Competence In Language Teaching Research Articles

When Formal Education Is Not Enough. The Self-Improvement Needs of LSP Teachers

Learning in vocational education is mandated to implement the learning outcomes of Vocationally Oriented Foreign Language (VOFL). Unfortunately, formal education does not prepare foreign language teachers for work in vocational training institutions. This article addresses the problem of the needs of foreign language teachers working in vocational education in the Lublin region. A questionnaire survey is the basis for the diagnosis of the needs of these teachers. The latter are discussed in relation to the teaching of VOFL in terms of the forms and content of teachers’ in-service training and their readiness for self-improvement within the framework of informal education. The results of the survey show that the forms of training within the framework of formal, as well as informal, education are not satisfactory for the development of the professional competence of language teachers.

HOW TO DEVELOP THE AESTHETIC CULTURE OF LANGUAGE TEACHERS IN POST-INDUSTRIAL SETTINGS

The purpose of article was to reveal the postmodernist peculiarities of education in general and language teaching in particular, within the framework of aesthetic culture and appropriate competence of language teachers. Based on thorough theoretical analysis and consideration of teaching approaches and practices characteristic of various regions of the world (on the example of Australia, Germany, China, and Turkey), it was demonstrated that aesthetic culture is more and more becoming an integral element of language teaching, which implies shifting paradigm in education of language teachers both in higher education and at the workplace.

Raising student bilingualism through foreign language (English) teacher professional involvement

The bilingual process is widely observed among many people and many cultures. Out of the many different forms of bilingualism, the form of bilingualism that most often appears is the subsequent one, being the result of learning a second language in school settings. When developing this type of bilingualism, both the language competences of language teachers and the quality of their teaching talent are very important. In order to assess this type of interdependence, a study that focuses on the teachers’ skills and competences, on the one hand, and the impact L2 teachers have on students, on the other hand, was designed. The study involved 50 teachers and 100 students taught by them, all of them attending vocational secondary schools in southern Poland. All participants of the study (i.e. both the teachers and the students) were to answer six verification questions included in the Matura exam 2018. The results obtained during the research indicate the existence of an interdependence between the actual level of proficiency of foreign language (FL) teachers and the final evel of L2 proficiency presented by their students. Generally, the students led by language teachers with a higher overall level of communicative competence showed an overall better command of English in the survey. 

Integrating intercultural activities into teaching Mandarin for international students in China.

This study explores the intercultural activities in teaching Mandarin to international students in China. A sample of five Mandarin teachers with rich experience in teaching international students within Chinese universities. Data were collected through classroom observation, teachers' interviews and reflective journals and analyzed through thematic analysis using the framework of Byram's notion of intercultural competence in language teaching and learning. The results show that intercultural activities can effectively promote Mandarin teaching for international students. The findings also suggest Mandarin teachers can provide more opportunities for international students to share their values and opinions and adopt more activities to teach cultural knowledge. Accordingly, recommendations on preparing intercultural competence are concluded and put forward, which might support future teaching.

PROJECTING COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (CLT) IMPLEMENTATION IN TEACHING SPOKEN LANGUAGE AT SECONDARY SCHOOL

The interconnected between communicative competence and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) has been recognized as the most common approach to promoting communicative competence in language teaching. Moreover, it has been implemented by many English as a Foreign Language (EFL) countries involved in Indonesia. This study aims to determine the CLT implementation as performed by an EFL teacher in teaching spoken language at Secondary School. To achieve the aim, this study used a descriptive case study as a research design. The participant of the study was an EFL teacher who implements CLT in teaching spoken language. The data were collected through semi-structured interviews, classroom observation, and document analysis. The result of the data collection was analyzed by using Qualitative Data Analysis from Miles, Huberman, and Saldaña (2014). The findings revealed that the CLT implementation has been performed by an EFL teacher through three components. Those are seen from the teacher’s way of deciding the material, being a facilitator in the teaching-learning process, and applying teaching-learning strategies. This research indicates that the use of the CLT approach could facilitate learners to develop communicative competence skills.

The Integration of Global Competence Into Malaysian English as a Second Language Lessons for Quality Education (Fourth United Nations Sustainable Development Goal).

Research in the globalization era has emphasized the importance of global competence and its integration into language teaching and learning. This article discussed the current focus of global education through the integration of global competence in English as a Second Language (ESL) in Malaysia. The country’s global competence development among ESL teachers and students, along with its integration into English lessons, were identified, satisfying the need to achieve quality education. The global competence integration of ESL teachers will meet the fourth United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4), which strives for quality education. The global education goals form a critical starting point of this article, which articulates the connection to the targets in SDG 4. Hence, this article investigated the significance of global competence in language teaching and learning in Malaysia. Overall, the integration of global competence among ESL teachers can provide life-long learning, enhancing the quality of education.

Pragmatic Competence of Complimenting among Female Omani EFL College Students: A Sociolinguistic Study

The importance of pragmatic competence in language teaching and learning has been highlighted in many studies; however, scarcity of such studies in the Omani context can be easily identified. The study investigates how female Omani higher education students express compliments in English and whether these are pragmatically, linguistically and communicatively appropriate.  The research data were collected from 51 female college students through a response-based questionnaire containing 18 social scenarios to test their responses on the linguistic accuracy and pragmatic appropriateness of compliments.  Native speaker’s ratings on these revealed that 61.02% of students’ responses were linguistically deficient and 23.96% pragmatically incompetent. It was found that many students used linguistic and pragmatic considerations of complimenting from their mother tongue while communicating in English which resulted in infelicitous or defective performance of the speech act under examination. This entails an urgent need to integrate pragmatic and cultural knowledge into EFL skills courses in Oman, especially those that focus on speaking, in order to raise students’ awareness of what is considered appropriate and acceptable in English and avoid serious cross-cultural errors in inter-language communication. 
 Keywords: compliments, speech acts, female EFL students, linguistic accuracy, pragmatic competence

Upaya Meningkatkan Kompetensi Guru Bahasa dalam Menulis Buku Fiksi melalui Bimbingan Kelompok di MTs Negeri 6 Kulon Progo

This research aims to find out the application of group guidance as an effort to improve the competence of language teachers in writing fiction books in MTs Negeri 6 Kulon Progo. This research uses academic supervision techniques through group guidance. Based on the results of guidance, it can be concluded that there is an increase in the competence of language teachers in writing fiction books by 95%. As a result of the data group's guidance, there were 7 language teachers who wrote books both single and anthology along with offline or online guidance. Overall, this best practice activity has succeeded in improving the literacy skills of language teachers through group guidance.

Normativity in language teacher learning: ELF and theEuropean Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages(EPOSTL)

AbstractAs with any proposal for a change in pedagogy, the starting point for implementation is teacher education. Suggestions have been put forward for an approach to English language teaching (ELT) which takes into account the lingua franca function language can fulfill. Frameworks for how teachers might adopt a pedagogy of English as a lingua franca (ELF), however, are inconsistent with current policy guidelines for student teacher learning. This concerns most notably those directives provided in theEuropean Portfolio for Student Teachers of Languages(EPOSTL), which is used in a growing number of teacher formation programs. This paper examines the ‘can-do’ statements which the EPOSTL proposes should represent the required methodological competences of language teachers. Using discourse analytic methods, the article explores what the EPOSTL portrays that prospective teachers need to know about language and how to teach it. It is argued that the language education policy represented by the EPOSTL is based on a conceptual perspective that can only impede the development of a genuinely reflective approach to the education of English language teachers and the implementation of an ELF pedagogy.

ФОРМИРОВАНИЕ МЕЖКУЛЬТУРНОЙ КОМПЕТЕНЦИИ. ЧТО ВЛИЯЕТ НА УСПЕХ МЕЖКУЛЬТУРНОЙ КОММУНИКАЦИИ?

Objective of the article is to analyze parts of intercultural competence and to develop a system of intercultural exercises and experimentally test its efficiency. To check that teaching Russian as a foreign language using this system positively affects the success of intercultural communication. Applied methods . Description method; method of analysis; generalization and systematization; experimental pedagogical research method; comparison method. Results . There is no unified model of intercultural competence in language teaching. The main criteria for the success of the intercultural competence are its relevance and effectiveness. Conclusion . It has been experimentally confirmed that students living in the country of the target language and undergoing special intercultural training gain an increase in communicative competence. Possible areas for further work may be the creation of a textbook (system of intercultural exercises), the development of online trainings.

THE IMPORTANCE OF DEVELOPING TEACHERS' ASSESSMENT LITERACY COMPETENCE

The following article is based on the action research done among English as foreign language (EFL) educators to identify the language assessment literacy level; hence, educational assessment has always been an integral element of teaching. The principle aim in undertaking the following research was to investigate the language assessment level of EFL teachers at Higher Educational Institutions (HEI) and mitigate the barriers to success in gaining procedural/ conceptual level of assessment literacy. There are many studies on language assessment literacy, taking the definition of assessment literacy as the root and focusing on the competence of language teachers, there exist several definitions. They will include a range of skills related to the test production, test score analysis, and the roles/ functions of assessment in education and society. The following research was undertaken with the help of two data collection methods: qualitative and quantitative. Qualitative method helped to identify the perception of teachers the language testing and assessment and generate the answers. Test with authentic and contextualized scenarios was used as quantitative method. Both data helped to identify the level of teachers’ assessment literacy. A total of 103 EFL educators from three language universities: Uzbekistan state university of world languages, Samarkand state institute of foreign languages and Nukus state pedagogical institute named after Ajiniyaz, were involved in the study. The result showed that the gap between subject matter knowledge and pedagogy of assessment can be bridged by aligning pre-service and in-service teacher programs. The consistency in developing teachers’ language assessment competence can be reached if conducting a clear and well-developed assessment course in practicing classroom assessment.

The Role of Pedagogical Translation on The Development of Intercultural Communicative Competence in Language Teaching

Methods of language teaching have neglected the role of pedagogical translation throughout the twentieth century in order to prevent the use of the L1 in the classroom. With the elaboration of Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) in 2001, there has been a radical shift from an interactional language learning perspective at a bilingual environment to an intercultural perspective at a multilingual level with the recent theories of sociocultural learning and the emergence of intercultural competence. This study intends to redraw the theoretical background of translation in language learning after the traditional grammar-translation method and to deconstruct the neglected role of translation in the emerging methods during the second half of the twentieth century up to communicative and action-oriented approaches. The study aims at reinitiating the translation-based learning in coherence with the action-oriented approach, which is based upon the appropriation of an Intercultural Communicative Competence in language teaching. It was a qualitative phenomenographic research and the researcher examined data collected from ten experts and three main categories had been determined. The main theme was the impact of translation on intercultural communicative competence, which was divided into three categories (role, impact, and awareness via translation) It has been concluded that the translation is a way to surpass cultural boundaries in language teaching and the role of translating is a kind of mediation. Translation is not only an activity of transcoding, but also a complex procedure in which interfere language, culture, but also the inter-subjective pragmatic relations between individuals and the society.

Understanding Pragmatics and Pragmatic Competence in ELT Materials

<p>Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics concerned with utterance and speaker meaning. With regard to English language teaching (ELT) materials, pragmatics may deal with function in English or language functions—that is what or which language expression commonly used in particular situations. Speaking about function, there are some pragmatic aspects which we should be knowledgeable of. The present  paper attempts to  discuss what the pragmatic aspects are and their significance in the teaching of language functions through ELT materials. To discuss these pragmatic aspects, a library research was deployed by referring to previous studies on pragmatics and pragmatic competence in language teaching, including the author’s investigation on pragmatics in ELT materials. The results indicate that it is imperative for English language teachers to understand pragmatics in ELT materials as it helps them to teach language functions which are pragmatically effective or functional.</p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong>language functions, sociopragmatics, pragmalinguistics, meta-pragmatic information, ELT materials</p>

Aspects of developing pragmatic competence in efl in a formal setting

The need for a balanced approach to all the components of communicative competence in language teaching is extensively proven from a theoretical standpoint. In practice, however, the linguistic dimension, particularly the lexical one, prevails in the teaching-learning process, to the detriment of the other elements. The article highlights the importance of creating a balance among all the CC components, emphasizing that special attention should be paid to the pragmatic competence in a formal setting. Some effective teaching strategies in this regard are also described.

The use of micro-level discourse markers in British and American feature-length films: Implications for teaching in EFL contexts

Discourse markers (DMs) are significant for fluent speech. Furthermore, they are important elements of language for conversation organization, reciprocal relation among interlocutors, and productive speaking and comprehension. Although, they have very important functions for pragmatic development, they seem to be neglected in language teaching either because of the belief that they are difficult to teach, or as a result of the focus on grammatical competence in language teaching. This study examined the use and functions of micro-level. DMs in British and American feature-length films and it provided implications for using feature-lengths films as a source of authentic language input for explicit or implicit teaching of DMs. The scripts of four films (two British and two American) were analyzed using the AntConc Concordance program. The results show  that there is not a significant difference between British and American films in terms of the frequency of DMs well, like, and you know .  On the other hand, it is found that oh is used significantly more frequently in British films than American films. The functional analysis of the DMs showed that, both British and American feature-length films represent the use of English DMs in native discourse. Therefore, the study concludes that the films could be used for teaching and learning of DMs in foreign language teaching. The results are discussed in terms of pedagogical implications.Â

А REGIONAL LINGUOCULTURAL COMPONENT OF TRAINING LANGUAGE TEACHER (CONTENTS, FORMS AND MEANS OF IMPLEMENTATION)

The article presents the author’s concept of forming the regional cultural linguistic competence of language teachers in the process of study in pursuit of Bachelor's and Master's degrees. It regards the optimal structure and contents of the regional cultural linguistic competence, the forms and means of the implementation of the regional linguocultural component of teachers’professionaltraining. It shows different types of students’ in- and out-of-class activities and research projects connected with studying regional cultural linguistics, new models of modern means of teaching – the author’s textbooks and educational dictionaries that provide the implementation of the concept. The results of the methodical experiment that prove the effectiveness of the author’s model of forming the regional cultural linguistic competence of language teachers are given.

Teacher’s Perception of “A good English Language Teacher”

This article, as a part of a bigger research project on teachers' perceptions about the role of the teacher in teaching English in Vietnam, is to contribute a voice in clarifying the competence of a language teacher (teaching language) in view of ELT methodologists in the world. First author presents different perspectives on English teacher competence framework, then makes analysis of the competence frameworks, caregorizes them into groups, so that readers easily find the strengths and weaknesses of the model. Then the article summarizes the results of a study on the perception of secondary school teachers in Hanoi about “a good English language teacher” and necessary competences of English language teachers. Theoretical framework for data analysis is based on Dudzik's Competency Framework for English Language Teachers (2008) and the Guidebook for use of Competency Framework for English Language Teachers from NFL2020 (2015). Research results will bring new information and necessary knowledge to help teachers and administrators (especially NFL2020) make appropriate adjustments to improve the quality of English language teaching in Vietnam.

Teachers’ beliefs and students’ experiences regarding intercultural communicative competence teaching and learning

The article is based on the preliminary results of an ongoing research project that seeks to explore intercultural communicative competence of language teachers and university students. The article reports teachers’ beliefs and students’ experiences concerning intercultural communicative competence teaching and learning, gained by means of questionnaires. As Likert-type scales use fixed choice response formats and are designed to measure attitudes and opinions, they were used in the measurement of students’ statements that were asked to be evaluated in a survey, carried out in three different periods (steps). Teachers’ beliefs result from a long questionnaire, focused on data about how teachers perceive the cultural dimension of English language teaching and learning. The conclusions are based on data collected in a five-year study that need further investigation in the currently run project. Several recommendations for pre-service and in-service teacher training are commented on in the end. Keywords: teaching English, learning English, acquiring target culture, intercultural communicative competence

La competencia comunicativa en la enseñanza de idiomas

This research is done taking into consideration the importance of the development of communicative competence in the teaching and learning of English language teachers who teach the subject to students of the Bachelor in Law at the Ministry of the Interior (MININT ), who must be able to communicate in English with an English speaker in a situation of operational interest; as well as reading materials originally written in English and understand its contents. The aim of this work is theoretically support the communicative competence in language teaching and its importance in the study of English. The importance of research work lies in what it brings to the teaching of English in the Interior Ministry. The methods used were the analysis-synthesis and induction-deduction.

Theoretical bases of a conceptual framework with reference to intercultural communicative competence

With the rapid expansion of communication, the mobility of people and the expansion of immigration, it is generally agreed, in language education, that ‘intercultural communicative competence’ (ICC) should be an essential component of ‘language competence’ or vice versa. It also implies that there could not be intercultural communication without the integration of intercultural competence in language teaching. But, there is a need to study this issue logically and coherently. Accordingly, this article reviews existing theories and models. It also proposes a conceptual framework for the development of ICC which involves cognitive, affective and psychological factors. The three essential domains of ICC are: intercultural knowledge, intercultural skills and intercultural being. They capture the interrelations that are embedded in language, thought and culture. The paper argues that language competence needs to address not only the linguistic, sociolinguistic and pragmatic/discourse elements of langue but should integrate (inter)cultural interactions and transactions between individuals in the learning process.