ALDS professor receives research award
ALDS professor receives research award
Congratulations to Dr. David Wood for being one of eight recipients of the 2013 FASS Junior Research Award, for his project, “An Idiodynamic Investigation of the Relationship between Willingness to Communicate and Speech Fluency in a Second Language”.
One Comment
Congrats Professor Wood on receiving the research award. This is an interesting study that could expand to ‘ focus on larger groups of learners in several learning contexts’ such as my region (North Africa and the Middle East)since the common belief , evidenced and seconded by my teaching experience overseas, that Arab speakers unlike their Asian counterparts are more oral proficient , this raise the following question: Can WTC be the reason or the nature of culture ( in the case in hand : Arab) which is primarily/ overwhelmingly oral? Historically speaking much of Arab collective memories have been relayed orally for generations until at a later stage that some Khalifas (Kings) encouraged transcriptions and manuscripts to preserve the Arab cultural legacy. Thus, the influence of oral culture could have had hereditary implications on the nature of Arab speakers as WTC type of speakers therefore they tend to take more risks and venture speaking leading to significant improvement in fluency within much shorter time than other non native peers.
Good luck.