Volume 9, Number 2, December 2012
In 2003, the Japanese Ministry of Education (MEXT) introduced potentially far reaching reforms to EFL curricula in high schools entitled “The National Action Plan to Cultivate ‘Japanese with English Abilities’ ” (the Action Plan). However, given the failure of previous attempts at reform, there was some doubt as to whether the Action Plan would meet with success. This paper investigates the state of policy implementation through a review of the literature and presentation of new research. By means of a multi-regional five site study (N=309), first year university students were asked about the EFL lessons they experienced in their senior high schools. The study finds that many schools are meeting at least some of the aims of the Action Plan, but few if any are meeting all of them. Relevant issues and apparent trends are explored and discussed.
The objective of this study was (a) to investigate the nature and structure of the language learning beliefs of Thai students, and (b) to determine whether there was any significant difference in terms of the language learning beliefs among groups of students with different past educational experiences and students learning different foreign languages. Horwitz’s Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) was administered to Thai students learning the Japanese or Chinese language (N = 189) at a university. Through a principal component analysis, a six-factor structure was identified for the beliefs. Only in terms of one of the six factors was a significant difference identified between the groups of students who had graduated from different types of secondary schools and had different experiences of the preparatory pre-university English language course. Similarly, the language learning beliefs were significantly different for the groups of students learning two different languages only in terms of one factor. With the wide range of similarities in the participants’ past experiences in learning English and other foreign languages, the findings suggest that language learning beliefs are shared if the learners had similar learning experiences.
Due to the detrimental effects of foreign language anxiety on multiple areas of language achievement, a large body of research has been devoted to examining the sources of this anxiety. Yet very few studies have con-sidered acculturation and L2 self as causal factors in foreign language anxiety. This enquiry proposes hypothesized links between foreign language anxiety, three components of Schumann’s (1978, 1986) acculturation theories (assimilation, preservation, and adaptation), two aspects of Dörnyei’s (2005, 2009) L2 motivational self system (ideal L2 self and ought-to L2 self), and selected sociodemographic variables in the Taiwanese EFL context. A setwise multiple regression analysis revealed four variables that contributed significantly to the prediction of foreign language anxiety: the L2 self, preservation, hours spent on English listening com-prehension practice, and self-perceived English proficiency. The pedagogical implications of these findings for reducing foreign language anxiety and for improving foreign language learning are discussed.
The present study explored the effects of using Facebook as a medium for grammar and writing discussions of low-intermediate EFL students. The data were collected from the students’ utterances asking for explanations about English grammar and writing that were posted on Facebook, their gain scores in the pre-test and post-test, and interview responses. The findings showed a statistically significant difference between the mean scores of the pre-test and the post-test (t = 6.65, p = 0.00). Most common topics of discussion involved sentence structures, followed by word meanings, parts of speech and then relative clauses. It was found that English grammar was worth promoting for discussions on Facebook because there were correlations between the gain scores in the grammar and writing parts at the significant levels (r = 0.399 in the pre-test and r = 0.859 in the post-test). The students also had positive attitudes toward using Facebook as a means of learning grammar and writing. As an alternative learning tool, Facebook provided them a convenient and attractive means to engage in discussions with the teacher and other users who had better grammatical knowledge.
This paper presents an integrated approach to the teaching and learning of Chinese zh, one difficult sound particularly challenging to Hispanic students. The proposed approach consists of three components, namely a mouthercise, a flash animation, and a set of class practice and performance drills. An experiment of this approach has been conducted in a beginning Chinese class in an American university classroom setting. The results yield strong support for the efficacy of the proposed approach.
Little is known about how multilingual English users (MEUs) in EFL contexts such as Indonesia understand and construct their MEU identities. The purpose of the study is to explore how 30 students in a pre-service teacher education frame their multilingual English identities as written in response journals, part of a course requirement in a Cross-cultural Understanding (CCU) course. The findings illustrate that many of the participants negotiated their identities based on a core identity derived from their assumed first language (L1) culture. With regard to the English use, encounters with native speakers appeared to magnify their linguistic insecurity, viewing their nonnative status as a drawback. All of the participants appeared to be fully aware that the use of English in public spaces would project negative identities as Indonesian nationals. Implications for pre-service teacher education programs are made at the end of the paper.
Handoyo Puji Widodo
The Use of Complaint Letters as an Authentic Source of Input for an Interactive Task in Second Language Learning (pp. 245–258)
This article reports empirical findings from a micro-interactional analysis of the use of complaint letters as an authentic source of input for an interactive task that intermediate level university students performed in the ESL context. The present research study aims to examine whether the tasks of comprehending, responding to, and discussing complaint letters engage students in socially, cognitively and linguistically laden undertakings. Three international students from Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan participated voluntarily in this research study. These participants were asked to comprehend, respond to and discuss complaint letters, which served as an authentic source of input for these tasks. The recorded audio data were transcribed, coded and analysed through a micro-interactional analysis. The key findings are that the use of complaint letters enabled: passive and active engagement in peer interaction; meaning making of the input content; meaning negotiation; cognitive and emotional responses to the input; prior knowledge or experience activation; and the deployment of discourse markers in dialogic interaction. The findings suggest that the use of appropriate authentic texts as interactional input affords students the opportunity to engage in tasks personally and meaningfully.