Syllabus Design Research Articles

Iranian University EFL Students’ Cognitive Appraisals of Control and Value, Learning-Related Achievement Emotions, and Academic Achievement

The purpose was to examine the relationship between cognitive appraisals of control and value, learning-related achievement emotions, and academic achievement among Iranian EFL university students. Participants included 440 senior EFL students of different ages (22-35) from 15 universities in Iran. They completed the Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich, et al., 1991), and the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire (Pekrun et al., 2005). Moreover, the participants’ total Grade Point Averages were collected from the universities. The results revealed that control and value appraisals were positively correlated with all positive emotions, while all negative emotions except boredom were negatively correlated with control and value appraisals. Moreover, perceived value of learning could best predict participants’ enjoyment, while the perceived control over learning could best predict their hopes. The results also revealed that positive achievement emotions were positively correlated with participants’ academic achievement, while negative achievement emotions were negatively correlated with it. Finally, the findings showed enjoyment was the best predictor of participants’ academic achievement. The results can support EFL educators, material developers and syllabus designers to get a better description of EFL students’ control and value appraisals, achievement emotions and academic achievement, and their relationships with each other.

Teaching Language Skills to Young Learners through Activities: A Case Study of Primary Schools in Gujrat

Interactive teaching is central to learning language skills at all grades. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of Activity Based Teaching on leaning of the four major skills. To achieve this purpose, pre-test post-test control group design was used with a random sample of 34 male students selected from the list of primary schools located in the district Gujrat. A pre-test was conducted before the treatment of 5 weeks and a post-test was administered within a week after the treatment with the control and experiment group. To find out the significance of the difference between the scores of the tests, t-test for independent samples was run. The test indicated a significant difference in the performance of the experiment group. The study has important significance for the teachers, syllabus designers, and the materials developers. It is recommended in light of the findings that interactive teaching interspersed with activities should replace the lecture-based teaching of language skills, especially with 5th graders.

Teaching Intercultural Literary Genres in Pakistani Universities: The Undergraduate Students’ Perspective on the Poetry of Rumi and Blake

Pakistan is a multicultural country and people are divided across political and religious values. The major objective of this study is to investigate pedagogical relevance of the poetry of Rumi and Blake for culturally diverse undergraduate classes in Pakistani universities in Lahore. The study was based on survey research design. A closed ended questionnaire was developed for data collection from 100 students purposively selected from two universities in Lahore. Findings of the study indicate that intercultural poetry with the theme of Love written by poets like Rumi and Blake needs to be taught at the undergraduate level. The study has implications for students, teachers, and genre based syllabus designers associated with teaching of English Literature in Pakistani universities.

WhatsApp’s SMS Application: A Tool for Vocabulary Learning

Since this world is progressing and the new generation is increasingly adopting mobile phones in their everyday lives, thus, WhatsApp media and other mobile applications are increasingly being used at educational institutions all around the world. Therefore, the current study investigated the WhatsApp SMS application’s use in the vocabulary learning in the engineering university, Sindh, Pakistan. The study used a mixed-mode quasi-experimental pre-test post-test research design, in which students' vocabulary ability was assessed before they participated in WhatsApp classes and subsequently through post-test after the experiment. Moreover, students' experiences were also documented through the analysis of SMS messages they posted on a WhatsApp group (during experiment). The quantitative data was analysed on SPSS and the findings of the study revealed that WhatsApp’s SMS application usage posited a significant difference in the enhancement of vocabulary of the experimental group of students. Moreover, students’ postings (SMSs) on WhatsApp group were analysed qualitatively following the thematic analysis. The qualitative analysis also revealed positive experiences of students concerning WhatsApp’s SMS application in learning vocabulary. The current study reveals the benefits of WhatsApp’s SMS application on tertiary students worldwide, as well as instructors, syllabus designers who develop courses for tertiary students, and policymakers who make educational policies, by instilling technology-enabled social media tools (specifically WhatsApp) in the ESL classroom context both nationally and internationally.

A Comparative Study on the Impact of Lexical Inferencing, Extended Audio Glossing, and Frequency Mode of Input Instruction on EFL Learners' Lexical Collocation Knowledge.

This study shed light on the effects of four modes of vocabulary instruction, i.e., extended audio glossing, lexical inferencing, lexical translation, and frequency manipulation of input on the learning of lexical collocations by Iranian intermediate EFL learners. In so doing, 80 L1 Persian EFL students were divided into four 20-participant comparison groups: Lexical Inferencing (LI), Extended Audio Glossing (EAG), Frequency Manipulation of Input (FM), and the Lexical Translation group (LT). LI, EAG, FM, and LT were treated through lexical inferencing, extended audio glossing, skewed frequency of input, and lexical translation techniques, respectively. The participants were pretested and posttested through a piloted multiple-choice lexical collocation test and instructed for ten instructional sessions. The results of the data, analyzed through repeated measures ANCOVA, showed that all the techniques examined in this study were effective on learners' achievement in lexical collocations. Comparatively, FM treated through frequency manipulation of input, significantly outperformed the other groups in lexical collocation improvement. The ANCOVA results and paired comparisons also indicated that EAG had the least achievement in lexical collocation compared to the other three groups. These results can hopefully inform language teachers, learners, and syllabus designers.

Analyzing the Component of Literature Incorporated in EFL Textbooks in Primary Public Schools, Jordan

Literature, culture, and language are associated with each other (Kahraman, 2016). The component of literature revealed common properties essential in the community and the way language is used to express cultural values, thoughts, behavior, feelings, opinions, and beliefs. Therefore, it is vitally important to include literature components into classroom teaching since it encourages more thoughtful and authentic language learning. This study aimed at analyzing the quantity of literature components in Action Pack Series (1-10) currently used at public schools in Jordan. To achieve the study objectives, a total of (50) male and female teachers of English answered a questionnaire devised for this purpose in addition to (15) supervisors of English were interviewed. Content analysis and semi-structured interviews were conducted. The data has been carefully analyzed and revealed that a very limited number of literary texts were embedded in the current textbooks, and they were not distributed equally. The inclusion of literature components in APS (1-6) was completely marginalized. The study underlined the importance of including additional literary texts in Action Pack Series for a variety of benefits mentioned in the paper. The researchers recommended presenting a proper perspective by syllabus designers and methodologists to integrate adequate literature components in the prescribed textbooks.

Research on College English ESP Teaching Model and Skills of Vocational Universities

This essay discusses the research on an ESP (English for Specific Purposes) teaching model for college English courses for health management majors in vocational universities. The study consists of two stages: a needs analysis and the development and evaluation of an ESP teaching model based on the analysis results. The needs analysis was conducted through a questionnaire survey and interviews with health management majors and teachers. The ESP teaching model includes a syllabus design based on the specific language needs of health management majors, a task-based teaching approach, authentic materials and contexts, and learner-centered instruction. The model was evaluated through a classroom experiment and feedback from students and teachers. The results showed that the ESP teaching model was well-received by health management majors and teachers, and improved their English language proficiency and prepared them for their future careers.

Sustainability of translator training in higher education.

The United Nations has set a Sustainable Development Goal in education to be met hopefully by 2030. One of the target areas is to substantially increase the number of youth and adults possessing training and proficiency relevant to the technical and vocational skills needed for employment, well-paying jobs, and decent entrepreneurships. Enrolled students need to be equipped with core competencies suitable for the fields in which they are specializing, including the field of translation. For student translators, "transcreation" is a core competency they are expected to acquire and practice. With its increasing application in all sectors of life, the use of artificial intelligence or machine translation is on its way to becoming mainstream in the translation industry, eliminating bread-winning opportunities from translators, leaving them in the stream of life to sink or swim. That is why trainers of translators and practitioners alike insist that it is time to consider transcreation so that student translators can better embrace future challenges and boost their employability. A one-shot case study was adopted in this research. After a one-semester trial of teaching and practicing transcreation, an online questionnaire survey was administered to gain the overall perceptions of transcreation from the students. Findings show that the students have raised their awareness of transcreation as a novel approach to translation and most of them feel confident about their employability in the translation job market. Implications for translation syllabus design and translator training are also illustrated.

Exploring the Role of Professional Learning Community in EFL Student-Teachers’ Imagined Identity Development

ABSTRACT Developing teachers’ imagined identity, which refers to the ideal self as a professional based on virtual relationships between self and others, is essential to help teachers with future teaching practices. Drawing on Activity Theory, this study aimed to explore the role of the Professional Learning Community (PLC) in developing 12 Iranian EFL student-teachers’ imagined identity. Following a descriptive narrative design, the data were collected through autobiographical narratives, interviews, and field notes. The thematic analysis of the data showed that PLC has a constructive role in developing student-teachers’ imagined identity to become collaborative teachers, reflective teachers, teachers as learners, and teachers as syllabus designers in the future. The findings indicated that PLC could provide a venue for negotiating knowledge, develop a bottom-up collaborative culture, and create a trustful leadership context, which leads to student-teachers’ imagined identity development. Overall, it can be concluded that creating a negotiating context that enhances a bottom-up collaborative culture makes PLC a constructive method for developing student-teachers’ imagined identity.

Syllabus Design of English Club: Fostering Joyful Extracurricular for Tenth Graders

The transition from online to onsite English classroom resulted in the challenge for tenth graders to be more skillful in actively engaging into English conversation activities. However, it requires better planning of English Club as curricular lesson to enhance student’s participation. This study was intended to develop the syllabus of English Club to be a joyful extracurricular for tenth graders at a senior high school in Daha Kediri. The need analysis used questionnaire and interview to find the required data of student’s speaking practice in English Club activities. The findings show that English Club plays an important role in supporting students to practice speaking. The students also thought that the English Club had a great way of encouraging their motivation to practice speaking with friends. In other words, English Club gives them more joyful experience and knowledge from the learning atmosphere which is fun and comfortable making them more interested in practicing speaking.

Pre-service English Teachers’ Adaptation Skills in Two ESP Courses

Background: The ability to adapt, imitate and modify knowledge in a learning context into another learning context is an important ability for students. However, the ability of pre-service English teachers to adapt their knowledge and skills from one course to other courses has not been studied. This research seeks to find out how pre-service English teachers in one state university in Indonesia adapt knowledge and skills acquired in the Syllabus Design (SD) and Developing EFL Materials (DEM) courses into ESP Program Design (ESP PD) and ESP Materials Development (ESP MD) courses. Methodology: This research is a mixed quantitative and qualitative study involving 54 students who have taken SD, DEM, ESP PD and ESP MD courses in 2022 in a state university in Indonesia. Fifteen of them also took part in a focus group discussion. Their answers to the semi-open questionnaire asking whether the 16 knowledge and skills learned in SD and DEM courses had been adapted were analyzed in a simple quantitative manner with percentages and modes. While the results of focus group discussion about how they adapted them were analyzed qualitatively for themes.Findings: The results of this study show that 15 knowledge and skills in SD and DEM courses were adapted by students into ESP PD and ESP MD courses. The participants adapted them by changing the context of the syllabus and materials the developed in SD and DEM from English at school to English for specific purposes in ESP PD and ESP MD especially when formulating learning objectives. They also developed general English materials into ESP English materials for certain occupations. These findings indicate that students master the contexts of ESP PD and ESP MD.Conclusion: It can be concluded that pre-service English teachers have excellent adaptation skills, which are done not by force, but by choice, to the peripheral component and for the benefit of students. Originality: This is the contribution of this research to students’ learning theory in ESP in English teacher education to add to Leko’s (2015) Evidence by Practice (EBP) theory.

Jordanian EFL Students' Perception of Noncontrastive Allophonic Cues in English Speech Segmentation.

The prominent role of allophonic cues in English speech segmentation has widely been recognized by phonologists and psycholinguists. However, very meager inquiry was devoted to analysing the perception of these noncontrastive allophonic cues by Arab EFL learners. Accordingly, the present study is an attempt to examine the exploitation of allophonic cues, mainly aspiration, glottalization and approximant devoicing to English word junctures by 40 Jordanian PhD students. Moreover, it aims to find out which allophonic cues are perceived more accurately during the segmentation process and if there is any evidence for Universal Grammar markedness. The experiment is led through a forced-choice identification task adopted from Altenberg (Second Lang Res 21:325-358, 2005) and Rojczyk et al. (Res Lang 1:15-29, 2016). The results of ANOVA unveiled that there is a statistically significant difference between the three types of allophonic cues, viz. aspiration, glottalization and approximant devoicing. This implies that the participants outperformed in stimuli marked by glottalization than by aspiration and approximant devoicing. This result provided further evidence for the universality of glottalization as a boundary cue in English speech segmentation. Overall, the Jordanian PhD students failed in perceiving the allophonic cues accurately and exploiting them to detect word boundaries. The present inquiry has the potential to provide several recommendations for syllabus designers, and second/foreign language teachers and learners.

An Experimental Study on the Implementation of a STEAM-Based Learning Module in Science Education

Over the last decade, there has been notable academic interest in the multidisciplinary studies of science education with the emergence of STEAM. Accordingly, this study aimed to conduct an experimental study to explore the effectiveness of a STEAM-based space-themed learning module in science education taught to primary school students. The sample of the study was 6th- and 7th-grade students from the Central Anatolia Region of Turkiye. The experimental group consisted of 180 students, whereas the control group consisted of 94 students. The STEAM-based learning module was applied to the students in the experimental group, and the traditional lecture-based approach was applied to students in the control group. The traditional education and intervention lasted eight weeks. The chi-square test and one-way ANOVA were used to analyze the differences and associations between the variables. The results indicated that gender and academic achievement level were the two key factors determining the effectiveness of the STEAM-based learning module. The comparison of the pre-test and post-test scores indicated that the scores of the female students who participated in the module increased the most. This suggested that girls benefited more from the STEAM-based learning module than boys. Further, the lecture-based approach led to a decrease in some high-achieving students. The findings have implications for educational policymakers, curriculum developers, and syllabus designers.

The Effects of Internet Use in the Classroom on Reading Comprehension, Metacognitive Awareness, and Motivation

The primary objective of the current study is to investigate how internet use in the classroom in conjunction with metacognitive instruction affected students' metacognitive awareness, reading comprehension, and motivation. 40 pupils were randomly chosen from two eleventh-grade courses at Novin high school in Tabriz, Iran  and split into two groups as follows: (a) experimental group called internet group – received metacognitive instruction along with the internet use; and (b) control group – received metacognitive teaching in a regular class. The findings indicate that although the students' motivation towards English study as a foreign language was significantly affected by the internet environment, their metacognitive awareness and reading comprehension were not affected. The results of the present study have some implications for syllabus designers, curriculum developers and language teachers.

REVITALIZING EDUCATION THROUGH ICT: A SHORT OVERVIEW OF JAPAN'S CURRENT LANDSCAPE

The domain of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) education has garnered significant consideration in recent times. However, several challenges are inherent to this area of study, including monetary expense, temporal factors, pedagogical environment, teacher training programs, incentive, syllabus design, and health-related concerns. This paper presents an analysis of the difficulties encountered in the realm of ICT education in Japan, taking into account ten different perspectives.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0063/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

A New Computer Science Academic Word List

This corpus-based vocabulary study aimed to develop a new computer science academic word list across ten sub-disciplines of computer science defined by Association for Computing Machinery (hereafter ACM). A corpus of Computer Science containing 2,500,990 running words was developed from 300 Computer Science Research Articles (hereafter CSRAC) as a database of this study. Drawing on and combining procedures and methods from Coxhead (2000), Gardner and Davies (2014) and other previous studies, this study developed a New Computer Science Academic Word List (hereafter NCSAWL), containing the most frequently-used computer words in computer research articles from the corpus. The NCSAWL contains 444 words, which accounts for approximately 20.33% of the coverage in the CSRAC, the NCSAWL has a much better coverage of computer English. The result of this study has numerous implications for computer science learners, English teachers, researchers, as well as material writers and course syllabus designers. For examples, English computer teachers should focus on teaching learners the most high-frequent words which have a dispersed coverage and have special meaning and use in the discipline of computer science. Teachers could also raise the awareness of learners that some words have different meanings and uses in general English. The material designers for English for academic and special purposes could incorporate the NCSAWL vocabulary into their academic reading and writing materials for computer science students. Researchers and English language teachers who are interested in expanding their computer science academic vocabulary could also use this NCSAWL.

Exploring the Application of the Backward Design Model in EFL Classrooms: Teachers' Perceptions and Practices

This qualitative approach study aimed to explore and illustrate the teachers' perceptions in applying the Backward Design Model (BDM) in designing the Ecuadorian teaching syllabi for secondary public schools. Sixteen teachers were selected, and the data was gathered through the teachers' unit designs based on the BDM, teachers' reflections on the implementations of the BDM, and focus-group interviews. The analysis was done using a thematic approach. The researchers followed an interactive process by going forwards and backwards in reading, coding, and creating common themes that emerged from the collected data. The results indicate that the participants found the BDM planning a complex but fruitful process which allows them to better align the students' learning outcomes of each unit with the instructional materials, strategies, and teaching content based on a specific goal. The implications of this research lead to a possible consideration by the Ecuadorian Ministry of Education to enact this syllabus design according to the classroom context fully.

Developing English Material For Sharia Economy Study Program at IAIN Palopo

The purpose of this developmental research is to develop English material for Sharia Economy Study Program. It aims to determine the textbooks' feasibility, and to ascertain students' responses to the ESP textbooks. The ADDIE Research and Development (RD) model is used in this study. The feasibility study of the ESP textbook reveals the following points: 1)The result of validation from the material expert validation was 94,11 % qualified as “Very good”,the language expert was 80% qualified as “Good.”, and the layout expert was 92,4% qualified as “Very Good.”. In addition, the students’ perception results got a mean score of 4,28 with 86% of the percentage, which qualified as “ Very Good”. The final product consists 10 chapter with 10 exercises of each chapter. The developed textbook has a lot of strengths because it was created using a combination of syllabus design principles. a single unit presentation includes all four essential English skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, as well as grammar practice and vocabulary building. It indicates that the English material is capable and ready to use for Sharia Economic Study Program at IAIN Palopo.

Future Saudi female teachers' perceptions of native-like English pronunciation and English as a Lingua Franca

PurposeThe present study aims to examine the attitudes of future Saudi female English as a Foreign Language (EFL) student-teachers toward English native-like pronunciation to investigate their misconceptions about English as a Lingua Franca (ELF).Design/methodology/approachThe researcher used a questionnaire to collect the data for the study.FindingsThe results indicate that students and teachers have positive attitudes toward native-like pronunciation. However, the results also show a realization on the participants’ part about the status of ELF. The study concludes that although they have positive attitudes toward native-like English pronunciation, students use ELF and recognize that such pronunciation is not essential for global communication. The study results show that the participants are aware of ELF, filling a vacuum in the literature about how Saudi students perceive ELF. It encourages EFL teachers, syllabus designers, developers and researchers to provide more information on this topic and stresses international communicative ability, as ELF speakers require.Research limitations/implications As the study has some limitations that could be addressed in future research, other researchers should address these deficiencies in future studies. One limitation is that the study only involved Saudi female future teachers. Further researchers can investigate male Saudi future EFL teachers. Another limitation is that the study focused on future teachers of English in Saudi Arabia in only one institution. Other Saudi EFL teachers and other Arab future teachers could be further investigated to reject or support the study’s findings. Additionally, a more detailed demographic background could be specified in further research for more comprehensive results. In addition, similar studies could be conducted with participants from different EFL-speaking countries. Another limitation of this study is that it covers the attitudes of EFL future teachers toward native-like pronunciation and indirectly investigates their views on ELF. More research is needed to determine how EFL learners and teachers perceive ELF. The actual use of English globally could become more enlightened with further study.Practical implicationsThis study’s findings have implications for instructors, syllabus designers and researchers. The results suggest that EFL instructors, syllabus designers and researchers should focus more on international communicative competence than native-like competence. While designing course materials or teaching, teachers and syllabus developers should be fully aware of the status of ELF. Designers of syllabi should include conversations among speakers from different linguistic backgrounds. Effective communication is a priority. Students should become more familiar with global communication outside the classroom and be prepared to engage in it.Social implicationsStudents should become more familiar with global communication outside the classroom and be prepared to engage in it.Originality/valueNative varieties of English have gained popularity over the years among EFL teachers and learners. However, researchers have debated the importance of EFL students achieving native-like English proficiency.

Engagement Features in Business Newspapers Corpus: A Comparative Study of Business News and Business Articles

The study explores the Pakistani business newspaper corpus for the presence of engagement features—one of the systems of interactional metadiscourse. Business corpus of 1 million words comprised Pakistani business news and business articles collected from the four well-reputed Pakistani English newspapers, i.e., The Daily Times, The Nation, The Business Recorder, and The Dawn. It was found that the writer presents his ideas and arguments and engages his/her reader by employing different engagement features Furthermore, in the corpus of business articles, the writers were found keener to be informative and engaging than they were for the corpus of business news. The results of the study can potentially help future researchers in understanding the use of Engagement markers in other business corpus texts. In addition, educationists and syllabus designers may use the findings of the study for developing better teaching materials.