Volume 15, Number 2, December 2018 DOI: 10.56040/e-flt.153
Shannon Mason
A Snapshot of Language Program Standards in Australian Schools (pp. 243–255)
Language programs have been a part of the educational landscape in Australia for at least fifty years, but like in other predominantly English-speaking countries, the widespread success of the discipline remains elusive despite significant policy attention. Quality language programs are vital to support effective language teaching and learning, as acknowledged in pedagogical research informed by second language acquisition (SLA) theories, and in the Australian “Professional Standards for Accomplished Teaching of Languages and Cultures” (AFMLTA, 2005). However, little is known about the standards of language programs in Australian schools. To help address this, a mixed-methods study of 180 language teachers in the state of Queensland was conducted in order to gain insights into the standards of language programs in primary and secondary schools, using both objective measures and the subjective voices of teachers who are at the chalk-front. Results show wide variety in program standards from school to school, some of which are not optimal to support effective SLA. The study provides valuable insights for researchers and policymakers about the realities of language programs at the implementation level.
Nur Hayati, Utami Widiati & Furaidah
Understanding Reasons Behind Student Teachers’Pedagogical Decisions (pp. 256–270)
This qualitative case study is aimed at exploring the pedagogical decision making of English student teachers in planning and implementing a lesson that focused on listening and reading skills. We in-volved six student teachers in our study, all of whom attended a one-year teacher professional education program (Pendidikan Profesi Guru) in one university in Indonesia. We collected the data by examining the student teachers’ lesson plans, observing their peer teaching, doing an oral reflection with them, and studying their reflective journals. The student teachers appeared to show reasonable pedagogical deci-sions in terms of formulating comprehensive indicators of competences, employing various teaching techniques, preparing a number of texts and creative media, and trying to use English as the medium of instruction, which appeared to result from their understanding of relevant pedagogical principles as well as learning from the experience and feedback from lecturers and mentor teachers. However, we found is-sues concerning linguistic accuracy of the texts and the scope of the comprehension exercises. There also appeared to be lack of probing and higher order questioning from the student teachers during the class discussion of the exercises. From the students’ reflective journals, we found that these issues seem to be grounded in the student teachers’ lack of knowledge on the micro skills of listening and reading, and their conception of questions and feedback. Another main issue with the student teachers’ pedagogical decision making concerns the assessment, which relates to the potentially confusing dichotomy between “knowledge” and “skills” domains in the English syllabus of the 2013 curriculum applied in Indonesia.
Drawing on Macaro’s (2001) personal theories on code-switching (CS), this study aims to investigate why, how, and to what extent EFL instructors switch to their L1 during L2 instruction in the under re-searched tertiary level Turkish English as a foreign language (EFL) context. As part of a larger project, the data analyzed in this study were collected from 155 EFL instructors from six state universities in Turkey by means of an online questionnaire. Filling the methodological gap for the given context and linguistic phenomenon, an explanatory factor analysis and a subsequent discriminant function analysis were performed, indicating the differentiated perspectives and practices with regard to CS, the factors triggering its use, and the functions attributed, along with participants’ attitudes towards its pedagogi-cal effectiveness. Additionally, the qualitatively analyzed textual data from the same instrument con-firmed the quantitative findings, aligning with the corresponding literature. Having moved the personal theories on CS proposed by Macaro (2001) to the context in question, the results revealed that instruc-tors’ CS attitudes and perceptions are influential in determining how much L1 should be used in the L2 classrooms depending on linguistic, pedagogical, communicative, and learner-oriented factors and functions.
Yulong Li & Lixun Wang
An Ethnographic Exploration of Adopting Project-Based Learning in Teaching English for Academic Purposes (pp. 290–303)
Several university English teachers in Shanghai, China, have recently designed an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course that adopts the project-based learning (PBL) approach. Although there have been many studies about the adoption of PBL in EFL/ESL teaching, the integration of PBL into EAP teaching is relatively less reported, especially in the Chinese context. To fill this research gap, the present study has adopted an ethnographic approach to investigate the forms, effects, and challenges of integrating PBL into EAP teaching in the Chinese context. In particular, this paper will describe how the PBL pedagogy is integrated with the EAP course, how it helps to improve the students’ academic English, how it facilitates the students’ disciplinary knowledge learning and disciplinary identity formation, how it stimulates the students’ autonomy, and how it is instructive to their interpersonal ability and teamwork. It is hoped that the PBL EAP course developed by the EAP teachers will serve as a useful reference to English teachers around the world who wish to adopt a similar approach. There are, however, several challenges concerning the EAP teachers’ limited disciplinary knowledge and the restricted resources for conducting student-led projects, which need to be addressed carefully to ensure the success of the PBL EAP course.
Socio-educational Model, Self-Determination Theory, and, more recently, L2 Motivational Self System are arguably amongst the widely embraced theories of motivation in the field of foreign and second lan-guage learning. However, the relevance and validity of these theories across different sociocultural con-texts and educational levels remain an open question, simply because motivation is context-specific. The present study seeks to fill this lacuna in research by exploring students’ motivational orientations for learning English as a Foreign Language at a high school level within an Indonesian context. Fifty-one high school students were originally interviewed pertaining to the reasons why they had decided to learn English in the first place. Sixty-four orientations were identified during exhaustive interviews, but simi-lar themes were subsequently merged resulting in fifty-four orientations. These fifty-four orientations were administered to 503 high school students. Following each orientation is a five-point Lickert scale (hereafter Lickert) of potential responses: very relevant, relevant, not sure, irrelevant, and not relevant at all. The results were subjected to a principal component analysis so that the underlying dimensions of students’ motivational orientations for learning English in this particular context could be revealed. The principal component analysis resulted in the extraction of a five-component solution labelled as “ideal L2 self, ought-to L2 self and learning environment,” “integrative orientation,” “career orientation,” “in-formation access,” and “self-confidence and intrinsic motivation” respectively. Implications of these findings on the theory of motivation in the realm of foreign/second language teaching and learning will be critically examined in this paper.
Michael Stoltzfus & Panida Sukseemuang
Distribution of Instructional Time in Secondary, Non-Intensive Thai EFL Classes: Effects on Grammar Acquisition (pp. 322–337)
In order to bring clarity to the optimal distribution of instructional time in non-intensive EFL grammar courses, this study investigates whether 3.5 hours of weekly instructional time should be massed (a single session once a week) or distributed (short, daily sessions). A quasi-experimental design with pre-test, immediate post-test and delayed post-tests was used to measure gains on a range of eight grammar topics. The exams included two grammar tasks at varying levels of concep-tual difficulty. Results show that distributed practice produced significantly higher results on im-mediate post-tests. Distributed practice also resulted in higher scores on the delayed post-test alt-hough the difference was less outstanding. Performance on tasks of varying conceptual difficulty was affected equally by massed and distributed practice. These findings can inform decisions regard-ing the scheduling of weekly instructional time for optimal outcomes in non-intensive grammar courses. Short, daily instructional sessions are more beneficial to achieve language gains for short- and long-term recall than long sessions held once a week.
The present study examined the effects of explicit semantic radical instruction on beginner level Chinese foreign language learners’ overall comprehension by descriptively translating a given Chinese text. The study also investigated how the participants would perceive the effects of instruction of semantic radicals and how their motivation level in learning Chinese would change because of the explicit instruction on Chinese semantic radicals. The participants were asked to translate the same Chinese text before and after receiving explicit instruction of ten semantic radicals. The results demonstrated that the explicit instruction on Chinese semantic radicals helped participants significantly enhance their descriptive translation (indicating improved overall comprehension) of a given Chinese text. Overall, the participants recognized the facilitative role of semantic radicals in learning Chinese, and their intention to continue learning semantic radicals suggests their willingness to improve their Chinese proficiency.
Sun Hee Park & Hyunwoo Kim
The Acquisition of Declarative and Procedural Knowledge on Korean Causative Constructions by Chinese Learners of Korean (pp. 356–372)
This study investigated whether Chinese-speaking L2 learners of Korean can acquire Korean causative constructions (i.e. morphological and analytic causatives) and make use of the relevant knowledge in real-time sentence comprehension. Korean morphological causatives allow the causee to be marked by an accusative case, but not by a nominative case. In contrast, Korean analytic caus-atives allow both accusative and nominative case marking for a causee. In an acceptability judgment task, L2 learners as a whole group (n = 60) failed to reject morphological causative sentences when the causee was marked by a nominative case. However, a subset of L2 learners (n = 28) showed target-like performance, rejecting the infelicitous morphological causatives that involved a nomina-tive-marked causee. In a self-paced reading task, the same subset of L2 learners did not show sensi-tivity to the infelicitous morphological causatives with a nominative-marked causee, indicating their limitations in applying the knowledge to real-time language processing. We discuss these findings from the perspectives of L2 learners’ declarative and procedural knowledge of the Korean causative constructions and provide suggestions to teach the target constructions.
Chih-hui Chang
Foreign Language Learning Strategy Use Profile of University Students in Taiwan and Japan (pp. 356–387)
The current study, combining the use of the online questionnaire of Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, Version 7.0, and face-to-face group interviews, investigated the language learning strategy use (LLSU) profile of 599 university students of foreign languages in Taiwan and Japan. The target languages (TLs) included English, Japanese, and the European languages of French, German and Spanish. Four factors were examined in correlation with LLSU consisted of gender, academic disci-pline/TL, fondness for TL and previous experience in TL-speaking country. The overall LLSU of Taiwan-ese participants was higher than their Japanese counterparts. Taiwanese participants used social strate-gies the most, while the Japanese used memory strategies the most. Taiwanese participants used memory strategies the least, while the Japanese used social strategies the least. Male participants from the Tai-wan research site performed the best in terms of the frequency of LLSU among all participants. among both Taiwanese and Japanese participants learning European languages as TL had a significantly high LLSU. Interviews with participants revealed that Taiwanese participants preferred talking to TL native speakers, while Japanese participants preferred reading in the TL. The current study suggests that the use of various TL teaching strategies is beneficial in helping TL learners develop different learning strategies, which would eventually become part of their lifelong autonomous learning mechanism. In addition, to better understand the correlation between good language learners and LLSU (Oxford, 1990), language proficiency level and language instructions are suggested as independent variables for future related studies.
Yasuko Okada, Takafumi Sawaumi & Takehiko Ito
Video-recording has been widely used in foreign language education to study learners’ performance and thereby improve their language skills. Recent studies show that viewing not only their own recordings but also those of their peers enhances students’ motivation for language learning. This study attempted to replicate Okada, Sawaumi, and Ito (2017), who examined how observing non-native speaker model videos by proficiency order affect students’ public speaking skills. Participants were 31 Japanese university students enrolled in English communication courses. One group (n = 19) was shown more-proficient speaker videos first and less-proficient ones next, whereas the other (n = 12) was shown videos in the opposite order. Results indicated no significant effect on self-evaluation scores in either group. However, the third presentation was peer-rated significantly higher than the second for those who observed more-proficient models first and less-proficient ones next; these findings are not consistent with those of Okada et al. (2017), where students’ third presentation was rated significantly higher when they observed less-proficient models first and more-proficient ones next. This internal replication study presents the accumulated results.