Building Connections and Critical Language Awareness between Learning Communities Collaborating across Two Distant States

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

General comments

 

In the literature review, the authors discuss Beaudrie et al.’s (2019; 2020) questionnaire, but they do not state their rationale for not using the questionnaire. If this questionnaire was thoughtfully prepared and has been used in previous research, why not use it in the present study? Of course, there are possible reasonable answers to this question, but readers should not be left to infer them. The last full paragraph of p. 3 gets into this a little bit, it is not entirely clear how the Revised Taxonomy offers a unique way of assessing growth in CLA that is not present in Beaudrie et al.’s questionnaire. I do see the discussion on pp. 4-5 of Beaudrie et al.’s learning goals and understand that they were not created with assessment in mind, but this is separate from the questionnaire, so I think that the rationale behind not using the questionnaire should still be included. 

 

As I state below in the specific comments, the RQs seem out of order to me because the development of the measurable outcomes precedes their use. 

 

I see the listing of the measurable outcomes, but I would like to know more about how they were actually scored. For example, was each element scored as present/not present? Or was there some sort of rubric for each element in terms of how specific/clear it was? One can easily imagine a diversity of responses. Furthermore, knowing how the researchers scored the outcomes can offer educators an example of how they may want to assess these outcomes in their classes. The analysis of Mateo’s interview makes me think that these goals were analyzed based on their presence (though some of the answers such as “most likely” and “perhaps” imply that this is a matter of degrees), but I would like the readers to have an explicit explanation.  

 

I know that this is qualitative data, but the sample size of 4 is awfully small. Didn’t other students participate in these interviews? (There is no mention of how many students at each site participated in the inter-university collaboration.) I would like to hear a greater variety of student voices. Understandably, space likely won’t allow as detailed a description of the responses of more participants compared to what is in place for the 4 focal participants. However, quotes from additional participant interviews and written work can be brought in to support ideas raised by the 4 focal participants (e.g., present quotes from students whose observations about Spanglish were similar to Elena’s). Basic information about such additional participants can be provided briefly within the context of their quotes, for example, “Similarly, a 22-year-old L2 learner in New Mexico who identified as male said [quote].” Hearing from additional students will also help us think about these 4 participants in the context of the larger collabration. For example, was it common (among New Mexico HLLs, all HLLs, or participating students generally) to have students express contradictory ideas like Tina did?

 

There is no mention of intercoder reliability and how discrepant cases were handled.

 

The conclusion does not acknowledge any limitations of the study or directions for future research.

 

Specific comments

 

Abstract:

It seems to me that order of the research questions in the abstract should be flipped. That is, present the question about how to operationalize CLA and then ask about whether students increase their CLA. To match with this inversion, I would also suggest discussing the operationalization prior to stating that there was evidence of an increase of CLA.  

 

p. 3/Appendix B

Appendix B only says “Figuras Marisol”. There is no chart, even though the text says there is one. I think something happened and the chart didn’t make it into the document. This is disappointing because it sounds as if there is key information in Appendix B about language learning, LA, and CLA. In fact, it may be something that should be brought into the main text, but I can only say “may” because I can’t see it. 

 

p. 5, last full paragraph:

Again, I suggest inverting the order of the RQs.

 

p. 6, “For our project, we analyzed students’ work at different points in the semester looking for markers of LA or CLA.” 

Which assignments specifically? Perhaps refer to the assignment names that are given in Appendix A.

Conclusion:

Again, I suggest inverting the order of the RQs.

Minor errors

 

Abstract: comma needed after e.g.

 

Inherited in > “inherent to” or “integral to”?

 

p. 2, first full paragraph: comma after “project”

 

I see other errors and recommend a thorough proofreading.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks for your time and excellent feedback. We have thouroughly revised the manuscript, reordering many paragraphs, deleting some segments, and rewording many others. 

We considered changing the order of the RQs but believe that they make more sense in the strengthened manuscript. We also hope to have better justified using Bloom's Taxonomy. While we didn't argue for why we didn't use Beaudrie et al's questionnaire, we think that the changes in the manuscript flow better and that it is less of an issue since we better individuate our manner of analysis as an important contribution. For example, we argued more clearly for the value of including student voices. 

We have also more clearly positioned this as a sort of case-study, which we hope ameliorates concerns over not including  data from more students.

We have pointed to future suggestions, implicitly pointing to limitations. We are a little worried about being over word limit and were nervous about adding a section on limitations, but would be happy to do so in the next round if reviewers and editors believe it to strengthen the paper.

Thanks!!! 

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear author(s),

I applaud you for a paper that I believe will be very helpful to scholars and educators of Spanish wishing to implement CLA in their classrooms. In particular, I appreciated your thoughtful contributions towards the operationalization of CLA and how it can be assessed.

Nonetheless, there are some areas of your paper that need to be improved prior to publication. I offer a few general suggestions:

1. My impression is that your paper's goal is to operationalize CLA in a concrete way that can be analyzed and assessed in a classroom setting. With that said, I wonder if it may be clearer to lay that out in the first half of your paper, explaining how the learning outcomes that you have written stem from Bloom's Revised Taxonomy and the exact interuniversity collaborations and sociolinguistic activities that were conducted. Then use the second half of the paper to demonstrate (through the case studies) how you believe the course and the sociolinguistic activities benefitted students' LA and CLA, using your learning outcomes to show that. As of right now, the organization of the paper makes it difficult to follow along with what exactly you are trying to demonstrate/argue.
2. The Methodology section would benefit from greater detail. In particular, what themes were used to code the qualitative data? What are examples of those themes?
3. The Discussion and Conclusion sections could be strengthened by tying your findings to previous research.     

I have also provided specific comments throughout the manuscript in the attached file. I hope the suggestions are helpful in streamlining and strengthening your paper.  

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks for your time and excellent feedback. We have thouroughly revised the manuscript, reordering many paragraphs, deleting some segments, and rewording many others. We have elaborated upon why the students were chosen and given upgraded descriptions of the courses. We have also attended to the many comments present in the attached manuscript.

We discussed changing the way we present the application of the learning goals, as suggested. You had kindly suggested that using questions was not as effective as providing more examples. However, we remain committed to the question format as we believe it fits with the goal of the manuscript, to apply outcomes to data from students. 

We attended to concerns present in the paper and have clarified many of the shortcomings. 

Regarding the suggestions supplied separately, we believe that the reorganization will help with the first numbered suggestion to clarify the taxonomy and the nature of the interactions between students. 

We have considerably strengthened our discussion of the Methods and also our Discussion and Conclusion sections.

Thanks!!

Reviewer 3 Report

This manuscript has major potential to contribute to the field of SHL. I recommend restructuring your findings, to make clear and strong arguments.

I recommend including a section that explains why were those participants chosen and how were they chosen.

Also explain why did the researcher picked those two courses, why are those two courses mix-learning communities. There is no explanation about the learning communities collaboration across two distant states, why these states, how did they collaborated?

I have included questions on the document, I hope these are helpful for the authors.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thanks for your time and excellent feedback. We have thouroughly revised the manuscript, reordering many paragraphs, deleting some segments, and rewording many others. We have elaborated upon why the students were chosen and given upgraded descriptions of the courses. We have also attended to the many comments present in the attached manuscript. We value the honest questioning of some of the things we had claimed in our writeup and have either removed or clarified these. For example, we attempted to clarify briefly how each activity may have contributed to CLA in the conclusion. 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

General Comments

 

A lot of my comments in the first round of reviews were addressed, and I think that the paper reads more clearly overall. There are a few remaining issues I see, which I detail below.

 

The authors made a case for keeping the order of the RQs. Although I still think that they should be inverted, I don’t see the current order as being so detrimental as to hinder publication of the manuscript. 

 

I said in the last round of reviews that I see the listing of the measurable outcomes, but I would like to know more about how they were actually scored. For example, was each element scored as present/not present? Or was there some sort of rubric for each element in terms of how specific/clear it was? In the revised text, I see that there is a discussion of degree (e.g., “most likely” for one outcome for Mateo) and of when criteria are met in a contrary way (the case of Tina). That said, I am always in favor of being as explicit as possible about methods and analysis, so I would still appreciate a brief statement about how items were scored. I acknowledge the commentary in the conclusion about how CLA is not a monolithic construct, but I think specificity is really important: if we want practitioners to evaluate the development of CLA in their students, the researchers of this paper (and others on the topic) need to share exactly how they did it. 

 

Along similar lines, I wrote in my earlier review that there is no mention of intercoder reliability and how discrepant cases were handled. This still needs to be addressed. 

 

In their response, the authors say, “We have pointed to future suggestions, implicitly pointing to limitations.” Their discussion of future directions in the revised manuscript is minimal. I see only a reference that they found gaps that could be addressed in future courses (p. 14), not even mentioning what those gaps were. I understand that the authors are up against a word limit as they mentioned, but so is everybody else who submits to this journal. Directions for future research—and the limitations of the present study that they seek to address—are important and should not be left out of the manuscript. Maybe a separate section is not needed, but instead mentions of these limitations and directions for future work can be incorporated into the discussion. I think that the authors can cut enough to make room for this.

 

 

Specific Comments

 

p. 14: I don’t understand why the RQs are repeated just before the Conclusions when they presented nearly verbatim in the Conclusions. I recommend deleting these RQs.

 

Minor errors

 

Abstract: comma needed after e.g. (I pointed this out last time.)

 

p. 2, first full paragraph: comma after “project” (or place the PP “for the final project elsewhere in the sentence for fewer commas in the sentence)

 

p. 2, second full paragraph: comma needed after e.g. 

 

Appendix A, perceptual dialectology mapping: “no data”? I think the “no” should be deleted.

 

Again, I see other minor errors and recommend a thorough proofreading.

 

 

Author Response

Dear esteemed reviewer,

We are once again grateful for your patience and the excellent insights. We have addressed the issue of how we scored the data by briefly adding text t Section 2, p. 5, where the topic was already introduced, but needed elaboration. We also talked about how the authors collaborated to arrive at our evaluations. 

We also reversed the order of the research questions and added a brief statement of limitations and future directions.

Thanks!!!

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors,

Thank you for addressing many of the suggestions that I had originally proposed. I have attached your manuscript with some minor editing suggestions and indications of typos. My two larger comments that I think would strengthen your paper prior to publication are:

1. Balancing Teri's case with the other three. Teri's analysis is noticeably shorter than the other three participants.

2. The Discussion could still use a bit more connection of your study's finding with previous literature. I have suggested some ideas in the pdf. 

Hope these comments are helpful and once again, I look forward to reading the final published version! 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you!!

We have made many more revisions and believe that the may have addressed some of your concerns. We have left Teri's short because the manuscript has become very long. If the editors give permission, we will add more.