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Promoting teacher professionalism in language education from the perspective of critical intercultural literacy
No full textAgainst the backdrop of globalisation, many English language teaching (ELT) curricula emphasise the need to promote awareness of intercultural communication. However, in many settings, the current ELT practices still predominantly focus on Anglophone cultures or interactions with Anglophone speakers, as the teachers and materials may not fully anticipate the cultural complexity and diversity the students will encounter in the future. This paper reports on a case study designed to build teachers’ critical intercultural literacy through a series of workshops at a university located in southeast China, specifically aiming to train Chinese university teachers in how to challenge textbook content from a critical perspective. Through an analysis of interviews with teachers and their reflective journal entries, this paper examines how teachers made sense of critically-oriented teaching and it discusses the implications for developing a critical stance beyond the classroom informed by critical pedagogy and Global Englishes language teaching
Perceived effects of CET4 test preparation, language ability, and test performance: An exploratory study of Chinese EFL learners
No full textThis study examined the perceived effects of test preparation for College English Test Band 4 (CET4) on development of language ability and test performance, which has not received sufficient attention previously. A total of 79 undergraduate students from two classes in a Chinese university participated in the study. At the end of the CET4 preparation program provided by the university, the participants completed a questionnaire indicating their perceived improvement in the various attributes (language skill development, skill understanding, test-taking strategies and confidence) in relation to writing, listening, reading, and translating measured by the test. Six participants took part in one-to-one interviews to provide detailed information about their perceived effectiveness of learning as a result of the preparation program. Overall participants thought they made more progress in reading and translating, but less in listening and writing. Regression analyses mainly established that the perceived improvements of most of the attributes and language abilities are significant predictors of students’ anticipated and actual CET4 performance. Implications for test preparation programs, language learners and instructors are discussed with reference to how to facilitate learners’ learning and development of language ability and how to improve performance on future tests
Predicting Japanese primary schoolchildren's English vocabulary knowledge from a sound-meaning recognition test
No full textThe purposes of this study were to: (1) build an appropriate model for predicting primary schoolchildren’s English vocabulary knowledge, (2) examine whether the developed model applies to new data, and (3) discuss how to apply the model to L2 vocabulary instruction. More specifically, the study asked third- and fourth-grade public primary school students to take a sound-meaning recognition test. All the study’s target words were katakana English and on the first 1,000-level of word frequency according to JACET (Japan Association of College English Teachers) 8000 and SVL (Standard Vocabulary List ) 12000, however, different numbers of word phonemes were included. The collected data were divided into training and testing data. To build the predictive model from the training data, the study used a generalized linear mixed model, which revealed that: (1) third-graders’ scores were as high as those of fourth-graders, and (2) the more phonemes a word has, the lower the test score. From the model, the study developed a regression formula that made it possible to predict how many primary schoolchildren knew the meaning of a certain word when they listened to its pronunciation. It also found that the predicted percentages from the training data correlated moderately with the actual test scores from the testing data. Therefore, the model achieved moderately high quality for predicting new data
Comparisons of word lists on new word level checker
No full textThis paper introduces a novel online vocabulary profiling application called the New Word Level Checker (https://nwlc.pythonanywhere.com/) and word list resources used by the application. First, the rationale for developing another web vocabulary profiler and the word lists included in the application are described. Next, the lexical units (i.e., how words are counted) and rules (e.g., case sensitivity, contractions, abbreviations with periods, hyphenated words, and compounds) employed in the application are explained. Then, the word lists adopted for the application are compared to show which lists are best used for different purposes. Pedagogical implications of the use of the application and word lists are discussed, especially focusing on matching learners with vocabulary-level appropriate test
Incorporating E-portfolio with flipped classrooms: An in-depth analysis of students’ speaking performance and learning engagement
No full textThe advent of technology has enabled the implementation of e-portfolio in students speaking performance to collect and store their artifacts online. With the implementation of technology, e-portfolio tends to be incorporated with flipped classrooms. Previous studies, however, failed to consider the implementation of this incorporation, especially in teaching speaking skills. t is thereby leading to a lack of literature on this topic. This research, therefore, aims to examine the effect of e-portfolio in flipped classrooms on students’ speaking performance and explore their learning engagement. An explanatory sequential mixedmethod approach consisting of speaking test and interview methods was used to obtain data from 63 twelfth grade students, 29 in the experiment group and 34 in the control. The speaking test and interviews data were analyzed using the independent t-test and the qualitative content analysis technique, respectively. The result showed a significant effect of e-portfolio in flipped classrooms on students’ speaking performance. Furthermore, students showed active behavioral, cognitive, and affective engagement. n conclusion, this study discussed all three possible implications for English language teaching
Teaching grammar and vocabulary in COVID-19 times: Approaches used in online teaching in Polish schools during a pandemic
No full textTechnology has been called to the rescue on a number of occasions, be it in large classes, under-resourced contexts, after earthquakes or other natural disasters. The COVD-19 pandemic which struck the whole world in pring 2020 afterwards necessitated a sudden shift from face-to-face to distance teaching. With no preparation, no training and very little support from the state, language teachers had to find their own ways transferring language instruction to the online medium. This paper explores the modes, approaches, affordances and obstacles of COVD-era grammar and vocabulary teaching in Poland. Apart from examining the shape of online teaching from two perspectives (student teachers and school teachers), the study confronts the approaches used in Polish schools against well-established models: stages of CALL (Warschauer & Healey, 1998, Bax, 2003), AMR (Puentedura, 2006) and kills pyramid (Hampel & tickler, 2005)
The underlying structure of foreign language anxiety in integrated speaking assessment: A mixed methods study
No full textThe aim of this mixed methods study is to identify the underlying structure of the construct of Foreign Language Anxiety in integrated listening-to-speak tasks. First, the analysis of the qualitative interviews with six postsecondary ESL learners reveals that anxiety for integrated speaking stems from four different factors: listening, source integration, topic familiarity, and time pressure. These findings informed the next study phase, the development of an initial inventory of 26 items. The questionnaire was checked for content validity and then administered to 190 respondents. Next, based on the quantitative data, Confirmatory Factor Analysis was carried out in order to identify the model that best fits the data. Model comparisons corroborate the qualitative finding that suggests FLA of integrated speaking comprises four correlated latent variables, with all model fit indices falling within an acceptable range. Overall, this study provides evidence for construct validity of FLA in integrated speaking contexts as a multifaceted structure. Findings are discussed in relation to the factors that we identified
Post-predicate that-clauses controlled by verbs in native and non-native academic writing: A corpus-based study
No full textPost-predicate that clauses are one of the indicators of evaluative language which shows the attitude, position, and personal evaluation of the writers in academic discourse. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the distribution and frequently used controlling verbs of post-predicate that clauses controlled by verb (VTHAT) in academic writings of Turkish learners of English and to compare them with those of native English students and expert writers. For this purpose, a specialized research corpus with three main sub-corpora was compiled: MA and PhD theses written by L2 students and native English students and published research articles written by native experienced writers. The results of the study showed that both L2 and native English students significantly overused VTHAT structures compared to the native experienced writers; however, Turkish students used VTHAT structures more frequently than their native peers in academic discourse. The analysis of the controlling verbs in VTHAT constructions showed that eight out of the 10 top frequent verbs in the Turkish students’ theses were common across either three or two sub-corpora. However, there were various significant differences in the frequencies of these controlling verbs between the sub-corpora, which can imply that Turkish students use such constructions to have a low authoritative presence in terms of their authorial stance in academic writing. The findings were discussed with reference to the previous findings, and pedagogical implications were offered