Experienced Language Teachers Research Articles

The effects of accent familiarity and language teaching experience on raters' judgments of non-native speech

Abstract Rater effects, defined as the construct-irrelevant variation associated with rater characteristics, are critical to the reliability and validity of speaking assessments ( Bachman et al., 1995 ; Kunnan, 2000 ). The current study investigates two under-explored characteristics among untrained raters: familiarity with the speakers' non-native accents and experience in teaching English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL). This study is the first to use a novel, objective measure of accent familiarity, i.e., an accent identification task. It included three groups of raters (n = 22 in each group) who varied on the two characteristics. All raters assigned holistic and three analytical ratings (foreign accents, grammar and vocabulary, and content) to 26 speech files. They also filled out a survey reporting their demographic information, perceived impacts of their background on their ratings, and evaluative features they used for rating. Although there were no significant differences in the three groups' ratings, ESL/EFL teachers self-reported that their background affected their rating decisions, and one third of them also felt that they were more lenient. Compared to non-teachers, ESL/EFL teachers were also better able to separate the analytical dimensions and were less biased by speakers' foreign accents when judging the overall proficiency or the content of their speech.

Literacy-oriented pedagogy in the advice of experienced language teachers as prospective practicum assessors

This study reports the impact of a professional development course on experienced, highly qualified secondary school teachers of English as a foreign language in preparation for their becoming paid assessors of student teachers on practicum. The course concerned a literacy-oriented pedagogy informed by literacy pedagogical content knowledge (LPCK). The course view of LPCK was contested disciplinary change from traditional sentence-based pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) about language to a genre-based view of both language learning and intellectual development as literacy development. The course providers were teacher educators committed to the new pedagogy because of its perceived relevance to social justice, that is, equal opportunity for students’ development of academic English for tertiary English-medium study necessitated largely by the globalization of education. The course outcomes, in the form of the participants’ spoken feedback to student teachers on practicum about 4 months after the course, were examined for evidence of teachers’ course-compatible LPCK. The feedback was found to exhibit rather minimal evidence of the LPCK introduced in the course. Significantly, these findings were in contrast to those of Love's working with first language novice teachers. Personal, pedagogical and contextual reasons are proposed for the difficulties arising when experienced language teachers are faced with new roles and pedagogical orientation.

ASTP: MODEL PEMBELAJARAN BAHASA ASING BAGI MILITER

The United States Army during the Second World War stunned the education world with their foreign language teaching experience. Their program that is called “The Army Specialized Training Program” (ASTP) was able to successfully train many participants with a very high success rate. Dr. Hamada Ibrahim, a professor in foreign languages at Cairo University, Egypt, described the “ASTP” as the most immense and successful program of learning foreign language in the history. The US Army foreign language program encompasses the background for the emergence of this program, a general picture of the program, the teaching subjects as well as the teaching techniques.

The Design, Implementation and Evaluation of a Pilot Scheme Adapted to the Bologna Goals at Tertiary Level

The Bologna Declaration attempts to reform the structure of the higher education system in forty‐six European countries in a convergent way. By 2010, the European space for higher education should be completed. In the 2005–2006 academic year, the University of Murcia, Spain, started promoting initiatives to adapt individual modules and entire courses to the ECTS‐compatible credit system. In this paper, we describe the development of an experiment under the ECTS credit scheme for the module English Language and Literature I, a course for first year students of French Studies. This experiment took place in the 2005–2006 academic year. This was the first experiment of its kind to be carried out in the Faculty of Arts under the Bologna principles. A teaching team made up of three experienced language teachers was put together for this purpose. The experiment would have a very strict follow‐through: three different types of questionnaires were designed and given to the students, teacher and observers respectiv...

The Experience of Language Teaching Edited by SENIOR, ROSE M.

<i>The Experience of Language Teaching</i> Edited by SENIOR, ROSE M.

Narrative of a cross-cultural language teaching experience: Conflicts between theory and practice

China's economic performance over the past few decades has put China in a position where it now accounts for one-third of global economic growth, twice as much as America. The large-scale growth of China's economy has attracted attentionfrom businesses and investors worldwide [Morrison (2006). China’ s economic conditions. Congressional Research Service: The Library of Congress]. With the continuing growth of China's economy, more and more people from all over the world are learning Chinese in order to conduct business and access China's huge markets. Correspondingly, an increase in the demand for Chinese speakers is being matched by an increase in available Chinese language teaching jobs globally. This has led many Chinese native speakers to consider teaching Chinese as a second language either in China or overseas. This study is a narrative inquiry into the transformation of thinking about language education, based on the author's experience of teaching Chinese while pursuing a doctorate program at a major university in the United States. The data used in this study are qualitative in nature, consisting of self-observations and journal writing. Narrative inquiry serves as a conceptual framework to this study and was adopted as a tool for data analysis. The analysis focused on how the author, as a teaching assistant from Taiwan, dealt with issues of teaching Chinese as a second language and how he drew on pedagogical theories and methodologies. The author's experience with students in the East Asian Language and Culture Department with their different assumptions and motivations highlighted the importance of teaching strategies and pedagogies in class. Elements like cultural diversity and learning styles are also discussed in this paper.

LANGUAGE MINORITY STUDENTS IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS: AN EDUCATION IN ENGLISH, H. Douglas Adamson

LANGUAGE MINORITY STUDENTS IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS: AN EDUCATION IN ENGLISH.H. Douglas Adamson. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. vii + 294. $34.50 paper.In this theoretical-empirical textbook, Adamson presents an authoritative and critical overview of the application of behavioral and cognitive, psycholinguistic, and linguistic paradigms to the particular educational and linguistic needs of English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. schools. Each paradigm alone fails to fully account for the complexities of ELL instruction. To solve this shortcoming, Adamson applies the Vygotskian sociocultural model of learning and cognitive development, a model that integrates external behavioral and internal cognitive factors. Adamson's balanced writing includes the nation's social and political views of ELL education as well as the arguments of critics of ELL instruction, arguments he does not leave uncontested. A noteworthy dimension of this work is how the author strengthens his argument with his extensive English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language teaching experience in the United States and abroad as well as his research in the field, including the report of a year-long case study of ELLs enrolled in a middle school in Arizona. The discussions of the vignettes and of the case-study results afford readers the opportunity to learn about the variables and complexities of ELL instruction through the lens of a constructivist researcher.

The Experience of Language Teaching

The Experience of Language Teaching

Teachers' Use of English in Communicative German Language Classrooms: A Qualitative Analysis

ABSTRACT: The use of English by foreign language teachers is a matter of much controversy. Whereas language switching by English‐speaking foreign language teachers has been the focus of previous research, relatively little is known about the amount of teachers' language use in the classroom when comparing native speakers of the foreign language with nonnative speakers. This qualitative study examined the amount and the purpose of English used by five teaching assistants (TAs) (three native speakers of English, one native speaker of German, and one whose first language was neither English nor German) in beginning German language classrooms. Results of the study indicate eight common functions for the use of English and also show that previous language teaching experience as well as a background in relevant teacher training coursework reduced the amount of English used.

Do Teachers Need Instructional Analogies to Teach Mother-Tongue (L1)? – Teachers’ Perceptions and Representations of Difficult Topics in Mother-Tongue Education

The key elements in Shulman's conception of pedagogical content knowledge are knowledge of representations of subject matter and understanding of students' learning difficulties. The present study deals with teachers' perceptions of areas of student difficulty related to their representations of difficult subject matter. The focus is the role of analogies in the representation repertoire of six experienced language teachers who were interviewed about aspects of subject-specific practical knowledge or pedagogical content knowledge: difficult topics in mother-tongue education, related learning problems, representations, use of analogies, need for appropriate analogies, and an instructional model. The main question addressed in this study is whether language teachers use forms of representation that are different from those used by science teachers, including analogies, because of the nature of their school subject. The results indicate that reading comprehension and writing proficiency are considered difficult topics, and there are various representations without analogies. In the teachers' view, there is no need for analogies and an instructional model. It appears possible that language teaching does not lend itself to the use of instructional analogies.

Searching for effectiveness in ELT: towards the construction of a framework for continuous improvement in state funded secondary language class in Spain in the light of recent legislative changes

Drawing on a working experience of language teaching, teacher training and the implementation of the EFQM model of excellence, and taking into account the recent legislative changes in the Spanish state educational system , this paper studies a number of current trends relating to quality and effectiveness in education with a view to examining possible applications for improving language teaching and learning. Apart from its intended informative purpose, this study proposes the development of a framework similar to those already established within education but not as yet fully applied to formal language instruction in Spain, with the intention of finding ways to improve a number of key areas in the management of second language teaching and learning through the systematic implementation of effectiveness activities.

Exploring a world of paradoxes: an investigation of group work

This paper has a dual role to play here. First, it presents a classroom investigation conducted within the framework of Exploratory Practice (EP) set out in the introductory paper to this volume, and secondly it illustrates EP’s potential for developing a ‘research culture’ in a university institution. Perhaps it should be possible to take such a culture of inquiry for granted at university level, but recent decades in the United kingdom have seen the rise, and fall, of many university-based language teaching units whose members’ contracts did not entail research. Now that research has become a major source of funding, such staff are increasingly being urged to undertake research as well as to teach a language. EP, with its emphasis on integrating research into pedagogy (see Allwright, this issue), offers a research model that experienced language teachers might prefer to traditional academic research, and find more manageable. This paper illustrates how an investigation into group work arose from this interest in developing a culture of inquiry, and concludes with a note of caution concerning the pace of change.

Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition and Learning Strategies in ICALL Environments

The research described in this paper investigates the role of Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLS) in ICALL environments. Although VLS taxonomics do exist, they have been developed for traditional classfoom-type learning, and tend to be incomplete in terms of strategies or factors arguably important for vocabulary learning. Based on existing taxonomies, a VLS taxonomy for an ICALL environment will be developed that takes these issues into account. The final taxonomy, validated by factor analysis, will also be evaluated by experienced language teachers in terms of being able to serve as a basis for providing ICALL teaching materials. The usefulness of a broad range of VLS in this learning environment will be investigated, both in terms of perceived helpfulness and assessed growth of lexical knowledge. The taxonomy building is expected to be interleaved with an evaluation of vocabulary acquisition, which also requires that the question of how to measure and assess lexical knowledge be addressed. The design of the learning environment will not be considered in this paper.

A class-centred approach to language teaching

This article provides a framework for understanding the principles that underlie the classroom decision-making of experienced language teachers. It is based on a study that examined social processes in classes of adult English language learners. The study revealed that teachers are sensitive to the social needs of their class groups, and that their pedagogically and socially-oriented behaviours are closely intertwined. The way that experienced teachers set up learning tasks is governed by a tacit understanding of the principles of group dynamics. Many language teachers, it seems, have intuitively adopted a classcentred approach to their teaching.

The use of analogies in language teaching: Representing the content of teachers' practical knowledge

This study sought to determine how experienced language teachers use analogies to help students comprehend a text on the course of their regular teaching routines. It is assumed that analogies constitute one important component of the content of teachers' practical knowledge in the context of reading-comprehension instruction. The framework of the study drew from Shulman's notion of 'pedagogical content knowledge'; the perspective was the analogy-provider (e.g. teacher or textbook author). Eight lessons taught by eight different teachers were observed and analysed for the presence of analogies. The frequent use of analogies, continuously under discussion in the literature about science education, seems at least open to question. The research suggests that teacher education programmes for language teaching should include information about developing and evaluating instructional analogies.

Making sense of language teaching: teachers' principles and classroom practices

From observed lessons and subsequent interviews and elicitation procedures, 18 experienced teachers of ESL to adults and children in an Australian context described their classroom practices and explained these in relation to the underlying language teaching principles that they saw as guiding their work. The purpose of the study was to discover the meanings the teachers gave to their classroom work in terms of the particular relationships they identified between practice and principle. Despite being undertaken within a particular teaching situation, the study revealed both individual and group diversity in the practices they adopted and in their underlying principles. In addition, a practice widely adopted across the group appeared to be based upon diverse principles, just as a single principle that was commonly shared among the teachers was associated by them with a wide range of practices. Closer examination of the whole group data, however, revealed a particular pattern in the links that the teachers made between principles and practices. The complex relationships uncovered in the study between thinking and action in the work of experienced language teachers have implications for curriculum innovation, teacher education, and for language classroom research.

Creating safe learning environments: Developing and maintaining class cohesion

This paper reports on an Australian study that was conducted in two distinct phases. Phase One examined the belief systems of 28 experienced language teachers, while Phase Two used the theoretical framework generated by the teachers to document the social evolution of eight intensive English language classes containing adult learners from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Phase One revealed that language teachers place high value on class cohesion, believing that classes that operate as cohesive groups provide safe environments for language learning. Phase Two described a range of individual and collective classroom behaviours and identified a variety of strategies used by teachers in their attempts to develop and maintain class cohesion. The study has implications for pedagogy because it foregrounds the importance of class cohesion and identifies the kinds of classroom behaviours that can enhance the development of cohesiveness in language classes. It also raises the question of the degree to which students do actually feel safe in "safe" learning environments.

Communicative Language Teaching in China: Progress and Resistance

TESOL QUARTERLY While existing test designs are being improved, organized efforts have been directed to alternative, more task-based test designs guided by contemporary language testing theories. Unlike the earlier tests, these new tests give due attention to speaking and writing. They are designed with a view to promoting learning. Formative assessment has been a means of teaching for many experienced language teachers over the years, but little research has been conducted on formative assessment in China and abroad. There seems a need for such research to complement language testing.

A Content-Based, Hands-On Program: Idaho FLES

This model shows how a university and school district combine efforts to create a Spanish enrichment program designed to stimulate academic interest in elementary-age children and to provide preservice teachers with additional foreign language teaching experience. Rather than focusing on textbook-based instruction, this model offers content-based courses intended to engage students in hands-on experiences. It takes into consideration the concerns of junior high school and middle school students enrolled in traditional textbook-based classes and creates a content-based elementary language program that will prepare students for more advanced language study as they go on to secondary school.

Learning to do research on language teaching and learning: Graduate apprenticeships

This article describes the learning processes that six experienced language teachers described themselves as having accomplished in the context of a 3-year research project in which they worked, in the context of doing their Ph.D.s, as research assistants. The learning processes involved: learning specific research skills; understanding teaching practices, development of theory and concepts; links with aspects of their graduate studies; working in a team, and preparing themselves for their future careers as university professors and researchers. Suggestions are made for developing these notions into a theory of how language teachers, in the context of apprenticeships during their graduate studies, might learn about doing educational research.