Analysing Narrative Elements in Short Fiction: A Study of Students' Writing Skills

The teaching of English as a second language (ESL) in Malaysia has undergone many changes. Different ways of looking at and employing pedagogical approaches in Malaysian ESL classrooms have been considered and attempted; some of these have not only altered but also challenged traditional approaches in the classroom. However, writing, seen by many Malaysian students as the most difficult of the four, has often been neglected. ESL teachers cannot be entirely blamed for this minimal emphasis on composition writing. Factors, which work against both the teachers and students, include the time factor, which inevitably compels teachers to focus on a product-based rather than process-based writing. Although there is an extensive body of research on process-oriented first language writing, little attention has been given to second language classroom practice. Therefore, researchers who examine ESL writers in Malaysian universities are required to determine whether the process-oriented approach to teaching writing can be used effectively with ESL students so that the gap between the actual level of English language proficiency amongst Malaysian university students, especially writing skills, and the level of competence required for learning at tertiary levels can be bridged relatively quickly. This paper reports the finding of one of the research activities looking at the contribution of a teaching intervention based on the process centered approach; i.e. the types of revision changes employed by this group of students in developing the drafts. Revising is the process of making sure that the writing says what the writer wants it to say.

Learning to write can be a nightmare, be it on the natives or second language. Various approaches, methods, and techniques were tested by researches to improve the writing skills of learners with multiple issues in mastering the craft. Nevertheless, the standards of writing achievements among second language learners are remarkably frustrating. In Malaysia, teaching writing to the primary school pupils is one of the biggest concerns as pupils expected to compose narratives as assessment in the public primary education. Concerning this, this research aimed to measure the effectiveness of the flow chart to improve pupils' narrative writing and to investigate pupils’ achievement levels in each narrative writing component. Besides, it identifies the pedagogical strategies that lead to the scaffolding of narrative writing. Action research carried out with 12 intervention sessions in two cycles. Each Cycle involved three stages: planning, action, and reflection. A total of 25 Year Four urban primary school pupils participated in this study. The researcher obtained the data via pre and post-test, analysis of pupils’ narrative writing, and classroom observations. The findings showed that there was a significant improvement in pupils’ post-test scores and narrative writing assessment components. This study is essential to improve narrative writing achievement and benefit teachers who teach narrative writing in primary and secondary schools to enhance pupils’ performances. Studies in the future should include pupils from rural area schools with low proficiency levels to compare the findings in employing flow chart in narrative writing.

The present study explored the extent to which teacher assessment (TA) and peer assessment (PA) differ in terms of magnitude and patterns of distribution across English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ descriptive and narrative writing performance. Twenty Persian-speaking EFL learners were non-randomly selected and voluntarily participated in a 12-session writing course at a private language school in Iran. Their performance on descriptive and narrative writing tasks was subjected to PA and TA sequentially. The West Virginia Department of Education descriptive writing rubric (with five components of organization, development, sentence structure, word choice and grammar, and mechanics) and Smarter Balanced narrative writing rubric (with five categories of narrative focus, organization, elaboration of narrative, language and vocabulary, and conventions) were adopted to schematize and analyze the distribution of the TA and PA comments. The results of frequency analysis indicated that TA far outnumbered PA on both descriptive and narrative genres of writing. Furthermore, on both descriptive and narrative writings, TA and PA commentaries were local in scope, form-focused, fluctuating, and inconsistent. Also, the distribution of TA and PA comments mainly focused on the conventions of narrative writings, while other macro-components of narrative writing had a steady and depleted pattern. The statistical results confirmed the significance of the observed differences between the number and the nature of TA and PA on descriptive and narrative genres of writing. The researchers made their concluding remarks on the probable causes of observed diversities, imposed limitations of the study, and a number of topics for future research.

Developments in the area of task-based language teaching (TBLT) research have heightened the need to focus on the task implementation factors in the sense that they are effective in successful language performance to occur. The present study aimed to examine the effect of task repetition, as one of the task implementation variables, on Iranian high-intermediate English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' narrative writing performance. To this end, a pre-test/post-test quasi-experimental design was applied; 40 participants, with 18 to 25 years of age, were non-randomly selected and considered as two groups of the experimental and control ones. Both groups took a pre-test to ensure their homogeneity in narrative writing skill. Then, for 14 sessions, the experimental group was engaged in repetitive practice of narrative writing tasks. Three weeks after the end of the treatment, both groups performed the two post-tests. The results of independent samples t -tests showed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control one in regard with complexity on the two post-test phases (p<.05), however; the results were not significant in the case of accuracy. The findings have important pedagogical implications for EFL learners and teachers, as well as useful future research directions in EFL writing for the researchers.

This article investigated attitude, one of subsystem appraisal, in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) university students’ narrative writings. Five narrative writing was selected purposefully from undergraduate students of the English Department at a local private university in Central Java. The findings demonstrate that the affect is the most dominant subsystem of attitude used in the students’ narrative writing to convey feelings and emotion of characters and events in the stories in order to make the readers involved in the stories. The prominent finding of this research implies that most students used expressions of attitudes which belong to basic English words and repetition of same words. This present research suggests English language teachers and lecturers pay more attention to the explicit teaching of attitudinal words usage in writing, especially narrative writing.

Developing adequate English as a Foreign Language (EFL) academic writing skills is of paramount importance for students’ success in higher education in Oman. The traditional teaching approaches adopted in writing courses often lead to students’ disengagement, however. Although several studies have examined students and teachers’ perceptions of flipped instruction in various EFL courses, no study has examined the impact of flipping on students’ engagement in writing courses. This practice-based research project, where the instructor was the researcher, explored the impact of flipped teaching on 57 General Foundation Program (GFP) EFL learners’ behavioural, cognitive, emotional and agentic engagement in academic writing in a higher education institution in Oman, and the variations that exist in students’ engagement according to gender, age, English language proficiency and technology skills. The study adopted a mixed-methods design and used a student engagement questionnaire, focus group interviews and participant observations to collect data. Descriptive and inferential statistics and deductive and inductive analytical procedures were used to analyse the quantitative and qualitative data respectively. The study presents new practicable knowledge about the implementation and implications of flipped instruction for Omani EFL students’ engagement in academic writing at the GFP level. It proposes flipping as an instructional approach which helps to address GFP students’ lack of 4 behavioural, cognitive, emotional and agentic engagement in writing courses in the Omani context. Behaviourally, students in the flipped classroom experience increased effort, improved concentration levels, persistence, communication and collaboration, and amelioration in their attitude to class attendance. It is reasonable to conclude that learners undergo cognitive growth and develop self-regulatory strategies and meta-cognitive awareness. At the level of emotional engagement, learners initially experience negative emotions such as anger and frustration, and then more positive emotions such as contentment and increased interest in the subject as they adapt to the flipped teaching-learning model. Flipping also seems to influence students’ autonomy and ability to ask questions and express opinions. It appears, however, that this approach does not influence students’ capacity to contribute to their own learning resources and activities. This study makes a valuable contribution to knowledge about students’ engagement in EFL writing courses. It revealed that a strong positive correlation exists between students’ behavioural, cognitive and emotional engagement, and that a positive correlation exists between students’ technology skills and linguistic proficiency and several aspects of their engagement. The study demonstrated, however, that no correlation exists between gender and age and students’ engagement in the flipped classroom. Furthermore, this practice-based research indicated that although flipped instruction helps to address the problem of students’ disengagement in writing courses in our context, factors such as students’ linguistic proficiency and technology skills should be taken into consideration before implementing this instructional approach in the current setting.

This study is to investigate the different influences of an LI with article system and of an L1 without article system on the second language acquisition (SLA). Specifically, how the positive and negative transfer of a [+article] language like Spanish and a [-article] language like Chinese as LI s to English as a second language (ESL) interferes with respect to the use of the English articles. The instrument consists of three parts: (1) a diagnostic test of twenty questions about general English ability of the participants, (2) a doze test consisting of thirty fill-in questions about three categories of the use of the English articles, and (3) a self-report questionnaire about the participant's demographic information. The voluntary participants included fourteen Spanish and fifteen Chinese adults with higher level of English proficiency in an ESL context. They were selected for two experiments. Ten from each language group with higher scores of the diagnostic test were chosen for Experiment 1. For Experiment 2, another ten from each language group with lower scores of the same diagnostic test were chosen as subjects. Some of the participants in each language group were included in the two experiments respectively. Part II of the instrument consists of thirty fill-in questions about the use of the English article system (three categories: definite article the, indefinite article a, and zero article O) for the participants to answer by choosing an appropriate article to complete the sentence in the doze test. t-test was used to analyze the data collected, and the results revealed that overall, the Spanish speakers have higher score than the Chinese speakers. In particular, the former performed better in the usage of the article the than the latter. It seems that the Spanish speakers positively transferred their L1 to their use of the English article in ESL setting because the definite article is used in their L1. The results also showed positive transfer of Li with article system (Spanish) and negative transfer L1 without article system (Chinese) to the English article use in ESL environment. Implication for the instruction on the English article system in ESL/EFL context is proposed and further study is also suggested.

This paper presents a study on assessing English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ language proficiency in Benin secondary schools. Assessment and evaluation are indispensable components of English language teaching. Assessing students is crucial to both learners and teachers themselves in the sense that its basic function is to improve learning. However, much awareness has not been raised on the key roles of assessment in Benin secondary schools. This study aims at investigating how effective teachers’ assessment of their learners’ language abilities is in EFL classroom and to explore EFL learners’ attitude towards assessment. Using qualitative and quantitative methods, 56 EFL teachers and 458 lower intermediate and upper EFL learners in the Atlantic region in Benin participated in this study. The field study revealed that many teachers wrongly mistake assessment for test and thus use both terms to mean the same thing. Teachers have not been able to see tests as a way of assessing their teaching methods and upgrading their students’ language skills. Besides, most teachers stated that testing is the only tool they use in assessing their learners’ language proficiency and it is mostly for the purpose of assigning grades at the end of the terms. Students declared that most tests consist of grammar questions. As this study draws attention to the close relationship between assessment and teaching, training workshops have been recommended to guide and train teachers on how to effectively assess their students so that teaching and learning in the EFL classroom meet expected objectives and goals.

Although teacher burnout has drawn the attention of many researchers, there is little empirical evidence for the contribution of non-native English language teachers’ language proficiency level to their experience of burnout. To address this significant gap, the present study examined the relationship between English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ self-assessed language proficiency and their experience of burnout. Research has indicated that personal resources of teachers can function as protectors against their experience of burnout. Thus, it was assumed that investigating how EFL teachers’ level of burnout can be reduced through language proficiency as a personal resource can cast a new light on the role of personal resources in reducing teachers’ experience of burnout. To this end, data were collected from 110 Iranian EFL teachers who were teaching in private language institutes through the Maslach Burnout Inventory - Educator Survey and Iranian EFL Teacher Self-Reported Language Proficiency Scale. The correlational analysis revealed that language proficiency had a significant negative relationship with the emotional exhaustion and depersonalization dimensions and a significant positive relationship with the personal accomplishment dimension of burnout. The results of regression analysis also indicated that, except for the reading subskill, all the other proficiency subskills were the best predictors of the different dimensions of burnout. Based on the findings of the current study, some pedagogical implications and research suggestions were also proposed.

Background: The Texas Department of State Health Services reported an enrollment of 29.7% Hispanic heritage students in nursing schools in 2020. Hispanics comprise of 18.5% of the total US population. Hispanic communities are less likely to speak proficient English than non-Hispanic Whites due to lack of language concordance. A diverse nursing workforce is necessary to accommodate the changing community. English as an additional language is frequently identified as a barrier to a nursing degree. This study examined how English proficiency affects nursing academic success of non-BSN and BSN nursing students. Methodology: Non-experimental descriptive quantitative research with two open-ended questions were employed. Students from 27 non-BSN and BSN programs along the U.S.-Mexico border were surveyed. Participants (N = 158) self-reported Grade Point Average (GPAs) on a 4.0 scale and completed two language proficiency instruments, the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q) and the English Language Acculturation Scale (ELAS). Participants responded to questions related to strategies that were either beneficial or barriers to their learning and success. Results: Regression of GPA on predictors of English proficiency yielded non-significant models. Convergent validity between the two language proficiency instruments was supported, and reliability was similarly high. MANOVA analysis revealed students on a BSN versus non-BSN program hold higher GPAs. Non-BSN students showed higher Spanish language proficiency than those on a BSN program. Seven themes emerged from the question data, three themes showed that English as an Additional Language (EAL) benefits students (support, communication, and academic resources) and four were barriers to learning (finances, time management, language, and self-perception). Conclusion: A diverse bilingual nursing workforce is essential to meet the future needs of the US. Even though language proficiency did not predict academic success, students enrolled in non-BSN and BSN students who utilized both languages were academically successful.

Underpinned by [Bhabha, H. K. (2004). The location of culture (2nd ed). Routledge.] conceptualizations of the “third space,” this study is a qualitative exploration of an attempt to create an intervening telecollaborative “third space” for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners in a Taiwan university. Students were engaged in language exchange with foreign language learning peers in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ) and critical reflection on their own cultural norms and values. Data consisted of summative and formative assessments documented in E-portfolios and reflective essays by EFL learners who participated in the telecollaboration. Findings showed that 97% of the EFL learners agreed that telecollaboration should be part of language exchange programs. Through the affordance of the “third space,” EFL learners were able not only to practice the target language through interaction, but also to build their confidence by critically engaging with individuals from different linguistic and sociocultural backgrounds and expressing their thoughts and idea. The telecollaboration also enhanced EFL learners’ intercultural knowledge beyond generic understandings attached to particular countries and nations. Implications for practice and suggestions for future studies are discussed.

Ouyang and Jiang (2018) measured the second language proficiency of English as a foreign language (EFL) learners based on the probability distribution of dependency distance. However, the typological features of the native language (Chinese) and the target language (English) they adopted are generally considered similar in word order and dependency direction. In addition, their method of classifying the learners’ proficiency levels is based on the learners’ grades, which might weaken the validity of the results. These results are strengthened and verified further in the current research by analysing a treebank of Japanese EFL learners’ interlanguage since their native language and the target language are typologically distinctive. Moreover, the TOEIC score was used as a benchmark to classify the second language proficiency levels of the learners. We found that (1) the mean dependency distance can measure the syntactic complexity of Japanese EFL learners’ interlanguage; (2) constrained by human working memory, the probability distribution of dependency distance based on Japanese EFL learners’ interlanguage follows certain distribution patterns as unveiled in other natural human languages; (3) the parameters of the right truncated modified Zipf-Alekseev distribution can well reflect the changes of the Japanese EFL learners’ second language proficiency, indicating the development of interlanguage.

Language, Social Media and Ideologies: Translingual Englishes, Facebook and Authenticities

Technology integration in English language instruction has become essential in the digital age for the development of effective communication skills, particularly in writing. The effect of Digital Storytelling (DST) on improving the narrative writing abilities of BTech students learning English as a second language (ESL) is examined in this study. Based on metacognitive theory, which stresses learners'awareness and control of cognitive processes, the study investigates how DST promotes linguistic proficiency, creativity, and structured thinking. Two BTech student groups—the control and experimental groups—were evaluated during an eight-week intervention using a quasi-experimental design. The control group received traditional writing instruction, while the experimental group used multimodal tools like voiceovers, visuals, and narration scripts to complete DST tasks. Pre- and post-tests were given to evaluate students'progress in narrative writing using rubrics that emphasized vocabulary, grammar, coherence, organization, and creativity. The experimental group's narrative writing performance significantly improved, according to the findings, highlighting the contribution of DST to improving language proficiency, deeper engagement, and reflective thinking. By giving students a feeling of purpose and ownership, the incorporation of digital storytelling not only enhanced the writing process but also inspired students. This study confirms that DST can be a transformative pedagogical tool in ESL contexts, especially for improving tertiary-level learners'narrative competencies. In order to improve student outcomes and encourage greater engagement with writing assignments, future implications recommend integrating DST into regular curricula.

Few systematic review research specifically explores the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) speaking instruction in Asian higher education. Given current research trends, AI-based instruction is receiving increasing attention for its potential to enhance language learning. Therefore, this review aims to trace the trend of empirical research on integrating AI in EFL speaking instruction between 2018 and 2024 in Asia. Using the PRISMA systematic review protocol, this paper analyzed 21 studies on AI-integrated EFL speaking instruction, exploring trends, AI tools, integrating instructional methods, and the challenges between 2018 and 2024. This research finds that since 2022, research on integrating AI in EFL speaking instruction in higher education has increased significantly, mainly in East Asia, and the research methods are primarily quantitative studies. AI chatbots, apps, and platforms are predominantly seen in EFL speaking instruction and AI virtual human teachers have the potential to be applied in oral English classrooms. Task-based learning shows the greatest potential method for integrating AI into English-speaking instruction. However, several challenges hinder the full adoption of AI in EFL curricula, highlighting gaps in empirical research. This review contributes to the discourse on AI-enhanced EFL instruction by offering new insights into existing practices, identifying research gaps, and emphasizing the need for more effective AI tools and instructional methods in Asian higher education. The study underscores the importance of experimental and qualitative research to refine AI-based pedagogical strategies and enhance EFL learners’ speaking proficiency in tertiary education.