Department of Western Languages

Collaborative feedback in a blended learning environment was studied to encourage learner- centeredness in the process of writing. The study aimed to: 1) examine how Thai university students perceived collaborative feedback activities when conducted in a blended learning environment; and 2) compare students’ perceptions toward collaborative feedback through face- to-face and online interactions. The participants were 24 English minors and the instruments used were a questionnaire and the students’ reflections. The reliability of the questionnaire was 0.81. The results revealed that the informants had high positive perceptions toward collaborative feedback activities both through face-to-face and online interactions. There was no significant difference between the two modes of delivery. The data obtained from the students’ reflections also revealed that the informants preferred face-to-face interactions (41.67%) or both modes (45.83%). Only a few students (12.50%) preferred collaborative feedback via the online mode.

Keywords: collaborative feedback, face to face, online community, blended learning, hybrid learning, EFL writing

Teachers of writing should encourage their students to read as it will support the development of their writing skill. Linking reading activities effectively in a writing class is a challenge for many teachers. For them, e-Learning can be used as a sound alternative. This paper recounts a one semester experience using an ATutor online forum to integrate reading into an academic writing class of third-year university students in the academic year 2010. Through the ATutor online forum, students discussed a narrow range of topics based on reading articles assigned in class. In this way, the students had an opportunity to practice their critical thinking skill by analyzing the purpose, audience and organization of the reading texts, so as to help them understand more about the elements of writing and apply what they have learned in their own writing.

Keywords
academic writing, ATutor, EFL, e-Learning, online forum

Multimodality, the idea of communication in multiple modes, can be applied to examine human subjectivity in the digital realm, or what we can call “digital subjectivity.” This article provides a literature review of these two topics to explore the relationship between them. The goal of this review is to understand how multimodality can influence the formation of human subjectivity in the context of digital communication technologies. Specifically, the article aims to answer three questions: 1) How can multimodality play a role in the construction of digital subjectivity in digital environments?  2) What are overlapping areas of concepts and studies on multimodality and digital subjectivity?  and 3) What might be gaps of studies found in this literature review?  The answers to these questions can fruitfully lead to further research in these areas and other related fields. Keywords : Multimodality, Digital subjectivity, Digital communication บทคดยอ การสอสารเชงพหวธ หรอแนวคดดานการสอสารท...

Structuralists maintain that every human action, including the writing a text, is governed by an underlying structure. One probably agrees with this notion when considering how EFL (English as a Foreign Language) writing is taught and learned.

As language is the primary source of meaning, learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) need the language as the main tool for writing. As a result, the teaching of EFL writing, which mostly adopts the current-traditional approach, focuses more on grammar and form than on the rhetorical situation of the writing. This results in writings that are mostly informative, 1 อาจารย์ ประจำ าภาควิ ชาภาษาตะวั นตก คณะมนุ ษยศาสตร์ มหาวิ ทยาลั ยศรี นคริ นทรวิ โรฒ วารสารเกษมบั ณฑิ ต ปี ที ่ 14 ฉบั บที ่ 1 มกราคม -มิ ถุ นายน 2556 43 plain and uninteresting. The process approach has introduced the development of drafts to teach students to adjust to rhetorical situations. Teaching argumentative writing could be seen as subsumed under process pedagogy, for it also teaches students that writing is rhetorical. However, there are techniques and strategies or argument that students need to practice. The present paper discusses the elements of argument and introduces techniques and strategies useful for writing argumentative essays.

This study was aimed at investigating qualities related to writing power that affect creating a reader-writer relationship. It aimed to explore kinds and characteristics of reader-writer relationships, reader-writer codes, and strategies and techniques that may be used to empower writing. It also aimed to study the problems in students' writing that may prevent them from writing powerfully and investigate inter-rating correlations among readers with regard to writing power in students' writings. The sample included twenty second and third-year students majoring in English and Languages for Careers who studied EN 231 (Composition 1) in the first semester of 2010 at Srinakharinwirot University. The research instruments were 1) teaching materials aimed at teaching about writing power, reader-writer relationships, reader-writer codes, techniques, and strategies that may help empower writing, 2) an article writer for the researcher and readers to understand writing power, reader-writer relationships, reader-writer codes, techniques, and strategies that may help empower writing, and 3) an evaluation form for readers to evaluate power in the students' writing. Four readers read 40 papers from the twenty students, two from each, and analyze them. The data analyses made use of tables, percentages, and qualitative discussions. The findings show that for

One should benefit a great deal from just studying how the term "socialism" or "pluralism" has emerged in the field of English Studies. English Studies is a broad field, and the term socialism might very well represent the relationship among the major subfields of this field. This term has, in fact, come out from attempts to define the human subject. "Socialism" is clear in its meaning, a policy or practice aimed at the happiness of many people. Simple as it may seem, there are many issues or topics circulating around it that allow one to see a sketch of English Studies. This is because if one traces this word back to where it comes from, one will see that it is implicitly involved in many movements inside each subfield of English Studies and thus learn many interesting issues and discussions along the movements.

As present in rubrics, EFL (English as a foreign language) writing instruction, influenced by psychometric assessment theory, is based on reductionism, reliability, and objectivity, although writing is by nature subjective. Trying to be reliable and objective, EFL writing instruction largely emphasizes grammar and form. While these two qualities are the necessary tool, especially for EFL students, the emphasis on them takes away or minimizes the attention to the social aspect of writing. This social aspect, in fact, is pedagogically valued by English programs and theorists of composition, and should be viewed as the second half of writing instruction. This second half refers to the inculcation of desirable social qualities, such as being critical, ethical, knowledgeable, and moral. Trying to create a balance between the side--that is, grammar and organization on one side and the social aspect on the other--brings about conflicts in our routines. The conclusion, however, is that we still teach grammar and organization and also adopt more of the social aspect by using more social activities and combining our teaching with other related theories.

While the emphases of current-traditional rhetoric on grammar, usage, and form are indispensible for our Thai EFL students, we need to inculcate other skills in our students, especially the high-order skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. Coupled with fast changes of the current world, other skills and qualities are also needed out of our students. For example, our students should always seek knowledge to cope with the changes in moral and ethical ways. As a result, the reconstructed EFL writer should possess characteristics of both the modern subject and the postmodern subject. The modern subject is rational, moral, and transcendental. The postmodern subject is technologically competent, easy to adapt to changes, and more worldly experienced. The reconstructed EFL writer is a combination of them.

This study aimed to 1) compare the syntactic development between high and low proficiency lower secondary school students, 2) explore the easy and difficult syntactic features for them, 3) examine the effect of cognition on their syntactic development, and 4) investigate features semantically difficult for them. For two semesters, the researcher taught English writing to a high and a low proficiency group of grade eight students. The researcher collected 100 unguided writings from each group to analyze using three forms. The researcher also informally interviewed ten students from each group. Both groups developed their syntactic ability similarly in terms of sentence patterns. Both groups were good at using two-part phrases, but the low proficiency group produced long phrases in relatively small numbers, and they were almost unable to arrange phrases with different functions into larger ones. The high proficiency group produced more errors and more kinds of error because the low proficiency group produced less text and mostly non-English. The difficult sentence structures were the ones not shared by L1 and L2. The low proficiency students had difficulty producing three-part phrases or phrases consisting of smaller phrases with different functions. The kinds of error frequently produced by both groups were omission, non-English, tense, addition, subjectverb agreement, fragment and misordering respectively, but the low proficiency group produced mostly non-English. Cognition plays a role in producing recognizable sentence and phrase patterns. The semantically difficult features for both groups were the structures Thai does not share with English, especially

Evidences always show that Thai students, undergraduates and graduates, are poor at sentence skills. This may have to do with the acceptation of the Communicative Language Teaching Approach (CLT) into Thailand in the 1990s, approximately twenty years now. CLT, the practice of the language, is continually pushed ahead, although students lack structure. As a result, it is unlikely that CLT will have a good future. On the other side, the Grammar Translation Method (GTM) provides structure but is condemned for failing to produce competence users of English. Therefore, despite many obstacles, there should be a combination of the two approaches in helping students to develop their sentence skills. This article focuses on the usefulness of generative grammar (GG), which is part of GTM. GTM, along with GG, is, in fact, the exploitation of cognition, the source of many desirable qualities, such as being critical and interpretive, but GTM ranks low in the operation of cognition. CLT can help solve the problem by putting the knowledge created by GTM and GG (in this article, the basic sentence patterns) into practice, here into effective communication, opening more chances for students to develop high-order qualities.

The teaching and learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) writing in Thailand is mostly concentrated on the body of the language and on objectivity and reliability.  What we teach so little, therefore, is matters about the function of language. “Agency” and “power” are two textual qualities out of many others on this side.  While these two qualities are hard to grasp in text, they are highly valued by composition teachers and are the source of other high-order textual qualities such as being interpretative and analytical.  This small-scaled, but insightful study, adopting a qualitative method, attempted to decipher them in Thai students’ writing.  The researcher looked for these two qualities in thirty-six paragraphs from thirty-six Thai university students and learners with two different proficiency levels.  Using Corbin and Strauss (1998)’s methodology for grounded theory, the researcher categorized words, phrases, ideas, and expressions into the two textual qualities.  The results showed that 1) opinions exhibit more agency than the pronoun I, and opinions or reasons, well-formed sentences with details, writer’s strategies, word choice, and argument are crucial in achieving power, 2) writer’s involvement in the topic and opinions or reasons are two features shared by both qualities, and 3) linguistic inability and informative writing hinder the construction of agency and power.
Key words: EFL writing, power, agency, textual quality, function of language

This study seeks to unfold interactional patterns of Thai EFL learners performing the problemsolving tasks in face-to-face (FTF) and synchronous computer-mediated (SCMC) contexts and explain to what extents that characteristics of each context contribute to learners' interaction. Problem-based learning was implemented as a scenario of the tasks due to its potentiality in bringing nature of learners' interactions out into open. The participants in this study were divided into two groups. The first group discussed the problems in the FTF context where their verbal and non-verbal languages were videotaped while the second group performed similar tasks in the SCMC context through Skype. Their conversations were automatically recorded by the program and later retrieved. The interview was conducted a week after the last discussion. The results revealed that the learners communicated through interactional patterns particular to the learning context. Furthermore, the properties of each context had influences on interactional stages, language use, and social interactions.