Primary School English Language Research Articles

Primary School English-Language Education in Asia: From Policy to Practice

Primary School English-Language Education in Asia: From Policy to Practice

Evaluation in Primary School English Language Activities: A Study in Support of Pupils Learning

Evaluation in Primary School English Language Activities: A Study in Support of Pupils Learning

English Language Classroom Practices: Bangladeshi Primary School Children’s Perceptions

English language teaching (ELT) has been investigated from various angles including how English language teachers perceive what happens in an ELT classroom. How primary school English language learners perceive their experiences of ELT is rarely reported in the published literature, particularly from developing countries such as Bangladesh. This article reports on a study that examined Bangladeshi primary school learners’ experience of English language classroom practices in which technology-enhanced communicative language teaching activities were promoted through a project called English in Action (EIA). EIA is a large-scale 9-year long international English language development project in Bangladesh, funded by the UK government. A semi-structured group interview was conducted with 600 Grade 3 students from different regions of Bangladesh. The findings showed that the learners found communicative language learning activities such as dialogue and role play more effective than translation and memorizing grammar rules for learning English, although they enjoyed reciting and drills. The results also showed that these learners’ English teachers tended to mix both traditional and communicative approaches in their lessons. The paper critiques EIA and argues that any major language development project needs to consider the local context and learners’ views on language learning for its success.

A Study of the Use of Narratives in Teaching English as a Foreign Language to Young Learners

The article reports the findings of a survey, conducted among primary school English language teachers in Slovenia, aimed at revealing their attitudes towards the use of narratives in teaching English as a foreign language to children aged from eight to nine years (3rd and 4th grades respectively). The research results show that most teachers use narratives when teaching English, generally once or twice per month, and that teachers who do not use a course book in the classroom employ storytelling or story reading techniques more frequently than teachers who follow a course book in their teaching. Despite the fact that the teachers participating in the study are aware of the importance of narratives in teaching English as a foreign language to young learners, there is still a lot to be done concerning the selection of the narratives, the narrating techniques and the post-narration activities. Proper teacher training for teaching a foreign language to young learners could address most of these issues.

A Study of Gender Positioning and Occupational Roles in Selected Primary School English Language Textbooks

A scholarly article by authors Habibah Ismail, Bahiyah Dato’ Hj, Ab Hamid, and Mohd Subakir Mohd Yasin, Zarina Othman, Yuen Chee Keong, Azhar Jaludin published in The International Journal of Learning: Annual Review

An Interim Report of a Study on Evaluation in Primary School English Language Activities : With a Focus on Self-evaluation

An Interim Report of a Study on Evaluation in Primary School English Language Activities : With a Focus on Self-evaluation

A Qualitative Study of the Effectiveness of Teacher Education Programs in Preparing Primary School English Language Teachers

1997 yilinda Milli Egitim Bakanligi’nin ilkogretim Ingilizce derslerini 4. siniftan baslayacak sekilde planlamasi bu dersleri etkili bir sekilde yurutebilecek ogretmenlerin yetistirilmesine duyulan gereksinimi de beraberinde getirmis ve bu da ogretmen yetistirme ders programlarinda degisiklikler yapilmasini zorunlu kilmistir. Bu zorunluluk ozellikle Cocuklara Yabanci Dil Ogretimi derslerinin Ingilizce ogretmeni yetistiren programlara konulmasini beraberinde getirmistir. Ancak, bu derslerin yeterliligi ve ogretmen yetistirme programlarinin ilkogretim duzeyi ogrencileriyle ders yurutebilecek nitelikte ogretmenler yetistirmede basarisi hakkindaki calismalara duyulan gereksinim de giderek artmistir. Bu calismada, Ingilizce ogretmenlerini ilkogretim duzeyi ogrencilerine ders vermeye hazirlayan lisans programlarinin etkililigi derinlemesine gorusme tekniginin kullanildigi bir nitel arastirma yontemi izlenerek irdelenmistir. Toplam 25 ogretmenle yapilan gorusmelerin sonuclarina gore ogretmenlerin yalnizca % 8’i lisans programlarini yeterli gormektedir. Programin en guclu yonu, uygulama derslerini icermesi; en gucsuz yonu ise ogretmenleri gercek sinif ortamina hazirlayamamasi olarak goze carpmaktadir. Calismanin en dikkat cekici sonucu, Ingiliz Dili Egitimi programi disindaki programlardan mezun olup Ogretmenlik Sertifikasi alarak ogretmen olanlarin meslege basladiklarinda cocuklara yabanci dil ogretimi hakkinda kendilerini yetersiz gormeleridir ki onlara gore bunun temel nedeni sertifika programlarinin ilgili dersleri icermemesidir.

Primary school English teachers' research engagement

Research engagement is an important means for teachers to develop their professional competence. This paper reports on an enquiry into the research engagement of a group of primary school English language teachers in Guangdong province on the Chinese mainland. Drawing on questionnaire data and teachers’ interview narratives, the paper examines how these Chinese primary school teachers experienced research and what their conceptions of good quality research were. While the enquiry revealed that the participants had a variety of research experiences, it also revealed that their research engagement was undermined by numerous contextual constraints and their perceived inadequacy as teacher researchers. These findings will be discussed with suggestions for making research an effective sustainable path for primary school English teachers’ professional development.

Research engagement and educational decentralisation: problematising primary school English teachers’ research experiences in China

Teachers are encouraged to enhance professional competence through reflective practice and they are also asked to undertake research to generate evidence for their professional practices. This paper reports on an inquiry into a group of primary school English language teachers’ research engagement in the province of Guangdong on the Chinese mainland. The inquiry explored the effect of educational reforms on the participants’ research engagement through the use of an open‐ended questionnaire and group interviews. The inquiry revealed that research engagement had become an important part of the teachers’ professional lives. Emerging findings from the inquiry also problematised their research engagement as it was found to have been undermined by a competitive promotion mechanism, the teachers’ conceptualisations of research and challenges in the knowledge dissemination process. The paper ends with reflections on how to make teacher research “educational” for teachers and serve as an effective way for professional development.

Regulative discourse in Singapore primary English classrooms: teachers' choices of directives

Classroom research has largely focused on an ‘instructional discourse’ in local classroom contexts where teachers and students interact about subject knowledge. Few studies have been conducted, however, to examine ‘regulative discourse’, which is the precondition for the transmission of subject knowledge. In this article, therefore, we investigate regulative discourse in Singapore primary school English Language classrooms from a perspective of Bernstein's pedagogic discourse theory. Specifically, we identify the typology of teachers' directives with morphosyntactic patterns by using corpus linguistic approach, and explore what choices teachers make of directives, for what regulatory purposes and how they position students. In this way, we illustrate how the regulative discourse is constructed and what power relations are enacted or manifested between teachers and students in the Singapore classroom context. The findings help illuminate relationships between sociocultural factors and classroom regulative practices that enable a better understanding of sociocultural specific rules of order, relation and identity in the classroom context.

Teacher practices and verbal interaction in primary school classrooms in Botswana

This article reports the results of fifteen randomly selected English lessons (eight in Standard 6; one in Standard 5; and six in Standard 4) observed in primary schools in Botswana. It was hypothesised that pupils had limited opportunities for meaningful verbal interaction in the classroom. Analyses were made on transcribed lesson data to determine the nature of verbal interaction, the questions asked in the classroom, the language error-correction techniques used, and the teaching attributes of the teachers. All these analyses confirmed the hypothesis to be true. The results were then collated and typical characteristics of primary school English language classrooms in Botswana were identified. It appears that an interactive model of pedagogy is, however, still wanting in the English language classrooms, despite the popularity of in-service programmes on communicative teaching for teachers.

A professional development program for primary school English language teachers in Turkey: designing a materials bank

This paper presents and discusses an in-service teacher development program that focussed on establishing a materials bank for English language teachers at a private primary school in Ankara, Turkey, and teachers’ evaluations of the program. The program aimed to lead to teacher change as growth and learning, to address school-based needs, and to provide overall quality improvement. Feedback obtained during the professional development program and after its completion demonstrates that teachers improved their knowledge and skills on materials design and curriculum related issues as well as improving the overall quality of instruction and developing a positive attitude towards professional development.

Don't throw out directives!: Reinterpreting the relationship between language input and output

Hong Kong was one of the first public school systems in the world to shift to online learning in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Primary and secondary school language teachers had to adapt instruction to cater to their students' diverse linguistic and educational needs. Drawing from the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DCE), the current study examines the experiences of primary and secondary school English language teachers’ digital competence as they navigated digital resources, teaching and learning, assessment, and empowering learners in an emergency remote teaching context. Using a two-stage design, this study drew from qualitative survey data (N = 73) and follow-up interviews (N = 10). Findings illuminate how language teachers responded to their students' educational and linguistic needs in online environments. Notably, educators adapted their virtual instruction to cater to students with varying English language proficiency levels and leveraged both synchronous and asynchronous platforms to best support student learning. Moreover, the current study sheds light on how the DCE framework might be used as a tool to assess the digital competencies of educators and better prepare them for virtual teaching. It concludes with a call for more research on emergency remote teaching, particularly within primary and secondary language classrooms.