This literature review focused on effective teaching strategies for children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in classrooms where English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is taught, which is undoubtedly a novel and crucial issue that demands immediate attention. This review not only concentrates on identifying the teaching strategies used for students with ADHD but also delves into and considers different teaching approaches and inclusive education adaptations for students with ADHD. The impact of this review might be significant (...) for educators, parents, and stakeholders alike since it could provide valuable recommendations and knowledge based on the evidence gathered. This would lead to developing more effective, efficient, and inclusive teaching strategies or mechanisms for students with ADHD. Programs aimed at teacher training could also benefit from the findings of this review, contributing to the general support and improving the academic experience of students with ADHD in foreign language learning environments. (shrink)

The rise of transrealism in the second half of the twentieth century embellished the literary landscape in America with a new mode of expression that offered new understanding of time, space, identity, and social values and norms. This study situates the American novelist Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano within this literary context to map out the qualities that distinguish it as a transrealistic fiction. We argue that through innovative coalescence of fantasy and realism, this postmodern novel provides a satirical commentary against (...) the incongruities of the contemporary American society. To analyse the novel, we employ Rudy Rucker’s theorisations of the movement that delineates the transrealist manifesto as a union of realism, fantasy, and science-fiction. The findings reveal that through a satirical representation of the current advancements in technology and their inevitably negative impact on human life and society, the novel provides a dystopian picture of modern life in America. This apocalyptic sentiment is reinforced through a creative convergence of the surreal features of science-fiction, the tropes of naturalistic realism, and the elements of satire that together help to accentuate the deficiencies and ironies of the modern American society as well as the rampant misuse of technology by both individuals and authorities. (shrink)

The present longitudinal survey study explored changes in and effects of foreign language classroom anxiety and listening anxiety on Chinese undergraduate students’ English proficiency over a semester in the COVID-19 context. A set of 182 matching questionnaires was collected from first-year undergraduate English as a foreign language learners at two time points of a 16-week semester. Analyses of the data revealed the following major findings: the participants experienced high levels of FLCA and FLLA both at (...) the beginning and end of the semester, neither of which changed significantly during the semester, FLCA and FLLA were highly positively related to each other, FLCA and FLLA significantly predicted students’ self-rated proficiency in listening and speaking English, and confidence in using English, efforts and motivation to learn English and interaction with instructors and peers mediated FLCA and FLLA to exert effects on students’ self-perceived proficiency in listening and speaking English. These findings indicate that the learning environment is critical in influencing the levels of and changes in FLCA and listening anxiety and that these two types of foreign language anxiety are serious issues in the pandemic foreign language learning context. (shrink)

Recently, the use of new educational technologies in language teaching development is expanding rapidly. Educational technologies attach new features to the learning environments. The integration of educational technologies in language teaching has been received special attention among language researchers. In so doing, the present study investigated language learners’ perceptions of the integration of innovative educational technologies in their language classrooms. The sample comprised 301 English as a foreign language students with different academic qualifications (...) from Shaanxi Province and other provinces in China. To gather the necessary data, the researcher conducted a technology integration questionnaire and a focus group interview. The results of obtained data demonstrated that the language learners had positive attitudes toward using technology in their classrooms. However, the findings of the interviews indicated that learners had some problems such as lack of technology literacy and inadequate assess to facilities in participating in technology-based classroom activities. (shrink)

How can English language teachers contribute to peace locally and globally? English language teachers and learners are located in the global civil society – an international network of civil organizations and NGOs related to human rights, the environment, and sustainable peace. English, with its special role as an international language, is a major tool for communication within this network. On the local level, many teachers are interested in promoting reconciliation and sustainable peace, but often (...) do not know how to do so. This book provides information, analysis, and techniques to help teachers around the world take action toward this goal. Balancing, in a readable and accessible way, the global and the local, core and periphery, cultural diffusion and resistance, theory and practice, pessimism and optimism, outsider and insider perspectives, the expert role and the apprentice role, and prescriptive and elicitive methods, it offers an alternative to literature about critical applied linguistics, globalization, and peace education that is simply too complex and wordy to spread easily from theoretician to the classroom teacher. _The English Teacher in Global Civil Society_: synthesizes threads from many fields and topics into a coherent and empowering argument for the activist role English language teachers can take to promote social change draws on humanistic education, peace education, cross-cultural understanding, problem-posing, cooperative learning, and critical thinking methodologies to help English language teachers learn how to teach conflict resolution skills in their classrooms covers issues in critical applied linguistics, approaches and methodologies in ESL/EFL, global and local curricular issues, and specific skill areas such reading, writing, and speaking suggests a new goal for English language teachers: global citizenship. This engaging, informative, provocative, and highly readable book is a welcome resource for English language teacher trainers, pre-service teachers, practicing classroom teachers, and Peace Corps workers around the world. (shrink)

Due to the emergence of new technologies, reforms in higher education require changes in traditional education. The flipped classroom approach can be a solution to such educational changes to create a student-centered individual learning environment. This approach, which is a type of blended learning, has effectively integrated traditional education and social networks using both environments inside and outside the classroom. The current review is to provide an overview of flipped classroom studies in language teaching contexts. Particularly, (...) the study put emphasis on revealing and addressing the potential benefits and challenges of flipped classroom approach for teaching using social media. It focused on learning environments that students were exposed to the lecture content before the class in a collaborative and interactive learning environment using well-known social media applications. Twenty-five journal publications of flipped classrooms were analyzed in terms of their flipped learning activities, learner achievement, learner attitude, and challenges encountered. The analysis of the selected studies showed that the flipped classroom approach has a positive effect on learning, reducing cognitive load, involvement, accuracy, motivation, attitude, and satisfaction with the course and self-efficacy in higher education, and one of the most important challenges of the flipped classroom is the lack of familiarity and appropriate adaptation of students. With the inversion method, there was an increase in teachers’ workload. According to the analysis of the selected research findings, it is concluded that higher education can effectively use this method. (shrink)

Foreign language anxiety has been identified as a crucial affective factor in language learning. Similar to the situation in language classes, university students in interpretation classes are required to perform in a foreign language when their language skills are inadequate. Investigations are needed to determine the specific impact of FLA on interpretation learning. This study investigated the effects of the specific interpretation classroom FLA on interpretation learning and dependency distance as an indicator of learners’ (...) cognitive load. The participants were 49 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in English–Chinese interpretation classes at a university in Hong Kong. The results showed a significant negative correlation between ICFLA levels and consecutive interpretation achievement scores. ICFLA was also negatively correlated with DD in consecutive interpretations. Four factors underlying ICFLA were identified. The findings of this study would provide useful insights for researchers and educators to understand the nature and effect of FLA in different settings. (shrink)

The article elaborates on an interactive approach to language learning applied in an online EFL classroom. It presents a new insight into implementing interactive methods to develop students’ communicative competence. In conditions of world integration, the formation of communicative and life skills is indispensable. Eventually, such an approach to English language learning in distance mode is the most accessible way for teacher-learner interaction to acquire general linguistic expertise and upgrade specific language skills. The study results (...) show that an interactive approach facilitates live communication in online EFL settings, enhances learners’ motivation and autonomy, and fosters quick decision-making reactions. Modern computer technologies offer boundless opportunities for interactive methods application in the online foreign language learning context. A skillful instructor is called to masterly plan computer-mediated classroom activities, creating space to realize each student’s cognitive and communicative potential fully. Students learn to debate, substantiate their viewpoints, brainstorm ideas, do projects, work individually or collaborate in comfortable learning settings. (shrink)

Due in large part to the trends towards economic globalization, English has become the most widely disseminated and ubiquitous international language. The purpose of the study was to investigate what Taiwan?s EFL teachers at the elementary level believe about the policy of English as a compulsory subject and how they perceive the benefits and obstacles of the policy?s implementation. Ten elementary English teachers in Tainan City and its suburban areas participated in this study. Data were collected (...) through teachers? interviews, classroom observation and document analysis. Results found that all ten teachers agreed with the policy for English as a compulsory subject at the elementary level. They observed both positive and negative sides of this top?down policy. Classroom observation and interview data revealed that EFL teachers had to plan their English classes with the constraints on a large class of students with mixed levels of proficiency, limited teaching hours and resources. Parents? expectations of and attitudes towards English learning also became an obstacle. (shrink)

One of the significant courses in Chinese universities is English. This course is usually taught by a foreign language instructor. There will, however, necessarily be some communication hurdles between “foreign language teachers” and “native students.” This research presents an emotion recognition method for foreign language teachers in order to eliminate communication barriers between teachers and students and improve student learning efficiency. We discovered four factors of emotion recognition through literature analysis: smile, eye contact, gesture, and tone. (...) We believe that differences in foreign language teachers’ performance in these four areas will have an impact on students’ emotion recognition and, as a result, on their learning efficiency. The influence of the foreign language teacher’s eye contact and gestures is larger in the decision whether can improve the students’ classroom learning efficiency, according to 43 of the questionnaire data analysis. The second is the tone and smile. Our research contributes to the body of knowledge on emotion recognition in university foreign language teachers by presenting a practical method for recognizing emotion in foreign language teachers. We recommend that college foreign language teachers pay attention to eye and gesture communication with students in English classrooms based on the findings. By enriching the style of emotional expression in class, college language teachers, particularly foreign language teachers, can improve communication, and connection with students. (shrink)

The present study explores the perceptions of elementary and intermediate learners toward English as a code-switching medium in Chinese as a Foreign Language classrooms. The data were collected by means of a survey of international elementary and intermediate-level students studying Chinese at the College of Chinese Language and Culture of Jinan University in Guangzhou, China. The data collection method included a five-point Likert scale questionnaire survey. The analysis of quantitative and qualitative data collected from the questionnaire showed (...) that CFL learners at both proficiency levels tended to favor code-switching in classrooms. However, the results of the Mann–Whitney U test showed that intermediate learners favored code-switching to a lesser extent than elementary learners. Moreover, their perceptions were found to differ significantly in terms of the varying functions of code-switching. These findings suggest that code-switching functions as an effective teaching strategy in the CFL classrooms, although teachers should regulate its deployment when teaching learners with different proficiency levels. (shrink)

This study investigates the use of musical intelligence to improve the English pronunciation of Chinese third level students. It is relevant for a human-centred systems engineering approach to cross-cultural interaction. Language learning is important as valid communication can help interactions and cultural understanding between countries, this also may benefit international stability. There are natural barriers between the English and Chinese language which are reflected in teaching approaches. The teaching of English in Chinese classrooms is removed (...) from real-world English learning environments. The academic environments and approaches focus on the learning of grammar, spelling and writing with little real-life conversation and interaction with native English speakers. English language learning in China is from a more academic perspective rather than practical utilisation. Correct pronunciation and accent is therefore diminished. This study demonstrates that a musical intelligence e-Learning approach can benefit Chinese English language students. (shrink)

This mixed methods research study investigated if explicit instruction could affect EFL teachers’ perceptions and practices of classroom justice considering its three-dimensional conceptualization based on the social psychology theories of justice, encompassing the distributive, interactional, and procedural justice. To this end, 77 Iranian English as a Foreign Language teachers, chosen through maximum variation sampling, attended a four-session online justice-training course. The data were collected both before and after the course intervention through close- and open-ended questionnaires. Quantitative data (...) analysis results, obtained through running paired samples t-tests and Wilcoxon signed ranks tests, indicated that except for the distributive component, the treatment was effective in significantly enhancing the Iranian EFL teachers’ procedural, interactional, and total classroom justice perceptions. Content analysis of the posttest qualitative data, done through MAXQDA, revealed that the participants approved the course usefulness, its significance, and uses of justice enactment strategies in their classroom. Furthermore, they confirmed positive changes in their conceptions and practices of justice because of attending the course and showed enthusiasm in attending more such courses in the future. The convergence of the quantitative and qualitative results in this study demonstrated the effectiveness of the justice-oriented training course for enhancing EFL teachers’ just classroom behaviors. Hence, the results would be fruitful for teacher educators aiming to promote the pre- and in-service EFL teachers’ professional effectiveness through explicit instruction on classroom justice and its use in teacher education programs. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

The present study investigated the impacts of mobile assisted vocabulary learning via digital flashcards. The data were collected from 44 adult English as Foreign Language learners in three intact classes in a private language teaching institute in Iran, randomly assigned to experimental and control learning conditions. The experimental group used a freely available DF application to learn items from a recently developed corpus-based word list for high-frequency vocabulary in English. The treatment was implemented as out-of-the-classroom (...) learning activities where the EFL learners used DFs to augment their vocabulary knowledge, and their learning gains were compared to the control group that received regular English language education. The participants’ vocabulary knowledge was tested in pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests, and the findings indicated that using DFs for outside the classroom vocabulary learning contributed significantly to short- and long-term improvements in the knowledge of high-frequency words. The study provided empirical evidence for the affordances of mobile assisted vocabulary learning for learning a considerable proportion of core vocabulary and has some implications for addressing the vocabulary learning needs of EFL learners. (shrink)

Culturally responsive teaching has been found to promote student engagement and enhance learning in the classroom. As an effective pedagogy, the past decade has witnessed a soaring interest in exploring teachers’ competence, self-efficacy, and influencing factors in implementing CRT across school subjects. However, scant attention has been directed to language teachers’ engagement with CRT. Given the increasing diversity in students’ socio-economic status, cultural backgrounds, learning needs and preferences in English language classrooms, CRT has also become a (...) prominent concern in China. This study sets out to explore English as a Foreign Language teacher engagement with CRT in rural schools in China. With a multi-case study of eight EFL teachers, the researchers collected data through individual interviews and classroom observations. Four types of teacher engagement based on the foci were identified and were further characterized by cognitive, emotional, and social aspects. This study also taps into the internal and external factors influencing the teachers’ engagement with CRT. Implications and suggestions were provided to tackle the problems of English Language Education in rural China and contexts alike worldwide. (shrink)

The article describes techniques for organizing an English lesson that help reduce stress and increase students ' motivation. Comprehensive and continuous use of the described methods is the most important condition for a comfortable stress-free environment in the classroom, which forms a healthy and successful student. The article also contains recommendations for creating a comfortable emotional background in the English lesson by means of special mini-exercises, games, and chants aimed at attracting students attention.

Research shows that exploring language corpora through data-driven learning plays a significant role in language learning. Nevertheless, it is not clear if using concordancing as an application of DDL affects the learners’ second language motivation. To address this gap, the current study adopted a triangulation design, validating quantitative data model, and a quasi-experimental design. Ninety English-major university students with an intermediate level of English language proficiency, divided into control and experimental groups, took part in (...) the study. Drawing on a second language motivational self-system questionnaire, the findings of the study did not result in any statistically significant differences between the students in their second language motivational self-system. Altogether, the students found learning English through a DDL approach with concordancing less motivating than receiving explicit instruction. The study has implications for language teaching and learning. (shrink)

Experimental studies have developed, conducted, and evaluated classroom interventions for foreign language anxiety reduction. However, various characteristics of those classroom interventions make it difficult to synthesize the findings and apply them to practice. We conducted what is, to the best of our knowledge, the first systematic review on educational interventions for FLA. Six criteria were established for inclusion of studies. Using English keywords, we identified 854 potentially eligible studies through ProQuest and Scopus, 40 of which were (...) finally included. All included studies were published from 2007 to 2020. The studies differed in type of intervention, duration of intervention, and scale to measure FLA. Our systematic review resulted in seven features of classroom interventions, categorized as student–student interactions, student-teacher interactions, self-management, and mood boosters; we also categorized interventions as either individual or interactional. (shrink)

In What We Say, Who We Are, Parker English explores the commonality between Leopold Senghor's concept of "negritude" and Zora Neale Hurston's view of "Negro expression." For English, these two concepts emphasize that a person's view of herself is above all dictated by the way in which she talks about herself. Focusing on "performism," English discusses the presentational/representational and externalistic/internalistic facets of this concept and how they relate to the ideas of Senghor and Hurston.

This review aimed at exploring the related investigations on the effects of online and traditional learning contexts on English as a foreign language learners’ grit and foreign language anxiety. Studies have verified the relationship between learners’ grit and academic performance in online learning contexts. However, there is a need for studying the effect of face-to-face learning and face-to-screen learning on learners’ grit. On the other hand, studies have shown that classroom context is a mediating variable in (...) the relationship between grit and FLA. Furthermore, few studies have been done on the effect of traditional classroom contexts and online learning contexts on learners’ FLA. Most studies showed that online learning contexts create more FLA. There are some reasons such as ambiguity of contexts, lack of feedback, lack of opportunities for communication, type of employed applications, cognitive load, technophobia, and reduction in enthusiasm which arouse learners’ anxiety in an online learning environment. In the end, the pedagogical implications are expounded to promote the learners’ grit and diminish anxiety for better performance. This review also provides some suggestions for further research to clarify our perspective on positive and negative emotional variables. (shrink)

There has been much research into teacher beliefs about teaching and learning as seen in the general teacher education literature. In the field of language teacher education, this line of research has been evolving, with the recent trend being streamlined into “teacher cognition” as a generic or umbrella term. Despite increasing amounts of research output so far, research into foreign language teachers’ cognitions about their own teaching and decision-making is still insufficient, particularly with regard to university-level English-as-a-foreign- (...) class='Hi'>language (EFL) teachers in China. Drawing on Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory, this qualitative research focused on EFL teachers’ cognitions about form-focused instruction in Chinese university settings. It intended to discover how teachers’ cognitions changed when they were expected to teach in actual classrooms and what factors contributed to these changes. Data collected from four teacher-participants through semi-structured interviews, classroom observations and follow-up stimulated recall interviews showed participants’ support forfocus-on-forminstruction, which means they not only paid attention to the grammatical form of the language but also to the meaning it is intended to convey. However, data also showed that the teacher-participants shifted fromfocus-on-formtofocus-on-formSinstruction in actual teaching, which suggests that they might have realized the challenges of carrying out teaching activities surroundingfocus-on-formand would like to take an easier approach by only teaching the grammar of the language byfocusing on formS. Such incongruences are interpreted with reference to a plethora of sociocultural factors including traditional Chinese thinking and institutional expectations. The implications of the findings for stakeholders in universities, including faculty members, students, and curriculum developers in similar contexts, are also discussed. (shrink)

Reforms surrounding the teacher’s role in fostering students’ social competences, especially those associated with empathy, have moved to the forefront of global higher education policy discourse. In this context, reform in higher education teaching has been focused on shifting teachers’ practices away from traditional lecture-style teaching—historically associated with higher education teaching—towards student-centred pedagogical approaches, largely because of how the latter facilitate students’ social learning, including the development of students’ abilities connected to empathy, such as intercultural understanding. These developments towards learner-oriented (...) higher education teaching may offer promising opportunities; however, a central problem within these current policy recommendations is that the connection between cultivating empathy and cultivating imagination is not explicitly foregrounded. Against this background, I turn to Dewey’s notion of imagination to show how imagination is indispensable to all learning, and therefore has a role to play in teaching. In this article, I show how imagination is not only deeply connected to empathy, but also critical for gaining intercultural understanding and is a condition for the possibility that, as human beings, we can learn with and from others. On this basis, I argue that Dewey’s notion of imagination provides significant insight on how to rethink what is needed to create inclusive classrooms in higher education, especially under conditions of cultural, linguistic and religious diversity. First, I consider Dewey’s concept of learning and the indispensable role of imagination in learning. Second, drawing on the work of Martha Nussbaum, I examine how teaching through the narrative arts in higher education cultivates the imagination and helps us engage the lives of others. I use an example from my own teaching to illustrate how the narrative arts can foster dialogue across difference through the development of what I call ‘third voice’—a different or other ‘position’ that productively mediates reflective interaction between participants, including teacher and learners. In closing, I consider the implications of my discussion for present and future higher education policy on the evaluation of ‘quality teaching’. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEven though many sport philosophers have worked to delineate clear definitions of play and games, typical language usage often conflates the two phenomena and even provides an undue normati...

ABSTRACTEven though many sport philosophers have worked to delineate clear definitions of play and games, typical language usage often conflates the two phenomena and even provides an undue normati...

Between 1934 and 1937 Maurice Blondel, the French Roman Catholic philosopher best known for his 1893 work, Action, published a trilogy of writings. Out of these writings came a theological ontology of tremendous force, creativity, and coherence. The purpose of the present dissertation is to reassess the viability of Blondel's ontology for contemporary theology. The retrieval begins with John Milbank's 1990 investigation of Blondel's early philosophy. While Milbank focuses on the strengths of Blondel, he also highlights some critical weaknesses. The (...) dissertation argues that Blondel later came to recognize and correct these weaknesses in his trilogy. ;La pensee, the first volume of the trilogy, discusses the nature and development of thought. Recognizing the ontological structure of thought leads Blondel to present his doctrine of the transnatural elan for assimilation to God. The transnatural desire for God is compared with Henri de Lubac's notion of naturae desiderium and then applied to the modern problem of the relationship between nature and supernature. ;The second installment of the trilogy, L'etre et les etres , explores the mysterious relation of Being and beings. Blondel situates the discussion within the language of creation, identifying Being as Creator and beings as creatures. The analogy of creation allows him to forge the proper relationship between Being and beings. After Blondel's death, two different schools of thought emerged on the mystery of being: Karl Rahner's Thomism and Jean-Luc Marion's new phenomenology. Each school is reviewed and critiqued from a Blondelian perspective. ;The trilogy concludes with a long-awaited revision of L'action . It begins by distinguishing the idea of action from action itself and establishing the ontological difference of action. Action is presented ontologically as enacted power, which is investigated in its individual, social, and metaphysical forms. Individual action is identified as making, practicing, and contemplating. Social action is studied next, with the conclusion that the social being of enacted power is determined by either a philosophy of peace or violence. Finally, divine action is evaluated with regards to the language of causality and absolute power. Blondel proposes instead to describe God's activity in terms of pure action. (shrink)

While previous studies have examined front-line teachers’ written feedback practices in second language writing classrooms, such studies tend to not take teachers’ language and sociocultural backgrounds into consideration, which may mediate their performance in written feedback provision. Therefore, much remains to be known about how L2 writing teachers with different first languages enact written feedback. To fill this gap, we designed an exploratory study to examine native English-speaking and non-native English-speaking teachers’ written feedback practices in the (...) Chinese tertiary context. Our study collected 80 English as a foreign language students’ writing samples with teacher written feedback and analyzed them from three aspects: Feedback scope, feedback focus, and feedback strategy. The findings of our study revealed that the two groups of teachers shared similar practices regarding feedback scope and feedback strategies. Both NES and NNES EFL teachers used a comprehensive approach to feedback provision, although NNES teachers provided significantly more feedback points than their NES peers and they delivered their feedback directly and indirectly. However, their practices differed greatly with regard to feedback focus. Specifically, when responding to EFL students’ writing, NES teachers showed more concern with global issues, whereas NNES teachers paid more attention to linguistic errors. With a surge in the recruitment of expatriate NES and local NNES English teachers in China and other EFL countries, our study is expected to make a contribution to a better understanding of the two groups of EFL teachers’ pedagogical practices in written feedback provision and generate important implications for their feedback provision. (shrink)

Teaching is one of the professions that creates opportunities for individuals to experience flow, a state of complete absorption in an activity. However, very few studies have examined ESL/EFL teachers’ flow states inside or outside the classroom. As such, this study aimed to explore the quality of experience of 75 EFL teachers in flow and also examine the relationships between their emotional intelligence, the Big Five personality traits and the flow state. To this end, the teachers filled out recurrent (...) flow surveys for a week, and also completed emotional intelligence and the Big Five personality questionnaires. It was found that reading was the major flow trigger outside the classroom and teaching and delivering lessons was the most significant flow-inducing activity for the teachers inside the classroom. Furthermore, correlations and independent samples t-tests indicated that all emotional intelligence and personality traits had significant relationships with flow except agreeableness. Finally, multiple regression analysis showed that two personality traits, conscientiousness and openness to experience were the strongest predictors of the flow state. The implications for future flow-related research in the field of applied linguistics are discussed. (shrink)

This paper makes a sociological exploration of the enforcement of strong boundaries between “pure” and “applied” knowledge in primary school English classrooms. This article is innovative in its focus on how pupils describe and evaluate their own experiences. It addressed the research question: How do primary pupils experience the traditional classroom and what suggestions do they and their teachers express for making improvements to English language learning? We used observations in 18 classrooms, a written sentence-starter activity (...) with 394 pupils and extended individual interviews with 38 pupils in Egyptian Government primary schools. The research took place in the 2015–2016 school years in response to the British Council’s ELT research awards funding. This article conveys the pupils’ experiences of learning the “pure” English; and also of experiencing another English outside the classroom, which was legitimised through speaking and interacting rather than... (shrink)

This review tends to investigate the related studies on the relationships among positive affectivity as a type of positive psychology construct and academic disengagement and communication apprehension as two types of negative emotions. The negative correlations among CA, disengagement, and positive affectivity like enjoyment have been verified in the review of the literature. Moreover, little research has been done on the relationship between academic disengagement and CA. The studies showed that some factors such as encouraging teaching methodologies, positive classroom (...) context, exciting and challenging classroom tasks can act as mediators in the relationship between positive affectivity and CA. In the end, the pedagogical implications are explicated to foster the language learning quality and to develop a language educational system. Suggestions for further research are provided to develop the existent literature on the relationship between English as a foreign language learners’ academic disengagement, CA, and their positive affectivity. (shrink)

With the growing need to nurture students’ independent learning, English language teaching practices should reflect student-centered assessment approaches, such as self-assessment, an ultimate goal of higher education. It has been pointed out that to conduct effective self-assessment, students need to be taught systematically, and that is where teachers are expected to step in. Prior to implementing such a change in ELT, it is important to conduct research on English as a foreign language teachers’ attitudes toward, and (...) self-efficacy beliefs about, implementing self-assessment to cultivate capable student self-assessors. Although the strong global endorsement of self-assessment over the past two decades has witnessed its classroom implementation in different disciplines, such studies are scant in relation to EFL writing classrooms. To address this gap, the present qualitative research examined five Chinese tertiary EFL writing teachers’ attitudes toward and self-efficacy beliefs about student self-assessment of writing, as well as possible reasons that discourage them from engaging students in self-assessment practices. Data collected from in-depth, semi-structured interviews indicated that self-assessment, a critical element of self-regulated learning, is surprisingly missing from the teachers’ knowledge base and previous practices. Additionally, the findings offer insights into the striking differences in teachers’ understanding of, attitudes toward, and low self-efficacy beliefs about self-assessment of writing. Reasons why teachers choose not to implement self-assessment of writing are also discussed. Findings from this study contribute to a deeper understanding of how EFL teachers’ attitudes and self-efficacy beliefs are enacted in relation to their classroom assessment practices in order to move forward discussions on the feasibility of implementing self-assessment of writing in tertiary EFL classrooms. (shrink)

This small-scale research paper analyses both teachers’ and students’ perceptions and their roles towards the use of Project Based Learning in a research context in the Republic of Kosovo. The study was completed by sixty students of three lower-secondary private schools in Kosovo and eight English language teachers who work there. The aim of this study was to investigate teachers’ perspectives on using PBL in their classes, the challenges they face while applying PBL, the most common benefits PBL (...) implementation, the materials used with this method, and the impact of PBL on students’ motivation to learn English as a Foreign Language. The data obtained from interviews with teachers highlight that teachers use PBL to a certain extent, though it works much effectively with lower-secondary and upper-secondary education. Teachers preferred to use Project Based Learning in their classrooms in general, although there appears to be some uncertainty between doing projects and Project Based Learning as a strategy. English language instructors have only seen themselves as facilitators of initiatives carried out in the classroom, resulting in a student-centered environment. In contrast to the past, it appears that teachers make extensive use of technology and involve students in a variety of activities to boost their learning and keep them engaged in PBL. Students on the other hand, through a very small number, highlighted that PBL is a better teaching approach in comparison to the traditional textbook teaching and learning. (shrink)

This study takes a holistic view of flow and anti-flow experiences as interactive subsystems in blended English as a foreign language learning and examines the dynamic complex construct in the field of instructed second language acquisition. We first rephrased the 22-item Classroom Flow Questionnaire to better reflect the context of blended EFL learning. The modified CFQ was then administered to 661 first language Chinese EFL learners. A final 14-item Foreign Language Flow Scale was developed (...) based on results from a series of reliability and validity tests. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis results have demonstrated that foreign language learning flow is a three-dimensional construct involving Enjoyment, Boredom, and Anxiety, thus conceptualizing and validating flow as a continuum with both positive and negative ends. Moreover, participants reported that they experienced the lowest degree of enjoyment, while with respect to the negative flow, they almost experienced similar degree of boredom and anxiety. The present study contributes to the development of the conceptual framework for flow in ISLA as well as constructive pedagogical implications for L2 researchers and educators. Suggestions for future research are also provided. (shrink)

One of the popular theories in psychology that potentially contributes to the development of teaching and learning programs is brain dominance. According to this theory, the brain is categorized into two hemispheres based on personal traits and cognitive styles. It is interesting to investigate the correlation between brain dominance and second language learning. Therefore, this study set out to examine the correlation between brain dominance and the development of English reading, and speaking skills. For this purpose, the required (...) data were randomly gathered from 230 sophomore students in four different universities and were analyzed through a Pearson Chi-Square test, a Kruskal–Wallis test, and a Mann–Whitney test. Findings evidenced a significant correlation between brain dominance and reading skills. Three categories of brain dominance groups differ in reading skills in which moderate right-brain shows the highest score. Concerning the speaking skills, however, the results documented no significant correlation between brain dominance and speaking skills. Three groups of brain dominance were not significantly different in three aspects of speaking skills, including accuracy, fluency, and comprehensibility. The study concludes by proposing a range of implications and some avenues for further research. (shrink)

Assessing learners’ individual differences helps identify students who need teacher support in classrooms. Previous studies have examined second language achievement based on reading anxiety because reading is an input-based activity essential for successful L2 learning. This study applied a latent rank model to identify L2 learners who are likely to be struggling or successful in classrooms according to their L2 reading anxiety symptoms. Moreover, a psychometric function was developed to determine the cutoff anxiety scores that discriminate against their substantial (...) differences. The model was applied to responses from the Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale provided by 335 Japanese learners of English. The results showed that the FLRAS classified students into three ranked groups with ordinal information regarding L2 reading anxiety. Rank 1 exhibited good conditions in L2 reading anxiety. Rank 2 reported high anxiety toward unfamiliar grammar during L2 reading. Rank 3 had even higher anxiety levels, especially for vocabulary and grammatical knowledge deficits and reading difficulty. The cutoff anxiety scores estimated by the model detected students who failed their L2 class with 79% accuracy. Theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical issues in language anxiety were discussed in terms of diagnosis and different approaches to teaching L2 reading. (shrink)

ABSTRACTWhile pedagogical content knowledge has been studied across a wide range of research areas, including science, language teaching and mathematics, there is limited research on the role...

The “dynamic turn” in the field of second language acquisition catalyzed scholarly devotion to the complex dynamic relationships between learner and teacher variables and various academic emotions. As such, the present study examined the varying effects of the aforementioned variables on the constructs of positive and negative flow, and determined their strongest predictors, respectively. This study used a mixed-method approach to collect data from 607 Chinese English-as-a-Foreign-Language learners. In stage one of the research, the researcher first assessed (...) the participants’ levels of positive flow and negative flow in a blended learning context, then performed Pearson correlation analysis to confirm a significant, but weak positive relationship between positive flow and negative flow. Then, significant difference tests were run to determine the varied effects of those variables on flow. Finally, two multiple regression analyses were conducted to identify five predictors of positive flow, with the biggest contribution coming from learners’ attitudes toward the foreign language, and three predictors of negative flow, with the learners’ major accounting for the majority of variance. In the second stage of the research, a qualitative corpus was constructed, based on accounts of classroom experiences from 71 participants of the total sample, and further illustrated the quantitative findings. Pedagogical implications for educational psychologists and teachers of second and/or foreign languages are addressed. (shrink)

This study adapts a Medical English Language Anxiety Scale based on Horwitz’s Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale and examines students’ anxiety in medical English vocabulary, listening and speaking, communication, literature reading, and academic paper writing. The biographical factors related to medical English language anxiety were also tested. The questionnaire sets including five dimensions were distributed to the students from a medical university in Sichuan, China, and were statistically analyzed by using SPSS 22.0 and (...) AMOS 21.0. By employing the adapted MELAS, it was found that 85.2% of the medical students surveyed suffered moderate and higher anxiety. Among all dimensions, students with listening and speaking anxiety recorded the highest, followed by literature reading anxiety, English academic writing anxiety, communication anxiety, and vocabulary learning anxiety. We also found that the anxiety of rural medical students in each dimension was higher than that of urban medical students. This study suggests that English teachers should be fully aware of their students’ language anxiety situation, design interesting class activities, and create a relaxed English learning atmosphere in classroom teaching to make students less nervous when learning medical English in class. (shrink)

Co-authored letter to the APA to take a lead role in the recognition of teaching in the classroom, based on the participation in an interdisciplinary Conference on the Role of Advocacy in the Classroom back in 1995. At the time of this writing, the late Myles Brand was the President of Indiana University and a member of the IU Department of Philosophy.

This book argues for the importance of writing to conceptions of language, technology, and civilization in the early modern era.