TESL Canada Journal
Not a member yet
936 research outputs found
Sort by
Developing Critical Consciousness Through Film
No full textRecent instructional trends in the field of TESOL emphasize teaching language through course content. The dual focus of content-based English instruction (CBI) provides a way for language teachers to engage learners with challenging material while increasing their linguistic proficiency. This article describes a unit in a CBI course at a Japanese university that was designed to promote the development of critical consciousness (Freire, 2005) through the analysis of a film. Students identified race- and gender-related issues, engaged in discussions about these issues, and finally wrote a critical response paper to the film
Variability in ESL Outcomes: The Influence of Age on Arrival and Length of Residence on Achievement in High School
No full textThis article integrates findings from earlier research (Roessingh and Kover, 2003; Roessingh, Kover, and Watt, 2005) linking distinct patterns of achievement for diverse age-on-arrival (AOA) cohorts of ESL learners on the grade 12 Alberta English language arts (ELA) examination to their vocabulary and reading comprehension scores on a standardized measure over time. Recasting the data and conducting simple statistical procedures can offer further insights into the features of cognitive academic language proficiency (CALP): the relationship between vocabulary development and academic performance. I consider ESL program effects and the connection between age on arrival, vocabulary size, and achievement outcomes as reflected on the ELA examination. I compare the ESL students' scores with those of a random sample of their native-speaking (NS) academic counterparts to note patterns among the various cohorts of learners. The results suggest that measures of language proficiency (e.g., vocabulary) can be used to gain direct insights into students' academic achievement. This work has important implications for the development of theoretical growth models that would establish language-learning trajectories of good ESL progress for varied AOA and lengths of residence (LOR) fitted against a NS trajectory
Effects of Word Games, Culturally Relevant Songs, and Stories on Students' Motivation in a Nigerian English Language Class
No full textThis study investigated the extent to which word games and culturally relevant songs and stories could motivate senior secondary school students in Nigeria, thereby enhancing their performance in English. A pre-test/post-test control group design was used. The sample consisted of 100 senior secondary school II students randomly assigned into experimental and control groups. Four instruments were designed, validated, and used for data collection. Four hypotheses were formulated and tested. The findings revealed that the use of word games and culturally relevant instructional activities was beneficial for these students, as they served as an effective motivational strategy that contributed to better performance in English-language learning at the senior secondary school level
Teachers' Assessment of ESL Students in Mainstream Classes: Challenges, Strategies, and Decision-Making
No full textGiven the increasing numbers of ESL students in Canadian classrooms, this study investigated how teachers of mainstream classes assess the written work of ESL students and whether they use different assessment strategies for ESL versus non-ESL students. Interviews were conducted with seven mainstream teachers from a private high school in Ontario. Although within-school variation was evident in the participants' approaches to assessing the work of both ESL and non-ESL students, most participants modified their assessment strategies when marking the work of ESL students. This finding suggests a need for school-level discussions and structured professional development activities relating to assessing ESL students' work
Identities and Beliefs in ESL Writing: From Product to Processes
No full textStudies investigating cultural influences on second-language writing have been mainly product-oriented. Moreover, research on writing processes has mostly focused on the strategies of writing and learning to write. Writing processes where we can see the evolution of the writer's identity and beliefs have been less adequately addressed. Therefore, this article focuses on the dynamic relationship of culture, identity, and beliefs with regard to the writing process (the micro-process) and the process of learning to write (the macro-process) in the ESL context. A study consisting of two cases was undertaken to examine the reconstruction of the writer's identity and the evolution of the learner's beliefs in an ESL context. Data for Case A include writings by and interviews with a first-year ESL student; data for Case B include class observations of and interviews with students and their teacher in an ESL writing class. It has been found that the notions of culture, identity, and beliefs are interwoven they work together to reshape learners' beliefs in terms of education and writing and to reconstruct a writer's identity that incorporates multiple influences and multiple intentions. Recommendations are offered for guiding ESL students in the exploration of their first and host cultures and for facilitating the evolution of beliefs and the reconstruction of identities
Book Reviews
No full textReviews of: 'From the Classroom: Grounded Activities for Language Learning,' by Miles Turnbull, Jill Sinclair Bell, and Sharon Lapkin (Eds.); 'English for Academic Study: Vocabulary Course Book,' by Colin Campbell; and 'Linguistic Diversity and Teaching,' by L.N. Commins and O.B. Miramontes
Is Field Dependence or Independence a Predictor of EFL Reading Performance?
No full textIn this study it was hypothesized that field dependence or independence would introduce systematic variance into Iranian EFL learners' overall and task-specific performance on task-based reading comprehension tests. One thousand, seven hundred, forty-three freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior students, all majoring in English at various Iranian universities and colleges, took the Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT). The resulting 582 field-independent (FI) and 707 field-dependent (FD) students then took the 1990 version of the IELTS. Using SPSS commands for collapsing continuous variables into groups and participants’ IELTS scores (based on the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles), four proficiency groups were identified for each cognitive style. From each proficiency group, 36 FD and 36 FI individuals were selected through a matching process. The resulting sample of 288 participants took the Task-Based Reading Test (TBRT) designed for the study. Data analysis revealed that individuals’ cognitive
styles resulted in a significant difference in their overall test performance in the proficient, semiproficient, and fairly proficient groups, but not in the low-proficient group. The findings also indicated that cognitive style resulted in a significant difference in participants' performance on true-false, sentence completion, outlining, scanning, and elicitation tasks in all proficiency groups
Book Reviews
No full textReviews of: 'Bridge to the Classroom: ESL Cases for Teacher Exploration,' Volumes I-III with Teacher's Guide, Volumes I and II by Joy Egbert, Volume III by Joy Egbert and Gina Mikel Petrie; 'Oxford Basics: Activities Using Resources,' by Heather Westrup and Joanna Baker; and 'Teaching and Learning Vocabulary: Bringing Scientific Research to Practice,' by Elfrieda H. Hiebert and Michael L. Kamil (Eds.
Process and Product: Creating Stories With Deaf Students
No full textThis article describes the implementation of one element of an adapted language arts curriculum for Deaf students in a bilingual (American Sign Language and English) educational setting. It examines the implementation of writing workshops in three elementary classrooms in a school for Deaf students. The typical steps of preparing/planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing were carried out by all students in both languages to create stories and produce final products in both videotaped American Sign Language and written English. The effective practice of writing workshop was adapted to meet the learning needs of Deaf students by including visual processing, meaning-based teaching strategies, and bilingual methods. By having opportunities to create and revise stories in their first language (ASL), students experienced an increased sense of ownership of their work and developed some of the metalinguistic skills that are essential to becoming effective writers