Electronic Journal of Foreign Language Teaching 2009, Vol. 6, No. 1, p. 3–4 © Centre for Language Studies National University of Singapore

Editorial

 

In this – the opening – issue of Volume 6, we are pleased to announce two new developments that once again underscore e-FLT’s commitment to the promotion of multilingualism and the teaching of languages beyond English.

First, as in the past three years, e-FLT will again be publishing a supplement on the teaching and learning of Asian languages. However, unlike in past years when we had collaborated with the Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA), the supplement to appear in September this year will be produced in collaboration with the Faculty of Asian Studies of the Australian National University. We are grateful to ANU, in particular to Professor Kent Anderson, Director of the Faculty of Asian Studies, for his strong support which helped make the ANU-NUS symposium a tremendous success. The symposium was held within the larger framework of the CLaSIC 2008 Conference at the Centre for Language Studies of the NUS. The supplement in this year is dedicated to the publication of selected papers from this event, all of which would have undergone the usual stringent double-blind refereeing process practised by e-FLT.

In addition, e-FLT is also proud to announce that Korean will be added to the slate of languages it publishes in with immediate effect, bringing the total number of languages to twelve. Besides English and Korean, the journal currently also accepts articles in Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Malay, Tamil, Thai and Vietnamese.

Volume 6, Issue 1 opens with an article by Etsuko Toyoda who investigated how adult learners with an alphabetic background develop awareness of the Japanese kanji script. The data she collected suggest that the subjects’ awareness of kanji sub-character components, their positions and combinations, semantic and phonological functions, as well as the limitations of these functions is the result of a gradual and possibly uneven process.

Victoria Russell, in the second article, provides a critical review of research into foreign language teachers’ corrective feedback and reports that current research points towards a possible mismatch in teachers’ and students’ perceptions of what is considered to be effective feedback on oral errors.

In the third article, Reza Pishghadam reports on a quantitative study of the role of emotional intelligence in second language learning. Among the factors he found to be important for success in second language learning were: intrapersonal and interpersonal EQ, stress management, general mood, and adaptability.

This is followed by an article contributed by Wenhua Hsu who collated a corpus of textbooks used in General English courses at universities in Taiwan. She analysed the textbooks in this corpus with view to the amount of new and academic vocabulary General English students can expect to learn from these books as well as their suitability for preparing students for the intermediate General English Proficiency Test, a commonly used standard test in Taiwan.

The fifth article, by Si Thang Kiet Ho, describes an ongoing study into the presence and status of cultural content in tertiary EFL teaching in Vietnam and the effect of intercultural language learning on learners’ EFL learning. Drawing on literature on intercultural language learning, he then proposes an approach to raise learners’ cultural awareness and to engage them cognitively, behaviourally and affectively in culture learning.

In the sixth article, Paul Chi Hong Lip presents the results of a study that investigated Hong Kong postsecondary students’ use of vocabulary learning strategies, focusing essentially on their frequency of use and their perceptions of the usefulness of these strategies.

In the seventh and last article of this issue, Heinz L. Kretzenbacher ponders some of the problems that arise in learning German as a second foreign language, subsequent to the English language, and argues against the stereotypical notion that German is a much more difficult language to learn compared to English. To overcome such perceived difficulties, he proposes a bridge model for teaching German syntactical structures, based on the results of studies in German linguistics.

In the sole review in this issue, Ying Soon Goh assesses a free dictionary software available on the Internet, “Youdao Desktop Dictionary,” and discusses its potential benefits for the vocabulary acquisition of learners of Mandarin as a foreign language.

On behalf of my colleagues on the Editorial Board, I would like to express our sincere appreciation for your support as well as the generous contributions of our external reviewers and the members of our International Advisory Board. We hope the articles in this issue will prove to be both relevant and stimulating to you, our readers, and look forward to receiving your submissions for future issues of e-FLT.


Wai Meng Chan
Editor