Pub Date : 2013-09-13DOI: 10.5746/LEIA/13/V4/I1/A5/PUNYARATABANDHU_RUSH_KLEINDL_WADDEN
Ditthayanan Punyaratabandhu, E. Rush, Michael Kleindl, P. Wadden
This article argues that due to test washback, simplicity of instruction, misconceptions of Western-heritage teachers about Asian students, and prevalence in ESL textbooks, the conventional five-paragraph essay is the dominant writing form taught to Asian university students. Yet as Dombek and Herndon (2004) observe, such a simplified form does not reflect the “periodic development” commonly found in the essays of proficient English-language writers and expected in Western university courses. To address this shortcoming, two sophisticated teaching methodologies used in language and liberal arts programs in Thailand and Japan are presented: the essay based upon periodic rather than cumulative development, and the Situation-ProblemSolution-Evaluation (SPSE) approach. Such pedagogies, it is argued, challenge students to move beyond formulas, to incorporate and integrate sources (in addition to personal experience), to engage in critical and creative analysis, and to enact a richer process of thinking in their writing. The Orthodoxy of the Five-Paragraph Essay In a compilation of critical perspectives on language instruction in TESOL Quarterly in 1999, Alastair Pennycook observed that work in TESOL had for a long time been “too narrowly constructed to be of much interest to people outside the area” (p. 346). In other words, the instrumentalist assumptions that underlie much of the field seem to have been accepted to degree that analysis rarely occurred in the discipline. This rigidity continues to be illustrated in the widespread use – and misuse – of the “five-paragraph essay.” Any student who has been required to take an English proficiency examination, such as the TOEFL or IELTS, will have been taught this familiar several-paragraph thesis-driven form (typically five paragraphs, but Language Education in Asia, 2013, 4(1), 60-75. http://dx.doi.org/10.5746/LEiA/13/V4/I1/A5/Punyaratabandhu_Rush_Kleindl_Wadden Language Education in Asia, Volume 4, Issue 1, 2013 Punyaratabandhu, Rush, Kleindl, and Wadden Page 61 ranging from three to six). Driven by test washback (the back-to-front influence tests have on teaching and learning) and its ease of instruction, this model has become the norm in ESL courses and texts around the world. However, authentic writing by authors fully proficient in English rarely takes this form. Instead, as Dombek and Herndon observed, professional essayists tend to write . . . in the periodic style, leading up to the most important thought . . . in their final sentences. They do this because their ideas are so complex or counterintuitive that they could not be understood without the train of thought and pieces of evidence that precede them (2004, p. 27). As Dombek and Herndon pointed out, while the five-paragraph essay can serve as a good base for beginners, it is often inappropriate for higher-level writing. Thus, this paper will suggest and evaluate teaching methodologies which can be used to help students move beyond familiar
本文认为，由于考试的反作用、教学的简单性、西方传统教师对亚洲学生的误解以及ESL教科书的盛行，传统的五段文章是亚洲大学生的主要写作形式。然而，正如Dombek和Herndon(2004)所观察到的那样，这种简化的形式并没有反映出精通英语作家的文章中常见的“周期性发展”，也没有反映出西方大学课程所期望的“周期性发展”。为了解决这一缺点，本文提出了泰国和日本语言和文科课程中使用的两种复杂的教学方法:基于周期性而不是累积性发展的论文，以及情境-问题-解决-评估(SPSE)方法。有人认为，这种教学法挑战学生超越公式，整合和整合资源(除了个人经验)，从事批判性和创造性的分析，并在写作中制定更丰富的思考过程。Alastair Pennycook在1999年的《TESOL季刊》上发表了一篇关于语言教学的批判性观点的汇编，他指出，长期以来，TESOL的工作“被构建得过于狭隘，以至于对该领域以外的人没有太大的兴趣”(第346页)。换句话说，作为该领域基础的工具主义假设似乎已经被接受到某种程度，以至于该学科很少进行分析。这种僵化在“五段文章”的广泛使用和误用中继续得到体现。任何被要求参加英语水平考试的学生，如托福或雅思，都会被教授这种熟悉的几段论文驱动形式(通常是五段，但亚洲语言教育，2013,4(1)，60-75。http://dx.doi.org/10.5746/LEiA/13/V4/I1/A5/Punyaratabandhu_Rush_Kleindl_Wadden亚洲语言教育，第4卷，第1期，2013年Punyaratabandhu, Rush, Kleindl, and Wadden第61页，范围从3到6)。在测试反推(测试对教学和学习的前后影响)及其易于教学的推动下，这种模式已成为世界各地ESL课程和教材的标准。然而，完全精通英语的作家的真正写作很少采用这种形式。相反，正如东贝克和赫恩登所观察到的，专业散文家倾向于写……在周期性的风格，导致最重要的思想…在他们最后的句子里。他们这样做是因为他们的想法是如此复杂或违反直觉，如果没有之前的思路和证据，他们就无法理解(2004年，第27页)。正如Dombek和Herndon所指出的，虽然五段文章可以作为初学者的良好基础，但它通常不适合更高水平的写作。因此，本文将建议和评估教学方法，这些方法可用于帮助学生超越熟悉的公式，并挑战他们采用更复杂的写作风格和修辞形式，以更好地参与真实话语中常见的各种批判性和创造性分析。本文作者在两所院校任教。一个是语言和数学准备中心(PC)，这是泰国玛希隆大学国际学院(MUIC)的大学预科项目;另一个是日本国际基督教大学(ICU)的文科英语课程(ELA)。这两个专业都被认为是各自领域的精英，他们学生的英语语言技能普遍高于同类大学的同龄人。这些课程的共同目标是培养毕业生不仅可以使用英语进行功能性交流以完成基本的学术任务，而且还可以批判性地和创造性地使用他们的语言能力。正是由于这些原因，这两个项目的教师都试图引入超越五段论的写作方法。要了解如何成功地使用这些方法，首先有必要了解为什么需要它们。
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Pub Date : 2013-09-13DOI: 10.5746/LEIA/13/V4/I1/A2/CAI
Luna Jing Cai
Academic writing remains a prominent issue for students and teachers in Asian EFL contexts. English courses offered in mainland China at tertiary levels mostly focus on teaching English for general purposes, and few concern writing for academic purposes, even for English majors. This small-scale needs analysis study reports on a survey of 50 Master of Arts students in English who are part of a new English for Academic Purposes program at a university in south China, as well as a focus group interview with a smaller group. Results indicate that 70% of the participants have never taken an academic writing course before and that the academic writing skills students found difficult are those less frequently taught. Students want a new course which provides them with generic features for writing the sections in a research article / thesis and, more importantly, the linguistic resources needed for writing academic papers appropriately. Current Teaching of Academic English at the University Level in China Tertiary students in EFL contexts are often faced with a gap between their limited command of L2 English academic literacies and their much more developed L1 academic literacies. In mainland China, while many universities are becoming more globally oriented, few institutions have established English language centers to provide specific linguistic consultancy for nonnative English-speaking students, as those in English-dominant countries or other contexts in Asia (e.g., Hong Kong and Singapore) have done. The majority of universities in mainland China offer “College English” courses, employing a textbook oriented for College English Test (CET) preparation that emphasizes grammar drilling (Zhang & Luo, 2004) and overlooks academic writing. Due to local constraints such as “large class size, disjunction between classroom instruction and the CET test and students’ test-driven learning styles” (You, 2004, p. 255), students’ academic writing proficiency remains low. As a result, Chinese students are constantly reported as able to attain high scores on grammarbased tests yet unable to write acceptable English compositions. According to Xu (2005), most Chinese students would like to rely on writing handbooks or directly imitate the format of published articles by borrowing certain expressions when required to write academic papers. Even though academic / thesis writing courses are offered in a few universities, they are usually teacher-centered lectures, with only referencing skills and thesis layout being taught, while elaborations on moves [the smallest discourse units that perform a certain communicative or 1Language Education in Asia, 2013, 4(1), 5-22. http://dx.doi.org/10.5746/LEiA/13/V4/I1/A2/Cai
学术写作仍然是亚洲学生和教师面临的一个突出问题。中国大陆高等院校开设的英语课程大多侧重于通用英语教学，很少涉及学术写作，即使是英语专业的学生。这项小规模的需求分析研究报告了对50名英语专业文学硕士学生的调查，这些学生是中国南方一所大学新开设的学术英语项目的一部分，以及对一个较小小组的焦点小组访谈。结果表明，70%的参与者以前从未上过学术写作课程，学生们发现学术写作技巧的困难是那些很少教的。学生们想要一门新课程，为他们提供撰写研究文章/论文部分的通用功能，更重要的是，为撰写学术论文提供所需的语言资源。英语环境下的大学生往往面临着二语水平有限和母语水平发达之间的差距。在中国大陆，虽然许多大学正变得更加全球化，但很少有机构建立了英语语言中心，为非英语母语的学生提供特定的语言咨询，就像那些在英语占主导地位的国家或亚洲其他地区(如香港和新加坡)所做的那样。中国大陆的大多数大学都开设“大学英语”课程，使用的是面向大学英语考试(CET)准备的教科书，强调语法练习(Zhang & Luo, 2004)，而忽略了学术写作。由于“班级规模大，课堂教学与大学英语考试脱节，学生的应试学习风格”等局部制约因素(You, 2004, p. 255)，学生的学术写作水平仍然很低。因此，中国学生经常在语法测试中获得高分，但却写不出令人满意的英语作文。根据Xu(2005)的研究，在撰写学术论文时，大多数中国学生倾向于依靠撰写手册或直接模仿已发表文章的格式，借用某些表达方式。虽然有几所大学开设了学术/论文写作课程，但这些课程通常以教师为中心，只教授参考技巧和论文布局，而对动作(执行某种交际或交际的最小话语单元)进行阐述[1].亚洲语言教育，2013,4(1)，5-22。http://dx.doi.org/10.5746/LEiA/13/V4/I1/A2/Cai
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Pub Date : 2013-09-13DOI: 10.5746/LEIA/13/V4/I1/A4/HARMS_MYERS
E. Harms, Ceann Myers
Oral communication teachers constantly strive to empower students to become confident English speakers. In order to become fluent, students must spend class time speaking English, but it can be difficult to increase individual speaking time and still meet the goals of the curriculum. Many teachers focus on individual presentations; however, this is time-consuming and difficult in large classes. This paper will explain Round Tables, a practical, engaging alternative to the traditional classroom presentation. Round Tables are small groups of students, with each student given a specific speaking role to perform. The roles allow students to practice different types of presentations and build fluency. Throughout the course, students present to their Round Table several times, improving their confidence and competence, while still allowing teachers to achieve other goals. This paper will also provide an implementation structure and offer materials that can be adapted for different classrooms. Developing speaking skills is essential for students to become fluent in a language. According to Folse (2006), one key factor in a speaking course is that students should be doing the majority of the speaking throughout the class. While informal conversation can be practiced and improved through group work and pair work, in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) setting, the goal is not only informal conversation but also formal presentation practice. It is essential to provide students more formalized opportunities to develop their self-expression and help build an authentic voice (Roberts & Cooke, 2009). Yet individual presentations are timeconsuming and difficult in large classes, with only one student speaking at a time while all other students are listening. In large classes, it can easily take more than one full class period for each student to give a standard five-minute speech. In addition, for the majority of this class time, students are primarily developing listening skills instead of interacting with the presenter or developing their own presentation skills. This represents a huge loss of student speaking time. Therefore, lost time and the limited linguistic output of the majority of the students during individual presentations are major disadvantages of heavily focusing on this activity throughout the semester. However, acquiring the skills necessary to give effective presentations is one major component of effective speaking, especially within an EAP environment. Of the four Language Education in Asia, 2013, 4(1), 39-59. http://dx.doi.org/10.5746/LEiA/13/V4/I1/A4/Harms_Myers
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Pub Date : 2013-09-13DOI: 10.5746/LEIA/13/V4/I1/A1/KIMURA
Kelly Kimura
Language Education in Asia publishes research and teaching practice papers with a practical focus on the classroom, yet the publication also aims to address all aspects of language education in this part of the world and so welcomes submissions from leaders in the field. Leaders have a broad perspective on and deep knowledge of language education issues, as well as experience with past changes in the field that may be applicable to current and future changes. Whether commentary or research, or describing successes or failures, these submissions represent potentially valuable contributions to the ongoing discussion and development of language education in this region.
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Pub Date : 2012-12-31DOI: 10.5746/LEIA/12/V3/I2/A04/THOMPSON_MILLINGTON
Colin Thompson, N. Millington
Research has shown how tasks can improve L2 oral skills in different ways (Ellis, 2005). The effectiveness of task-based learning has drawn interest within Asian educational contexts which have been accustomed to more traditional methods of language instruction. Authorities in these contexts have recently started to express a desire for more communicative oral syllabuses. However, large class sizes, inadequate financial support, and teacher time constraints at many institutions have often made the implementation of task-based learning problematic. This paper attempts to address these issues by reporting action research on an interactive task designed by teachers on a limited budget for use in an intermediate-level university classroom in Japan. It describes how the task was used to facilitate interaction and use of a specific grammar form, English articles.
{"title":"Task-Based Learning for Communication and Grammar Use","authors":"Colin Thompson, N. Millington","doi":"10.5746/LEIA/12/V3/I2/A04/THOMPSON_MILLINGTON","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5746/LEIA/12/V3/I2/A04/THOMPSON_MILLINGTON","url":null,"abstract":"Research has shown how tasks can improve L2 oral skills in different ways (Ellis, 2005). The effectiveness of task-based learning has drawn interest within Asian educational contexts which have been accustomed to more traditional methods of language instruction. Authorities in these contexts have recently started to express a desire for more communicative oral syllabuses. However, large class sizes, inadequate financial support, and teacher time constraints at many institutions have often made the implementation of task-based learning problematic. This paper attempts to address these issues by reporting action research on an interactive task designed by teachers on a limited budget for use in an intermediate-level university classroom in Japan. It describes how the task was used to facilitate interaction and use of a specific grammar form, English articles.","PeriodicalId":263152,"journal":{"name":"Language Education in Asia","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2012-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132270222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2012-12-31DOI: 10.5746/LEIA/12/V3/I2/A09/BUTLER_WILKINS
Kelly W. Butler, Michael Wilkins
The world is increasingly going digital. Many universities have one-to-one computing and campus Wi-Fi networks that allow teachers and students to interact digitally more than ever before, although the situation does vary from country to country. Teachers at one Japanese university are rapidly moving toward teaching paperless using various information and communication technology (ICT) tools. The article addresses how paperless teaching was applied in classes with first-year university students having low levels of computer skills, using specific tools such as Google Docs, Facebook, and Dropbox. It then provides general ideas of how to implement paperless teaching in classrooms, specific recommendations on tools and activities to use, and specific ways that students can be prepared before they enter university. Across Asia, there is a huge variety of information technology (IT) situations in universities, ranging from low-tech classrooms with only a whiteboard to classrooms with a full array of audio / visual materials available. Some universities have high speed Wi-Fi throughout their campuses. Some students have access to well-equipped computer labs outside of class. Additionally, schools in various areas around the world are moving to a one-to-one computing model (Trucano, 2010). With this transition toward more technologically-focused classrooms, teachers are finding ways to integrate new methods into their practices. This paper targets instructors with access to IT and highlights teaching practices attempting to make the technologies more useful for the teacher and students. It is designed as a basic outline for teaching paperless. Inspiration for this article came from the blog TeachPaperless (Blake-Plock, 2012), which aims not only to remove the paperwork from teaching, but to meet students’ technology needs. The article relates the challenges of employing various online media websites in class for academic purposes and aims to share how a paperless classroom was accomplished, what online tools and references were utilized, which skills the students needed to perform the tasks, and finally, what advantages and disadvantages were discovered during the process. The questions fostering this exploration were: 1Language Education in Asia, 2012, 3(2), 204-217. http://dx.doi.org/10.5746/LEiA/12/V3/I2/A09/Butler_Wilkins Language Education in Asia, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2012 Butler and Wilkins Page 205 1) What are the benefits or drawbacks of a paperless system for teachers and students? 2) What are the limitations and difficulties of teaching a paperless course? 3) What computer programs can be used in a face-to-face class so that it can be taught entirely paperless? While many e-Learning platforms exist, the authors’ university did not subscribe to any, requiring teachers to find other means of integrating technology into the classroom. One goal of this exploration was to discover technologies to use in the absence of these platforms. Further, this
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Pub Date : 2012-12-31DOI: 10.5746/LEIA/12/V3/I2/A13/WILKINSON
Darrell Wilkinson
Reading is widely accepted as one of the most important second-language skills as it offers language learners the opportunity to acquire a variety of lexical items, grammatical structures, and additional schematic knowledge. In an EFL or ESL context, two approaches to teaching reading, intensive and extensive reading, have generally been adopted. When employing intensive reading in a group context, the teacher faces many challenges, e.g., finding material interesting to all students and dealing with mixed levels, individual learner differences, and low motivation. After describing an action research project designed to indicate motivation for reading among two groups of Japanese college students and analyzing the results of that project, the author outlines a nontraditional, more holistic, and student-centered approach to intensive and extensive reading. This approach aims to overcome students’ low intrinsic motivation by adopting a more differentiated learning approach and applying some extensive reading principles to intensive reading. Although the ability to read effectively in a foreign language is widely viewed as one of the most important skills that a foreign language learner can possess, the teaching of reading poses a range of challenges, both pedagogical and logistical. From a pedagogical perspective, issues such as what type of reading should be carried out, what skills are necessary, how to teach these skills, and how to strike a balance between explicit instruction and time on task are still being discussed and researched (see Carrell, Devine, & Eskey, 1988; Hunt & Beglar, 2005; Macalister, 2008; Nation, 2009; Sehlaoui, 2001). For designers of the intensive reading component of a language course, the choice of materials (level, genre, style, and amount) and the grouping of students into levels are two of the biggest issues. Students’ second language levels vary considerably in many foreign language courses, causing many problems for students (Childs, 2002; DelliCarpini, 2006; Prodromou, 1989; Sehlaoui, 2001; Simanova, 2010).
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Pub Date : 2012-12-31DOI: 10.5746/LEIA/12/V3/I2/A14/MANH
Le Manh
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Pub Date : 2012-12-31DOI: 10.5746/LEIA/12/V3/I2/A11/MENNIM
Paul Mennim
This paper reports on a classroom teaching project in which Japanese university students were asked to produce and teach a thirty-minute lesson in English based around a research topic of their own choice. It explores the feasibility of making students responsible for creating teaching materials and describes the scaffolded assistance given to the students to train them into the role of teacher. The paper reports on the participants’ positive reactions to the teaching project, as reflected in questionnaire responses, and presents examples of student-generated teaching materials. Learner-centered curricula allow students to make decisions about the content of their courses and how those courses are taught (Nunan, 1988). The project that is the subject of this paper took place in a course where students were given the responsibility to design and teach their own English language materials. Students created their goals and objectives, a level of learnercenteredness that Nunan (1995, p. 138) rated as relatively high on a scale of implementation. Scharle and Szabo, discussing learner autonomy, pointed out the benefits of granting learners a high degree of independence: “For one, learners can only assume responsibility for their own learning if they have some control over the learning process. For another, increasing independence may evoke and reinforce responsible and autonomous attitudes” (2000, p. 80). Even so, Scharle and Szabo (2000) and Nunan (1995) cautioned that learner independence does not come automatically and that learners need training and guidance to adapt to new classroom roles. Literature Review The Context of the Study Such caution is relevant in the Japanese context. High schools in particular still feel pressure to prepare students for Japan’s notoriously demanding university entrance exams; because these exams do not test oral communication skills, the wash-back effect means that most classes are teacher-fronted, concentrating on the written language and the deductive teaching of grammar (Sakui, 2004). Learners in such a system have little experience in taking charge of their own learning. When they reach the tertiary level, however, they may gain some experience, since, as Language Education in Asia, 2012, 3(2), 230-242. http://dx.doi.org/10.5746/LEiA/12/V3/I2/A11/Mennim Language Education in Asia, Volume 3, Issue 2, 2012 Mennim Page 231 Hadley (1999) pointed out, Japanese universities enjoy more freedom to implement innovative courses and curricula that address the communicative deficit in high schools. The peer-teaching project in this study took place at a private Japanese university within a general, obligatory oral English course. The aim of the course was the development of fluency and experience in a range of oral communication styles. Although the participants were first-year law majors, this course did not focus on legal English (a legal English course can be taken as an elective) but on general conversational English; it
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Pub Date : 2012-12-31DOI: 10.5746/LEIA/12/V3/I2/A05/MARSHALL
Nicholas T. S. Marshall
The acquisition of interaction itself, rather than language in its formal properties (or talk, in a monological sense) is captured by the term interactional competence (IC). This has a bedrock status in human sociality in general, but is often ironically difficult to achieve in foreign language classrooms. This paper proposes that elements of project work involving interactive and collaborative activity, where goals must be negotiated in small groups, are effective in developing learners’ IC. A central concept here is procedural negotiation, where learners need to agree on how to proceed on an ongoing basis. Strong versions of this approach, where it is a key component of the curriculum, may not always be feasible or even appropriate, especially in traditional Asian contexts, but can be adopted to lesser or greater degrees. Suggestions are made about how to structure this kind of learning, and one unit of work is discussed. This paper proposes a set of teaching practices and also guidelines for a sample unit of work, for the purpose of developing a basic interactional competence (IC) in English as a foreign language for students of high school or college level. This is especially applicable in situations, as in much of Asia, where learners are often not exposed to naturally-occurring contexts of interaction in English outside of classrooms. Making such generalizations may seem at first glance to be overly simplistic since the term Asia encompasses the bulk of the world’s population and the tremendous diversity between nation states as well as great internal variation within national boundaries. However, if classroom learning is modeled as a set of institutional practices (Young, 2009) with a focus on the conventions of learner and teacher roles and the ways that these shape the possibilities of both learner and teacher talk, there can be remarkable similarities across cultures (Bernstein, 1996). Thus, in this way, general observations do have considerable validity.
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