

Random effect analysis on studies assessing moral decision-making. For each study, Hedges’s' g and confidence intervals are reported. The cumulative results showed a small to medium effect size

The leave-one-out analysis showed that the effect size was highly robust and ranged between .20 and .23 ( M = .22, SD = .006). The trim-and-fill method added one hypothetical missing study on the left side of the funnel plot (see Fig. 2 ). Adding this hypothetical study, the effect size remained similar, g = .21, 95% CI [.13, .29], z = 5.35, p < .0001, and the heterogeneity remained significant, Q T = 111.20, p < .0001, I 2 = 64.30%. The Egger’s test was not significant, z = .97, p = .32, suggesting no publication bias.

Funnel plot computed using the trim-and-fill method on studies assessing moral decision-making. White dots indicate the hypothetical missing study. Adding this study, the effect size remained small to medium, revealing limited publication bias

The meta-regression performed using participants’ proficiency in the FL as moderator ( N = 38) showed that the test on the moderator was not significant, Footnote 3 χ 2 (1) = .77, p = .37, ẞ = −.004; heterogeneity remained significant, Q T = 109.17, p < .0001, I 2 = 65.21%.

The meta-regression performed using NL–FL similarity as moderator ( N = 38) showed that the test on the moderator was significant, χ 2 (1) = 10.35, p = .001 and accounted for 37.09% of the heterogeneity which, however, remained significant, Q T = 76.82, p < .0001, I 2 = 53.35%. The decrease in heterogeneity suggests that NL–FL similarity plays a role in determining the differences in the effects reported by the various studies.

Critically, when the NL and FL belonged to different linguistic branches (i.e., Spanish vs. English), the effect size was significantly different from zero (see Table 2 ), g = .30, 95% CI [.21, .39], z = 6.91, p < .0001; on the other hand, when the NL and FL belonged to the same linguistic branch (i.e., German vs. English), the effect size was not significantly different from zero, g = .06, 95% CI [−.05, .18], z = −1.07, p = .28.

Risk-aversion domain

The random effect analysis ( N = 9) showed a small to medium mean effect size, g = .28, 95% CI [.17, .39], z = 5.19, p < .0001, meaning that an FL induces less risk aversion as compared with an NL. Total heterogeneity was not significant, Q T = 5.90, p = .82, I 2 = 0%, suggesting that the studies reported similar results (see Fig. 3 ). The Rosenthal’s fail-safe number was 77.

Random effect analysis on studies assessing risk aversion. For each study, Hedges’s' g and confidence intervals are reported. The cumulative results showed a small to medium effect size

The leave-one-out analysis showed that the effect size was highly robust and ranged between .26 and .31 ( M = .28, SD = .01). The trim-and-fill method added no hypothetical missing studies on the left side of the funnel plot (see Fig. 4 ). The Egger’s test was not significant, z = .37, p = .70, suggesting no publication bias.

Funnel plot computed using the trim-and-fill method on studies assessing risk aversion. The white dot indicates the hypothetical missing study. Adding this study, the effect size remained small to medium, revealing limited publication bias

The present study showed that an FL affects participants’ decisions as compared with an NL in both the moral decision-making and risk-aversion domains: Being in an FL context made participants more willing to accept harm in order to maximize outcomes and reduced their risk aversion. The cumulative effects calculated for the moral decision-making domain were robust, but also moderately heterogeneous. Heterogeneity decreased after adding NL-FL similarity as a moderator in the meta-regression, suggesting that NL–FL similarity plays a role in determining the differences in the effects reported by the various studies. On the other hand, with regard to the risk-aversion domain, the effect calculated was robust and the heterogeneity was low, reflecting homogeneity in the task used and in the reported results.

The effect size of the FLE in the included studies varied between small and moderate, both in moral decision-making and in risk-aversion domains, confirming previous findings on the FLE. Critically, the present study also shows how the FLE literature is not distorted by a publication bias.

In the moral decision-making domain, results indicate a moderate heterogeneity, probably due to several factors such as participants’ personality and individual differences, the NL and FL employed (i.e., degree of similarity/difference between them) and the difference in instructions and materials (i.e., in the risk-aversion domain the tasks involve mathematical reasoning to a large extent, while in the moral decision-making domain the task is more linguistically based). The two indices adopted to evaluate heterogeneity suggest different patterns, but the Q test is likely to be overpowered when the number of studies included is high. Thus, Higgins’s I 2 should be a more reliable index of heterogeneity (Higgins et al., 2003 ). Within this perspective, we note that in the meta-analyses reported herein Higgins’s I 2 was always below the threshold of high heterogeneity (i.e., I 2 > 75%; Higgins et al., 2003 ) and that adding NL–FL similarity as moderator accounted for a large part of this. Critically, when the NL and FL belonged to different linguistic branches (i.e., Spanish vs. English) the effect size was significantly different from zero, and when the NL and FL belonged to the same linguistic branch (i.e., German vs. English), the effect was null, consistent with recent evidence (Dylman & Champoux-Larsson, 2020 ; Miozzo et al., 2020 ).

In contrast, our findings also indicate that FL proficiency does not moderate the observed effect. This lack of effect could seem surprising, given the results available in the literature (for a review, see Pavlenko, 2017 ). However, it should be noted that herein we could only evaluate proficiency from a global level (i.e., the mean proficiency of each sample in each experiment), thus reducing the variability of hundreds of participants to one mean value. This approach is likely underpowered, and experimental studies employing mixed effects linear/logistic regressions would better account for participants’ variability in this factor.

In the domain of risk aversion, heterogeneity did not reach significance. This result is probably due to the greater similarity between the methodologies used in the studies that investigated the FLE in this domain. The effect size is very similar in the domain of moral decision-making and in that of risk aversion. This may suggest similar or identical cognitive mechanisms underlying the FLE in those domains. Indeed, the literature suggests that emotions have a pervasive role in both domains (e.g., Hogarth, Portell, Cuxart, & Kolev, 2011 ; Youssef et al., 2012 ) and that emotions are more embodied in the NL (Pavlenko, 2012 ). However, such a conclusion could only be further justified through studies that administer tasks, both in the domain of moral decision-making and in the domain of risk aversion across the same participants, and then comparing the effects.

Taken together, our results provide suggestions for future research to investigate whether the FLE can prove generalizable outside the laboratory environment. In many published studies (for a review, see Hadjichristidis et al., 2019 ) the implications that the FLE could have on political decisions made in those contexts in which most of the people use a lingua franca (i.e., the United Nations or European Parliament) have often been discussed. To conclude that language could impact the way these decisions are made, we need to take into consideration the effect size, the role of the context and the moderating effect of NL–FL linguistic similarity. Therefore, future studies might directly investigate whether the FLE is modulated by public contexts and meetings involving a large number of people from different countries discussing one topic. As discussed recently by Hadjichristidis et al. ( 2019 ), the various languages differ from each other in terms of both cultural factors and grammatical features, which could be reflected in a different cognitive processing of information (see also Chen, 2013 ). International meetings are contexts in which situations similar to those investigated in the laboratory rarely occur. Rather, they are contexts in which the participants speak many different NLs and one FL (usually English). Future research could investigate the moderating role of NL–FL similarity on the FLE more profoundly. Our result on the moderating role of NL–FL similarity could also be due to the different number of studies in each category.

Finally, several limitations of this study should be mentioned. The studies included in this meta-analysis are those that met our inclusion criteria. We have adopted these conservative criteria in order to include in the meta-analysis only those studies which were comparable in terms of tasks and paradigms. We could not assume that the FLEs on different judgments and biases share the same underlying mechanisms: Even taking into consideration only studies that assessed the willingness to violate a social norm in order to maximize outcomes, among those concerning moral decisions in general, we found a high heterogeneity. Nevertheless, our choice had to be necessarily driven by theoretical considerations. Further meta-analyses, conducted by other authors and with different inclusion criteria, would be useful in order to validate our conclusions.

In conclusion, FL affects participants’ decisions compared with NL, inducing participants to be more willing to accept harms in order to maximize outcomes in the moral decision-making domain and reducing risk aversion in risk-aversion domain. This result is critical within both experimental and social perspectives, and NL–FL similarity could be a critical moderator. Our results support previous findings on the FLE and provide suggestions for future research.

Data availability

Data and study materials (HTML and R-file of analysis code), that are necessary and sufficient to reproduce analyses and data presentations reported in the present study can be found at: https://github.com/danielegatti23/Foreing_Language_Effect_metanalysis

The framing effect in the Asian disease problem (e.g., Tversky & Kahneman, 1981 ) is often inferred by different patterns of answers to gain versus loss frames. However, the direct comparison between NL and FL is almost never reported, and conclusions on the FLE are drawn based on the lack of significance in the FL condition (e.g., Keysar et al., 2012 , first experiment). Thus, the experiments employing the Asian disease problem were excluded because, in these cases, there is no general consensus on how to quantify the effect sizes (cf. Oganian et al., 2016 ).

Since the included studies used different proficiency scales, we converted the data into percentages.

We also performed the same analysis using z scores. The effect of the moderator was still not significant, χ 2 (1) = .77, p = .37, ẞ = −.036.

Abbreviations

• Foreign language effect

Foreign language

Native language

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This work was supported by funding from the Italian Ministry of University and Research (PRIN 2017 No. 201755TKFE) and from the Italian Ministry of Health (Ricerca Corrente 2020) to T.V.

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Riccardo Circi and Daniele Gatti contributed equally to this work.

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Behavior and Brain Lab IULM–Neuromarketing Research Center, Università IULM, Via Carlo Bo 1, 20143, Milan, Italy

Riccardo Circi & Vincenzo Russo

Department of Brain and Behavioral Sciences, University of Pavia, Pavia, Italy

Daniele Gatti & Tomaso Vecchi

Cognitive Psychology Unit, IRCCS Mondino Foundation, Pavia, Italy

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Circi, R., Gatti, D., Russo, V. et al. The foreign language effect on decision-making: A meta-analysis. Psychon Bull Rev 28 , 1131–1141 (2021). https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-020-01871-z

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Communicative Language Teaching and Assessment Strategies in Online English as Foreign Language (EFL) Tutoring Context

19 Pages Posted: 3 Sep 2024

Precious Gallo

Isabela state university, jennelyn l. raymundo.

Date Written: July 26, 2024

Many Filipinos have found employment in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) online tutoring industry. The EFL online tutoring extends beyond the traditional academic mainstream, becoming a dynamic and personalized avenue for language learning. This paper aimed to fill the research gaps surfaced by the dearth of research in online learning, where there are limited known teaching and assessment strategies used to deliver EFL tutoring classes. It specifically sought to identify the effectiveness and adaptability of communicative language teaching strategies to cater to the language needs of EFL learners. The participants were tutors of Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese learners. Through a phenomenological qualitative inquiry, this study subsequently gathered data through a semi-structured interview with eight priori codes as a research instrument. On the other hand, tutoring class observations also corroborated the parallel validation of interview data. The data further analyzed using cool, warm, and thematic analyses. The directives of themes explicated in this study were delineated by the emerging Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach by Richards and Schmidt as conceptual framework, other prevalent strategies were also reiterated. In a nutshell, the participants' perspectives highlighted the effective utilization of language activities in all instructional and evaluative aspects. These are the use of authentic materials as a push for authenticity, opinion sharing, role-playing, information gap activities, information transfer activities, mechanical practice in language familiarization, meaningful practice by giving prompt feedback, language task, and project work. Consequently, the constraints revolved around language barrier, technological barrier, short attention span, and validity of assessments involved. Also, essential suggestions for future researchers are accentuated in this study.

Keywords: Communicative language teaching, English as a foreign language, online tutoring, online teaching strategies, online assessment strategies, authentic communication, language learning

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Study: Transparency is often lacking in datasets used to train large language models

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In order to train more powerful large language models, researchers use vast dataset collections that blend diverse data from thousands of web sources.

But as these datasets are combined and recombined into multiple collections, important information about their origins and restrictions on how they can be used are often lost or confounded in the shuffle.

Not only does this raise legal and ethical concerns, it can also damage a model’s performance. For instance, if a dataset is miscategorized, someone training a machine-learning model for a certain task may end up unwittingly using data that are not designed for that task.

In addition, data from unknown sources could contain biases that cause a model to make unfair predictions when deployed.

To improve data transparency, a team of multidisciplinary researchers from MIT and elsewhere launched a systematic audit of more than 1,800 text datasets on popular hosting sites. They found that more than 70 percent of these datasets omitted some licensing information, while about 50 percent had information that contained errors.

Building off these insights, they developed a user-friendly tool called the  Data Provenance Explorer that automatically generates easy-to-read summaries of a dataset’s creators, sources, licenses, and allowable uses.

“These types of tools can help regulators and practitioners make informed decisions about AI deployment, and further the responsible development of AI,” says Alex “Sandy” Pentland, an MIT professor, leader of the Human Dynamics Group in the MIT Media Lab, and co-author of a new open-access paper about the project .

The Data Provenance Explorer could help AI practitioners build more effective models by enabling them to select training datasets that fit their model’s intended purpose. In the long run, this could improve the accuracy of AI models in real-world situations, such as those used to evaluate loan applications or respond to customer queries.

“One of the best ways to understand the capabilities and limitations of an AI model is understanding what data it was trained on. When you have misattribution and confusion about where data came from, you have a serious transparency issue,” says Robert Mahari, a graduate student in the MIT Human Dynamics Group, a JD candidate at Harvard Law School, and co-lead author on the paper.

Mahari and Pentland are joined on the paper by co-lead author Shayne Longpre, a graduate student in the Media Lab; Sara Hooker, who leads the research lab Cohere for AI; as well as others at MIT, the University of California at Irvine, the University of Lille in France, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Olin College, Carnegie Mellon University, Contextual AI, ML Commons, and Tidelift. The research is published today in Nature Machine Intelligence .

Focus on finetuning

Researchers often use a technique called fine-tuning to improve the capabilities of a large language model that will be deployed for a specific task, like question-answering. For finetuning, they carefully build curated datasets designed to boost a model’s performance for this one task.

The MIT researchers focused on these fine-tuning datasets, which are often developed by researchers, academic organizations, or companies and licensed for specific uses.

When crowdsourced platforms aggregate such datasets into larger collections for practitioners to use for fine-tuning, some of that original license information is often left behind.

“These licenses ought to matter, and they should be enforceable,” Mahari says.

For instance, if the licensing terms of a dataset are wrong or missing, someone could spend a great deal of money and time developing a model they might be forced to take down later because some training data contained private information.

“People can end up training models where they don’t even understand the capabilities, concerns, or risk of those models, which ultimately stem from the data,” Longpre adds.

To begin this study, the researchers formally defined data provenance as the combination of a dataset’s sourcing, creating, and licensing heritage, as well as its characteristics. From there, they developed a structured auditing procedure to trace the data provenance of more than 1,800 text dataset collections from popular online repositories.

After finding that more than 70 percent of these datasets contained “unspecified” licenses that omitted much information, the researchers worked backward to fill in the blanks. Through their efforts, they reduced the number of datasets with “unspecified” licenses to around 30 percent.

Their work also revealed that the correct licenses were often more restrictive than those assigned by the repositories.   

In addition, they found that nearly all dataset creators were concentrated in the global north, which could limit a model’s capabilities if it is trained for deployment in a different region. For instance, a Turkish language dataset created predominantly by people in the U.S. and China might not contain any culturally significant aspects, Mahari explains.

“We almost delude ourselves into thinking the datasets are more diverse than they actually are,” he says.

Interestingly, the researchers also saw a dramatic spike in restrictions placed on datasets created in 2023 and 2024, which might be driven by concerns from academics that their datasets could be used for unintended commercial purposes.

A user-friendly tool

To help others obtain this information without the need for a manual audit, the researchers built the Data Provenance Explorer. In addition to sorting and filtering datasets based on certain criteria, the tool allows users to download a data provenance card that provides a succinct, structured overview of dataset characteristics.

“We are hoping this is a step, not just to understand the landscape, but also help people going forward to make more informed choices about what data they are training on,” Mahari says.

In the future, the researchers want to expand their analysis to investigate data provenance for multimodal data, including video and speech. They also want to study how terms of service on websites that serve as data sources are echoed in datasets.

As they expand their research, they are also reaching out to regulators to discuss their findings and the unique copyright implications of fine-tuning data.

“We need data provenance and transparency from the outset, when people are creating and releasing these datasets, to make it easier for others to derive these insights,” Longpre says.

“Many proposed policy interventions assume that we can correctly assign and identify licenses associated with data, and this work first shows that this is not the case, and then significantly improves the provenance information available,” says Stella Biderman, executive director of EleutherAI, who was not involved with this work. “In addition, section 3 contains relevant legal discussion. This is very valuable to machine learning practitioners outside companies large enough to have dedicated legal teams. Many people who want to build AI systems for public good are currently quietly struggling to figure out how to handle data licensing, because the internet is not designed in a way that makes data provenance easy to figure out.”

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