Promoting ecological critical awareness through English Language Teaching: EFL teachers’ strategies and practices

The globalization of education and increasingly multicultural nature of the classroom, English teachers must develop intercultural awareness and competence. However, comparative studies that specifically focus on the experiences of foreign English teachers are limited. Thus, the research aims to investigate and compare the similarities and differences of the intercultural awareness and practices of Indonesian and Ghanaian English teachers in the context of English language teaching. As well as the strategies of teaching materials and techniques they employ to promote intercultural understanding among their students. This research used qualitative methods within the framework of a comparative study design and data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The participants were 2 EFL teachers from Ghana and Indonesia. The researcher analyzed it to identify patterns by organizing, coding and summarizing the data into themes. The study's findings indicated the critical importance of integrating intercultural awareness in English teaching, emphasizing the recognition and value of cultural diversity. This motivates teachers to foster an inclusive, tolerant environment using culturally appropriate teaching materials and techniques, ensuring all students feel valued. The Ghanaian teacher in international schools promotes global cultural acceptance or called as intercultural awareness, blending diverse cultures into lessons, while the Indonesian teacher prioritizes local culture or basic cultural awareness in English teaching. However, this research has limitations on the application of integration, teaching materials and techniques in intercultural awareness in English language teaching. So that future research can explore these aspects more broadly and varied.

Teaching English courses mainly improves students’ communicative competence for a successful integration into public life so English teachers should possess certain qualifications to deliver instruction well. This study aims to describe the causes and effects of employing non-English language major teachers to teach English courses in the Naguilian Cluster as basis in policy note formulation. It employed the descriptive survey research design and used a researcher-made questionnaire in gathering data. The study found out that none of the respondents pursued higher studies related with English since their baccalaureate degree is not English and they were underload. They believed that there should be strict hiring and selection of English teachers. Moreover, they greatly affect the quality of English language learning since they commit errors or mistakes in the production of learning resources or instructional materials in teaching English. Thus, English teachers should either have a bachelor’s degree related with English or a certification in English language teaching; should undergo intensive training to enrich their English language teaching pedagogy; and the preparation and development of learning resources or instructional materials in English teaching and learning should be led by English language teachers who are experts in this field. The study recommends the inclusion of a certification in English language teaching in the absence of a bachelor’s degree in English.

Pre-service English teachers still need to gain the competence to develop authentic materials with Islamic values, reflected by their low perceived readiness. To reveal their readiness, this study was conducted by using narrative inquiry. The data were gathered from the storytelling of pre-service English teachers pursuing master's degrees at IAIN Kediri. Participants in this study were one male and one female student with teaching experience. The data were analyzed by using thematic analysis. The data showed that the pre-service teachers believed the readiness to develop digitalized authentic materials with Islamic values could have been more optimal. It is because of the existing instructional materials provided by the government, their lack of confidence as new teachers, and their limited autonomous access to their classes as a new teacher. English textbooks provided by the government are only general English. So, it makes the teachers follow the materials instead of developing authentic materials with Islamic values that are fundamentally needed by students studying in Islamic institutions, such as modifying the materials from books to reflect Muslim activities. Therefore, the pre-service teachers must expose themselves to integrated materials books and digital materials with Islamic values.

In the 21st century, the globalization impact has escalated the importance of intercultural sensitivity (IS) to societies and individuals. The new era of globalization offers new lenses for EFL teachers in developing and designing IS materials. Retrieved the importance of IS in English language teaching (ELT), this study reports a narrative study investigating how teachers conceptualized IS. This study also aims to explore teachers' conceptual understanding of IS affected them in designing ELT materials. The framework of this study applied the concept of IS proposed by Chen and Starosta (2000). The empirical data were gathered through semi-structured interviews and artifacts with three EFL teachers from a secondary school. The data was analyzed using thematic analysis by Barkhuizen, Benson, and Chik. Drawing on qualitative content analysis, the results captured that EFL teachers grasped the conceptualization of IS during English language teaching. The results also revealed that EFL teachers' understanding of IS causes them to be sensitive in designing English teaching materials. Teachers' understanding of IS concepts portrayed that teachers realized, accepted, and respected cultural differences during the intercultural instructional processes. This finding implies the need for EFL teachers to include some culturally sensitive topics or themes in their teaching materials by linking the tolerant curriculum with local cultural wisdom. This study also suggests exploring how EFL teachers developed intercultural teaching materials that provided a critical engagement with today's cultural literacies.

Teacher self-efficacy and individual innovativeness in English language teaching are critical concepts in regard to improving the quality of education and supporting teachers' professional development. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the relationship between English language teachers’ self-efficacy and individual innovativeness levels and the predictive effect of self-efficacy on individual innovativeness. In addition, it is also examined whether teacher self-efficacy and individual innovativeness variables differ in terms of gender, age, and seniority year, faculty of graduation, educational status, school level worked at, and type of school demographic variables. The research was conducted in accordance with the correlational research model. "Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale" and "Individual Innovativeness Scale" were used as the instruments of gathering the data. The sample of the study consisted of 306 participants, who volunteered to take part in the study and who were working as English teachers in educational institutions in Istanbul. Of the teachers, 199 (65%) were female and 107 (35%) were male. To analyze the data, IBM SPSS Statistics 22 program was used. The findings of the study show that there is a moderate positive relationship between English language teachers' self-efficacy beliefs and individual innovativeness levels. At the same time, English language teachers' self-efficacy beliefs explain 18% of individual innovativeness.

This empirical research study inquires as to whether teachers of English as a Second Language and teachers of English as a Foreign Language apply the technological tool–YouTube videos–into their English teaching with the same purposes and approaches. This chapter addresses a variety of activities that teachers in two different ESL and EFL contexts utilize to integrate YouTube videos into their English teaching. Ten teachers from a university in the USA (ESL context) and a university in Vietnam (EFL context) were recruited for this study. The results demonstrate similarities and the differences in the use of YouTube videos and how both ESL and EFL students agree with the potential applications of YouTube videos to maintain students' attention and make them feel motivated in the lesson content. Also reported in this chapter is that ESL teachers believe YouTube videos are a great tool for reflection activities and dealing with challenging content issues, whereas EFL teachers mainly use them as a native-speaking modeling in class for doing language drills and grammatical practice.

By using descriptive research design with quantitative and qualitative data gathering method, this study attempted to asses EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers practice of giving oral error corrective feedback and learners preferences for oral error correction. In doing so, data were gathered from grade 11 students and their English language teachers. Three English languages teachers were included for observation and interview by using comprehensive sampling technique and eight students were also selected for interview by using purposive sampling technique. Each teacher was observed three times and a total of nine classroom observations were made on four classes while EFL teachers teach speaking skills, and the data were recorded for three hundred sixty minutes. To gather quantitative data, questionnaires consists of four major parts were used. On the other hand data from classroom observations, teachers’ and students’ interview were analyzed qualitatively. Findings of the study revealed that EFL teachers always give oral corrective feedback on learners’ oral error. Teachers were found using explicit correction strategies most of the time. Learners prefer to be corrected by their teacher always and teachers were also found to be the dominant corrector of learners’ oral error. This indicated that EFL teachers’ actual classroom practice is divorced with some scholarly suggested pedagogical consideration. Keywords: Oral error, corrective feedback, practice, preferences DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/66-01 Publication date: March 31 st 2020

English as a Foreign Language (EFL) has constituted a major part of the curriculum in private and public institutions in Saudi Arabia for over eight decades. More recently, the emergence of English as a global language has made it a socially desirable language in Saudi society, as elsewhere in the world. However, despite the long history of English teaching in Saudi Arabia and the growth of the profession over the years, the overall English proficiency level of the majority of students is low and unsatisfactory. Saudi researchers have reported many reasons for the ineffectiveness of English Language Teaching (ELT) including, but not limited to, low levels of student motivation, negative attitudes toward English, a substandard English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum, and inefficient teacher pedagogical practices. These problems fall into two major categories: problems related to the lwhyr of teaching and learning of EFL, and problems related to the lhowr of teaching and learning EFL. In investigating these issues, much of this research has been carried out within individual/psychological/structuralist/positivist frameworks, which has failed not only to problematize the complexity of such constructs but also to appreciate the fact that all realities are produced/(re)produced via ldiscourser. Hence, the present study investigated EFL teaching and learning practices by employing Foucauldian and poststructuralist frameworks. This study used poststructuralism not only as a theoretical lens per se, but also established it through the implemented analytical tools and textual representations of the collected data. Employing a poststructuralist discursive perspective made it possible to view EFL teaching and learning as complex social practices, interacting with the discourses of English and ELT practices available in the global as well as the local context(s). These discourses create the nexus between power and knowledge and impact on what an EFL teacher/ learner does within a classroom setting by constructing perspectives of reality through which he or she comes to understand the EFL teaching and learning process in certain ways which constitute epistemological spaces and generate particular practices. Drawing on policy documents, EFL textbooks, classroom observations, interviews with two Saudi EFL teachers, and focus group discussions with Saudi EFL students in two rural areas, the study identified seven discourses circulating within and competing across the examined discursive spaces. The first three discourses are related to English and its values, including: English as a universal language; English as the language for better employment opportunities; and English as the language for spreading religion. The remaining four discourses centred around ELT with exams as an important aspect of EFL learning and ELT; CLT as the key to success in ELT; L1 as a barrier to successful EFL learning; and EFL textbooks as an essential aspect of the processes of EFL learning and ELT. In exploring the production and (re)production of these discourses through the examination of how visibilization, normalisation, exclusionary/inclusionary acts, classification, and subject positioning as discursive strategies are employed, it was found that whether a particular discourse was made visible or invisible depended on other discourses operating across the examined discursive spaces: the social context, the policy, the textbook, the classroom, and the teachers and students. The analysis of the connection(s) and misconnection(s) between these discursive spaces demonstrated that the interplay between the different discourses constructed discursive battlegrounds, which impacted the processes of EFL teaching and learning. Through the investigation of this interplay, it was found that there was a disconnect and an ambivalent relationship between the study participantsr espoused discourses of English and their EFL teaching and learning practices, suggesting that EFL teachers and learners should not be considered lstabler figures, but rather as social agents with discursively constructed ever changing subjectivities. Furthermore, the analyses of the constructions of the discourses operating within the examined policy texts demonstrate an intra disparity and fragmentation. This was manifested in the difference between the ideals of the EFL curriculum and the institutionally imposed regulating techniques, that is, examinations and teachersr assessment practices which had negative effects on EFL teaching and learning dynamics. Additionally, as a consequence of the competition between the different sources of discursive constructions, I found that there was a gulf between the EFL policies and the enactment of these policies in EFL teaching and learning dynamics in the observed EFL classrooms. The findings of this study also indicate that if a discourse promoted through the policy is mediated by discourses operating in the larger societal context, it became more visible in teaching and learning practices as compared to other discourses that did not have social moorings. This suggests that taking the prevailing social expectations into account at the stage of developing any policy is of paramount importance.nThe study concludes with a discussion of the implications of the interplay of connections and misconnections between competing discourses across different spaces in Saudi educational settings for improving the EFL teaching/learning environments in Saudi Arabia and other similar contexts.n

iSpring is one of various software which is benefit in English language teaching and learning. There are numerous researches that bring up the use of iSpring to support the material and quiz development. This research aims at providing comprehensive literature review about iSpring in English language teaching and learning. This research’s objectives are investigating; 1) the roles of iSpring in English language teaching and learning and 2) the effectiveness of iSpring in English language teaching and learning. Qualitative research method with library research approach was used in this research. The data consists of 3 theses, 4 conference proceedings, 5 journal articles that taken mostly from Google Scholar. The data then analysed using content analysis to match the objective of this research. The findings showed that iSpring has several important roles for English language teaching and learning such as; making English teaching and learning activities becomes easier; helping students to learn English language; creating interest, motivation, confident, concentration, and independence for students in English learning; supporting all types of learning styles and various level of students in English learning; providing effective English teaching and learning activities; and also accommodating various English teaching methods. Besides that, this research also showed that iSpring was effective for foreign language distance learning, improving students’ independence on self-evaluation, improving receptive skill, and productive skills as well. Therefore, iSpring is suitable to be used in education, especially to support the English language teaching and learning.

Native-speakerism, an established chauvinistic ideology in the realm of English language teaching (ELT), has been encountering academic and institutional challenges in the past few decades. However, it remains underexplored whether – if so, to what extent – English as a foreign language (EFL) education in China is still affected by this ideology. This study adopts Critical Discourse analysis (CDA), particularly its discourse-historical approach (DHA) as a theoretical guideline to explore this issue by investigating the attitudes of three categories of Chinese ELT stakeholders – students, teachers and administrators – toward Native-speakerism in four interrelated thematic dimensions of ELT to do with teachers, English language varieties, cultural orientations and teaching approaches respectively. Data were collected through questionnaire surveys and interviews from 817 non-English-major undergraduate students in different disciplinary areas, 68 College English (CE) teachers and eight CE program directors of six universities in a province located in North China. Data analysis indicates that the three participant groups, as an entirety, granted a prestigious status to native English speaker teachers (NESTs), particularly Anglo-American Caucasians, Inner Circle English, Inner Circle culture and teaching approaches rooted in Inner Circle countries, inter alia, the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach. Meanwhile, most of the participants expected White NESTs for classroom teaching and upheld Inner Circle English as the learning/teaching target. Although expressing the desire to incorporate into ELT Outer and Expanding Circle cultures, especially traditional Chinese culture, and the conventional teacher-centered teaching approach of China, the participants took them merely as a supplement to Inner Circle culture and CLT. Furthermore, they asserted that offering higher salaries and greater respects to NESTs is not discriminatory, as is prioritizing Inner Circle linguaculture over its Outer and Expanding Circle counterparts. It was also felt that promoting CLT entails no prejudice against the traditional education culture of China. The reasons that most of the participants stated for their endorsing the nativeness principle in these four dimensions of ELT resonate with the conventional Native-speakerist ideology that valorizes Inner Circle English and the education culture of the English speaking West. In addition to these shared standpoints, some inter-group differences were located among the participants. All these findings are indicative of a strong pro-nativeness mentality among the three participant groups, elucidating therefore that EFL education in China is still affected severely by Native-speakerism. Also represented in these findings are the lingering effects of the imbalanced historical-present relations between China and Inner Circle countries as well as the concomitant pro-nativeness ELT policies of China. While exposing the ideological terrain of China’s EFL education, this study has implications for relevant future research and for those who are engaged in ELT to take measures to resist Native-speakerism.

This research study focuses on the status of English language education in private educational institutions in Tunisia, an area that has received limited attention. Qualitative investigation, utilizing one-to-one interviews with English language teachers in private schools and universities, was conducted to understand the conditions of Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) in the private sector. Interviews were conducted online and transcribed for analysis. Findings indicate that the quality of English language teaching in private institutions surpasses that of state schools, with students benefiting from early exposure and ample practice opportunities. Teachers in private institutions have access to better resources due to stable financial situations, but they tend to be less experienced compared to their counterparts in public schools. Despite the study's limited scope, it provides valuable insights into Tunisian English teachers’ perceptions of working conditions and highlights their need for professional development and improvements in TEFL. The instrument used in the study has been validated and could serve as a basis for future research. This research, part of a larger PhD dissertation, contributes to understanding the differences between state and private language education and has pedagogical relevance for EFL education in similar contexts.

The central theme of this paper discusses the current issues in English Language Teaching (ELT) in Indonesian contexts particularly the English curriculum of Indonesian secondary school. It will first explore the historical development of English curriculum in Indonesia including the methods or approaches that have so far been used; this section touches on current directions in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) methodology - Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) - studies that may not be readily adapted by some English teachers in Indonesia. It will then move to the discussion of the goals of Indonesian English curriculum - integrated with Character Education - which could be considered a reflection of needs analysis and its ideologies. Lastly, this paper shows some challenges that could have hindered English language learning and teaching in Indonesia particularly related to the washback of English National Examination held by the Indonesian Government each year at the end of the school term; these challenges may need to be addressed by postgraduate universities that provide a TESOL Master`s programme. It also examines other high-stake assessments that seem to have influenced the directions of the English teaching and learning processes in Indonesian contexts.

The present study reports the implementation of e-learning in English language teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic at one of the private high schools in Indonesia viewed from teachers' and students' perspectives. Using a qualitative study, the data were garnered through semi-structured interviews with an English teacher, a principal who also teaches English, and students. The result reveals that both teachers and students have the same responses to e-learning practices. There were three stages in implementing e-learning: preparation, implementation, and evaluation. In terms of preparation, the English teacher designed lesson plans as a guideline for learning. In the implementation stage, the English teacher used learning materials from various sources, including textbooks, videos, articles, and other sources on the internet. On the other hand, students reported that English teaching and learning activities in e-learning classes were usually carried out through WhatsApp, Google Classroom, and Zoom meetings. Apart from the advantages of e-learning in English language teaching, some challenges in its practice include the difficulties of operating technical devices for specific teachers, the problems of controlling students during distance learning, etc. Finally, the study's findings promote integrating technology and encouraging teachers' professional development in English language teaching.

This study used library research research methods to investigate curriculum approaches in English language teaching in Indonesia. The purpose of this study is to identify curriculum approaches commonly used in English language teaching in Indonesia and to understand how these approaches shape teaching methods and strategies applied in language classrooms. In this study, the author conducted a comprehensive literature review of relevant literature, including textbooks, research journals, articles, and education policies related to English language teaching in Indonesia. The data collected were analyzed qualitatively to identify curriculum approaches commonly used in the context of English language teaching in Indonesia. The results of this study show that some curriculum approaches commonly used in English teaching in Indonesia include content-based approaches, communicative approaches, task-based approaches, and grammar-based approaches. The selection of this curriculum approach is based on the goals and objectives of the program, as well as the needs and interests of learners. In conclusion, in Indonesia, English teaching is influenced by various curriculum approaches, which shape the methods and strategies applied in language classes. The choice of curriculum approach in English language teaching depends on the goals and objectives of the program, as well as the needs and interests of learners. Different approaches can be used in combination to create a comprehensive and effective language learning experience so that language learners can easily master the language in a formal setting.

The present study aimed to 1) investigate English teachers’ perspectives on using music in English teaching in Thai secondary schools; and 2) explore the problems teachers met while using music to teach English in Thai secondary schools. Participants in the present study were 55 English teachers from different secondary schools in central Bangkok, Thailand. The instrument for the current study was a questionnaire which included 24 Likert-scale items about teachers’ perspectives involving the attitudes, beliefs, intentions and problems of using music in English teaching, and one open-ended question asking about the problems teachers met while using music in their English teaching. Results from the quantitative data of the current study revealed the significantly positive attitudes and beliefs of the English teachers in Thai secondary schools on using music in English teaching, however, the results of open-ended question mismatched with the teachers’ attitudes and beliefs, which indicated that teachers actually did not use music in their English teaching frequently. The reasons and recommendations for future research have been discussed.