Asian EFL

Despite a global increase in the number and importance of assistant language teachers (ALTs) in English language classrooms, very few studies have looked specifically at how ALTs view their own contribution to students' English learning. Based on the results of a questionnaire survey, this study investigates the self-reflections of 426 ALTs on the JET Programme in Japan regarding their own sense of purpose and value. A combination of quantitative statistical analysis and qualitative interpretation was used to analyse the data. The results suggest that, whilst ALTs did feel a sense of contribution, they also felt as though they lacked chances to implement communicative teaching methods over the dominant grammar-based pedagogy. This article suggests the need for team-learning between ALTs and Japanese English teachers so that ALTs may both come to have a fulfilled sense of value and contribution to the development of students' communicative skills in the Japanese English classroom.

Despite their apparent straightforwardness, certain features of language seem almost less teachable. The learners' writing is often full of minor errors on surface features that make it hard for the reader to make sense of it, let alone appreciate its content. These language features are taught to students of English during their first two years of education at university. However, whether these courses accomplish that goal to an acceptable point is questionable. The present study focuses on two such aspects of writing, punctuation and spelling, in the writing of advanced level students at an Iranian University. For this purpose, three different subject groups are chosen from among those who have passed Grammar and Writing I, Grammar and Writing II, and Advanced Writing. Using a recognition-production (henceforth R-P) and a composition task, the performance of these groups is compared in various aspects of punctuation. For the measurement of spelling, a descriptive approach is ...

Rooks (M.A.) teach in the EFL program at the School of Science and Technology at Kwansei Gakuin University in Sanda, Japan. Their research interests include fluency development (Foss), computer-mediated intercultural learning (Carney), meaningful language learning (McDonald), and comprehensible input (Rooks).

This study investigated whether reading strategy, amount of writing, metacognition, metamemory, and apprehension significantly predicts writing proficiency in English. The sample is composed of 159 college students taking up their English course. Five instruments ...

She completed her BA (Hons) and MA in English from Jahangirnagar University (Dhaka). She also did a Post Graduate Diploma in TESOL (Monash University, Melbourne) and an MA in ELT and Applied Linguistics (King's College London). Her research interests include the post-structuralist approach to language, sociology and geography, sociocultural theories on identity, and significance of English in post-colonial countries.

Inviting, including, and increasing student voice could transform and energize our activities, curricula, methods, and governance in English language teaching (ELT), and could engender a self-fulfilling prophecy of increased learning, student agency, and community consciousness. General education theory provides most of the examples for using student voice. However, we report how such practices can be applied in ELT with our own small streams of research through action logs, language learning histories, student ...

Peer review has become a common activity in second language writing classrooms in recent decades. However, the debate regarding its effectiveness is still ongoing. This paper is part of a collective case study into peer review usage at a large private university in Western Japan, and aims to explore some of the issues related to the use of peer review in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing classes. The paper investigates, through a series of interviews, what concerns teachers have about peer review that the university needs to take into account when training teachers and designing curriculum. The data from the study revealed that participants used both common methods to implement peer review as well as their own unique techniques. Several reoccurring successes, difficulties, and concerns are highlighted, as well as five underlying teacher beliefs.

The standard of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) education has prompted calls for reform to preservice EFL teacher education. Field experiences are central to their professional development and for implementing reform measures. This study aims to examine preservice EFL teachers' attitudes, needs, and experiences about learning to teach writing in English before their practicum in Vietnamese high schools. An

The last few decades have witnessed the widespread adoption of the communicative approach to teaching English to students of other languages with a view of helping them achieve communicative competence. However, in terms of implementation, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has encountered various problems in the EFL and ESL contexts. Drawing on previous research, this article presents the reader with a critical review and synthesis of the issues precluding the usage of CLT in ESL/EFL countries around the world. Specifically, it examines the problems faced by teachers in using the approach and the constraints resulting from their lack of skills and capability, culture, and context and examination-oriented education systems. The article concludes with an emphasis on the need to develop teachers' English language proficiency, provide regular pedagogical training in CLT, adapt the approach to be more culture and context sensitive, and create more authentic language learning asse...

This paper seeks to engage in attempts to problematize hegemony associated with ELT materials, especially in EFL settings. Social transformative perspectives will shed light on the role of agency through collective actions of social power by English language teachers, teacher educators, and students in possibly 1) critiquing forms of hegemony (i.e., dominant use of standard [academic] English and avoidance to [controversial] themes related to social justice) in ELT materials, and 2) envisioning transformative strategies that may challenge the hegemony being critiqued. Transformative strategies on the part of social power represented by TESOL practitioners, as well as English learners, may or may not involve state/bourgeois power. More importantly, when these strategies are seriously implemented, though not necessarily in a massive scale, EFL instructors and students may defy socioeconomic, linguistic, cultural, and academic hegemony due to reliance on using many materials (e.g., tex...

To gain a better understanding of the structure of L1 and L2 language ability, we conducted an extensive literature search to collect multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) studies. We specifically examined the unitary, correlated, uncorrelated, and higher-order structures of language ability to determine which of these best fit the data across studies. We used confirmatory factor analysis to reanalyze 58 correlation or covariance matrices from 39 studies, among which we retained 17 correlation or covariance matrices from 14 studies for the main analysis. Empirical evidence showed that the unitary and higher-order models best defined both L1 and L2 ability. The support for the unitary model was surprising but consistent with the findings of Davidson (1988). Moderator variable analyses failed to identify clear relationships between the examined models and moderator variables.

This study seeks to explore the use of inflation and over-assertion devices, verbal voices and polyphonic visibility in L2 learners' and native speakers' academic writing. For specific contrastive goals, special attention has been paid to hedges and downtoners. ...