English Language Teaching Course Research Articles

The effectiveness of the ELT component at the B.Ed. programme in Bangladesh: A critical perspective

The study determines the level of effectiveness of the English course at the B.Ed. programme in Bangladesh in developing professionalism of the prospective English language teachers. Recently, English language teaching has gained momentum because of its local as well as global instrumental use. But, Bangladesh is still facing an acute shortage of skilled English language teachers. Hence, the study investigates the existing structure and the scope of English Language Teaching (ELT) in the teacher training programme of Bangladesh. For this purpose, data has been collected both from trained English language teachers and pre-service trainees to find out the level of success of the ELT course at the B.Ed. programme in Bangladesh. Hence, the study investigates the scope of English language teaching and teacher training with reference to the training institutions in Dhaka, Mymensingh and Comilla. Stamford Journal of English; Volume 6; Page 261-284 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/sje.v6i0.13918

Intercultural challenge to language learning

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative research project set to investigate the piloting process of an innovative language program for university students. It challenges traditional English language teaching courses celebrating a view centered on learning; classes become spaces for students to understand the language they are learning through the development of small projects. The approach moves from a teaching transmission paradigm to one where the most important agent is each student who has to engage with a topic of his or her interest. Students are seen as individuals whose knowledge and understanding of the world is valued and not as people whose lack of language skills prevents them from engaging in discussions of complex topics. The objective of this innovation is to enhance students’ understanding and use of academic English in their field of interest. In this project, we argue that knowledge and understanding of the mother tongue and culture play key roles in the development of a second language. A number of studies suggest that students who had strong first language literacy skills achieved higher proficiency levels in their second language. Based on this argument and Vygotsky’s sociocultural learning theory, we designed disciplinary content language learning workshops for first-degree students. The main tenet is that students can develop academic English given that they know about their discipline. Findings so far reveal the difficulty of students to take distance from their previous learning experiences. They also show that students’ ideas expressed in English are far more complex than what would be expected of them given their second language skills. The complexity is not only related to thecontent, but to the way they construct their paragraphs and the understanding of how the register of their field may be used.

ELT Teacher Trainees Attitudes Towards Environmental Education And Their Tendency To Use It In The Language Classroom

With the change of focus in language teaching from grammar-based approaches to more communicative approaches, contextual language learning gained importance and found body in the English Language classroom. Global issues constitute one of the most popular contexts for purposeful language learning and meaningful language use. Increasing number of ELT (English Language Teaching) course books involve global issues in their content. Within the scope of socially responsible teaching (SRT) it is believed that it is the teachers responsibility to help their learners develop awareness on these issues. From this perspective current research aims to shed some light into ELT teacher education process by investigating teacher trainees attitudes and tendencies towards environmental education and their inclusion in the ELT lessons. Data for the research is collected from 224 third year ELT teacher trainees via a questionnaire prepared by the researchers. The reliability of the questionnaire was tested by using Cronbachs alpha and found to be .821 . As a result, it was found that third year ELT teacher trainees have mildly positive attitudes on environmental education. In addition, there were no statistically significant differences among the participants sex and their membership at environmental organizations on their attitudes towards environmental education and their tendency to use them in language education. The result of this study is significant for numerous stakeholders, including teacher education programs, Ministry of Education, state leaders and surrounding communities and families of English language learners in relation with the efforts to integrate environmental education to the ELT curriculum.

Tensions and struggles in fostering collaborative teacher autonomy online

This article explores the complex intersubjective relationships of teacher–learners, on a MA English Language Teaching course. The pedagogical aim of the module is to promote collaborative teacher–learner autonomy for professional development using asynchronous computer mediated communication to collaborate on a variety of tasks. Interview data reveals tensions and struggles between participants which appear to hinder their opportunities to collaborate and engage with the course. This study also explores the dissonance and tensions between the teacher educator's pedagogical aspirations, expectations and assumptions about participants and participants’ own perspectives of themselves and others. This dissonance prompted a re-examination of the importance of intersubjective relationships in education and the emergence of the teacher as communal agent as and educational ideal.