Tertiary Context Research Articles

Chinese University Students’ Perceptions of teacher Code-switching in EFL Speaking Classrooms

While research on students’ perceptions of code-switching in EFL classrooms has proliferated over the past several decades, limited research has been conducted to understand students’ perceptions with different levels of language proficiency in English. Drawing on both quantitative and qualitative data collected from students with different English proficiency levels, the present research reports students’ perceptions of teacher code-switching in EFL speaking classrooms in Chinese tertiary context. The quantitative data collected from questionnaires show that students do not favor total immersion. Students believe that English should be the medium of instruction for activities and their opinions show mixed results under the circumstances of teaching grammar and usage of English. Mixed opinions are also found in terms of teacher switching to Chinese to give administrative information and test information. The qualitative data in the questionnaire suggest that students prefer Chinese teacher of English owning to better understanding, and they attribute their levels of English as the deciding factor of their preferences. No statistical differences achieved regarding the perceptions from Level One and Level Two students. Findings suggest that the systematic and effective use of learner’s L1 is beneficial for language teaching in speaking classrooms, and L1 can be regarded as a powerful tool to develop effective teaching approaches for English language teachers.

Intercultural Communicative Competence in ELT: Lecturers’ Perception and Practice

“One of its obvious results is the emergence of intercultural communication and English language has then become as a bridge for cross-cultural communication, thanks to its worldwide lingua franca. For these reasons, Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC) should be more concerned in English Language Teaching (ELT) tertiary contexts. This study aims to gain an indepth understanding on this issue by investigating English teachers' perceptions and practices on ICC in ELT . The study uses a mixed method, to find the perspective of the lecturers, the researcher use questionnaire and interview, while for the practice the reseracher use observation. The findings of the study reveal the positive attitudes of English lecturers on ICC in ELT, but certain challenges confronted by their implementations have been highlighted. As a result, some possible measures to enhance ICC engagement in ELT in this context are proposed.”

Characterising postgraduate students’ corpus query and usage patterns for disciplinary data-driven learning

AbstractData-driven learning (DDL; Johns, 1991), involving students’ hands-on use of corpora for self-guided language learning, is a methodology now increasingly used in many tertiary contexts to enhance the teaching of disciplinary postgraduate thesis writing. However, there are still few studies tracking students’ actual engagement with corpora for DDL. This mixed-methods study reports on the tracking of students’ corpus use via a purpose-built corpus query and data visualisation platform integrated into a large postgraduate disciplinary thesis writing program at a university in Hong Kong. Data on corpus usage history (e.g. times of access, duration of use), query syntax (e.g. query lexis/phraseology and use of wildcards and part-of-speech tags), query function (e.g. frequency lists/distribution, concordance sorting and collocation) and query filters (e.g. searches by faculty, discipline, or thesis section) were collected from 327 students spanning over 11,000 individual corpus queries. The results show significant interdisciplinary and inter-/intra-user trends and variation in the use of particular corpus functions and query syntax adopted by corpus users. Students varied in the type of knowledge (e.g. domain-specific, language-specific) they were accessing, and frequently went beyond the exemplars of the DDL course materials to generate unique queries under their own initiative. Qualitative case study data from three corpus users’ activity logs also show distinctive individual corpus engagement by query frequency and function. These data provide a clearer insight into what students actually do during DDL and the different directions and trajectories that individual users take as a result of DDL. All accompanying DDL tasks are also included as supplementary materials.

Blended-Learning: The Responses from Non-English Students in the Indonesian Tertiary Context

The process of language teaching and learning has undergone major changes due to the developments of technology. The use of technology in education field has paved the way for higher education institution to innovatively shape their modern media in a language teaching and learning. Subsequently, the implementation of blended-learning has aroused at the Universitas Teknokrat Indonesia for approximately one and a half year ago to maximize the use of technology. Most lecturers in all study programs have increasingly utilized the social network sites such as Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. for the successfulness of blended-learning. This present study aims at exploring the students’ responses on how blended-learning might be used to develop their language learning and discovering their attitudes towards the implementation of blended-learning as an interactional teaching and learning tool in English for Business course. Employing a qualitative in form of a case study, eighty-two undergraduate students from study program of Informatics Engineering were observed, interviewed, and distributed questionnaires. The data were performed to collect the students’ responses and students’ attitudes toward the implementation of blended-learning in the process of their language learning. The findings were found out that most students from Informatics Engineering major showed their positive responses and positive attitudes using blended learning for the language teaching and learning. They also gained some educational benefits for their English language development. Thus, this blended learning brings us to the new trend for language teaching and learning media in order to motivate the students in enhancing their language acquisition.

Cybernetically informed pedagogy in two tertiary educational contexts: China and South Africa

Purpose Discussing cybernetics as an enacted practice within specific contexts, this paper aims to identify key similarities and differences of two cybernetically informed approaches to tertiary education in the distinct contexts of China and South Africa. Design/methodology/approach Making explicit and comparing two cybernetically informed educational approaches, the authors identify shared aspects as well as differences arising from their practice in social contexts that have differing norms and values. Findings The authors find that conversational settings for learning, immediacy of feedback, the key role of the teacher and assessment strategies that are matched to cybernetic learning and teaching strategies all constitute shared vital aspects of cybernetically informed teaching that are valid across two distinct educational contexts. Enacting these key aspects however requires careful adaptation to local contexts. Research limitations/implications Primarily qualitative in nature, this study is limited to the examination of two bodies of work conducted independently of each other in differing contexts. Practical implications Arising from the long-term examination of applied educational practice, findings discussed in the paper are intended to inform similar practice in other contexts. The authors however emphasise that enacted ethical practice requires careful adapting of learning and teaching strategies to local conditions. Social implications Based on the authors’ findings, the authors demonstrate the value of cybernetically informed tertiary education that emphasises ethical settings for learning on the basis of mutuality, equality and social inclusion. Originality/value Based on two bodies of work that consolidated practice-based insights independently of each other, this paper presents insights on cybernetically informed education that, shown to work well in two very different contexts, may offer a broader applicability.

ESP ISSUE IN INDONESIAN TERTIARY CONTEXT: WHAT STUDENTS NEED IN LEARNING ENGLISH

This study aims to analyze students’ English needs in an ESP course. English for specific purposes has become a significant aspect in the learning process in Indonesian tertiary context. The significant of occupation requirement globally and the emergence of mastering certain skills for certain jobs drives the need of English for specific area. Referring to this concern, General English is considered no longer suitable and it should be specified into several subjects based on certain purposes. In this case, ESP gives chances for students and teacher to define the target or the outcomes based on their purposes by considering their needs. Thus, conducting need analysis is the first, most significant part to be conducted in ESP course. Conducted in a private university in Indonesia, this study employed descriptive qualitative approach that used questionnaire and focus group discussion to collect the data. This study is a representation of teaching reflection after conducting 6-month ESP class. The results showed that since the students are enrolled in Communication Science Department, they need material that encourages them to communicate and participate actively in the classroom, refers to their major and reflects occupation-oriented material. The materials that distinguish this subject from others emphasize the specification of ESP class and show that the material used cannot be generalized. Therefore, the teacher should consider these results to prepare for the next ESP course. Article DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.20319/pijtel.2019.31.98117 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042, USA.

Examining the need for culturally responsive digital learning


 
 
 
 This article addresses the pedagogy and practice of tertiary learning, and in particular it asks, how is there a need for culturally responsive digital learning? Research shows how, worldwide, classroom content is being delivered through shifting, digitally-infused curriculum (van Dijck, 2013; Netsafe, 2016; Orr, 2016; Revere & Kovach, 2011). The focus of this article is to examine ways in which online, participatory structures work to engage all learners. In New Zealand tertiary contexts, there is an increasing number of culturally diverse student cohorts (particularly due to international education marketing and strategies [Ministry of Education, 2017]). I consider how common spaces in the digital platforms available for educational purposes can be seen to embody a common culture. Research informing this article comes from two studies I have undertaken. The first is a practical inquiry of the use of online spaces in the ‘global classroom’ (a term defined in this case as the world wide web of information, and also an institution’ s role to educate within a multinational, multicultural population). The second is a qualitative look into how educators discovered effective learning practices, for international students in particular, based upon a study that included educator interviews at one tertiary institute. Merging data from both studies indicated that incorporating digital learning through the now-familiar online spaces requires more dynamic, culturally responsive pedagogy. This research aims to provide some improved insight for all educators looking to answer this posed question. 
 
 
 

Anxiety in Classroom English Presentations: A Case Study in Korean Tertiary Educational Context

The purpose of this study is to examine Korean students’ anxiety in classroom presentations in tertiary educational context through classroom observation, self-reported questionnaire and semi-structured interview. In the stage of classroom observation, the potential responsivities relating with anxiety were explored through the analysis of fieldwork notes; the questionnaires were filled out by the students after they finished their presentations to unveil the students’ perceptions of their anxiety and the causes for such anxiety; the semi-structured interview was carried out to provide further evidence for the above findings. The research participants were twenty two students majoring in English education in a Korean national university. The research findings indicated that Korean students suffered different degree of anxiety in the course of classroom presentations; the major responsivities to anxiety included repeatedly occurring subconscious behaviors, silence, speech disruptions and slow rate of speaking and so forth. Concerning the causes arousing anxiety in classroom presentations, there were four major sources, consisting of negative attitude towards classroom presentations, preparation time, language proficiency, negative feedback from peers, while other factors like making mistakes, attention from audience, and teachers’ feedback were not the major source for students’ anxiety. These research findings should shed new light on classroom teaching for language teachers to improve their curriculum design to relieve students’ anxiety in classroom presentations.

Indonesia Master of Education Student’s Perceptions of Their Experience in Learning Tesol in the Tertiary Context in Australia

The aim of research study is to investigate the manner how experience in learning TESOL in tertiary context in Australia impacts on Indonesian M.Ed Students’ perception in the English language learning and in the English language teaching in their context. Although there have been many studies conducted with regard to the perceptions of international students with non-English backgrounds from Asian countries, there is no specific study yet conducted pertaining to how experience in learning TESOL in tertiary context in Australia impacts on Indonesian M.Ed Students’ perception in the English language learning and in the English language teaching in their context. The method used to collect data from the participants of the study consisting of eight of them is an individual semi-structured interview with openended questions and descriptive thematic analysis to analyze the data to generate the result of the study.

Digital Explanation as Assessment in University Science

Assessments in tertiary science subjects typically assess content knowledge, and there is current need to both develop and assess different forms of knowledge and skills, such as communications and digital literacies. A digital explanation is a multimodal artefact created by students to explain science to a specified audience, which is an alternate form of assessment that has potential to develop and assess these other important forms of knowledge and skills. This research draws from perspectives in multimodality, educational semiotics and science education to gain a better understanding of digital explanation as a form of assessment in university science. Data sources include digital artefacts (n = 42), task descriptions and rubrics and pre-/post-interviews (n = 21) with students who created them as a task in a university science subject. Analysis involved identifying the range of media resources used across the data set, seeking patterns in how multiple resources were used and exploring students’ perspectives on the task, including their design decisions. A more detailed look at artefacts from three different science learning contexts illustrates that students base their design decisions on the content knowledge being represented, their technical capabilities to generate them and how to engage the audience. Students enjoy this form of assessment and feel that the tasks allowed them to demonstrate different sorts of capabilities than are normally assessed in their subjects. Recommendations for instructors provide guidance for considering this sort of task in tertiary science contexts.

Multiple-Draft/Multiple-Party Feedback Practices in an EFL Tertiary Writing Course: Teachers’ and Students’ Perspectives

Based on various sources of data collection for a qualitative research project, the study reported in this paper set out to examine four teachers’ and sixteen students’ perceptions of a multiple-draft/multiple-party feedback approach to English as a Foreign Language (EFL) student writing. This approach had been implemented as a trial in a tertiary setting in Vietnam. Three sources of feedback at three phases were provided. These included (1) peer/group written and oral feedback on the students’ first drafts, (2) a teaching assistant’s written and oral feedback on their second drafts and (3) the lecturer’s written feedback on their final drafts. Content analysis of the data revealed that all participants valued this multiple feedback approach because of its practicality and the quality of the feedback which participants believed contributed to writing improvement. Based on the participants’ reactions, the study highlights the potential of multiple-draft/multiple-party feedback practices for improving English language writing in a tertiary context.

THE REPRESENTATION OF EXPERIENCE IN UNDERGRADUATE BUSINESS STUDENTS’ TEXTS: A FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF MULTIMODAL MEANING MAKING RESOURCES IN MARKETING TEXTS

From the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) standpoint, experiential meanings reflect our experience, perceptions, and consciousness. Research on experiential meaningmaking in tertiary contexts has traditionally focused on areas such as mathematics, journalism and media, science and computing, nursing, and history. This paper aims to investigate the experiential multimodal meanings in an undergraduate marketing course. The data comprised three written assignments and the tutor’s two model texts. The study employed a multidimensional approach by Alyousef (2013), which is framed by SFL (Halliday 2014) and O’Halloran’s (2005, 1998, 2008, 1999) multisemiotic framework for the analysis of semiotic codes in mathematics. The results showed that the experiential meanings in the students’ marketing plan texts were primarily construed through material processes and both explicit and implicit relational identifying processes. The findings indicated how mathematical symbolism is encoded in the multisemiotic texts, in the most economical manner, by using grammatical strategies of structural condensation. The results also noted the extent to which the different modes of meaning were integrated in the texts.

Academic socialization as the production and negotiation of social space

This article introduces the concept of academic social space as a useful construct to understand and interpret the academic language socialization of individuals in English second language academic spaces. Academic social space builds on the concepts of community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and production of space (Lefebvre, 1991). The article then reports on a study that adopted the notion of academic social space to examine the language socialization of one international student in a tertiary institute in New Zealand. Data about this case from various sources including diaries, interviews, class observations, field notes, institutional documents, and video/audio recordings of classroom interactions are presented. The analysis of findings from this study showed the student displayed three differential participation patterns in the three social spaces in which he was engaged. He presented himself as an active participant in his English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course, a silent participant in the first mainstream social space, and a changing silent-active participant respectively in the classroom and online domains of his second mainstream social space. The findings also showed that the concept of academic social space enables thick description (Geertz, 1973) about the language socialization experiences of additional language learners in tertiary contexts. Understanding the various aspects of social space enables researchers, educators, policy makers, and teachers to revisit their notion of space by considering it as an active, dynamic, and organic participant in the learning process of second language learners.

Making Progress in Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) Lessons: An Indonesian Tertiary Context

This paper outlines an attempt to discover students’ progress in both content and language skill in a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) lessons at an Indonesia’s higher education context. This is a part of a research conducted at Faculty of Science and Technology of Nusa Cendana University in Kupang, East Nusa Tenggara Province. This study employs mixed method approach with 20 participants attending by taking pre-test and post-test as well as joining a focus group interview particularly for 6 students. The tests were aimed at measuring the participants’ comprehension of English as the language of CLIL lesson. They were also used as the tool to evaluate students’ mastery of Mathematics as the content subject. Based on the post-test results, the findings showed that more students made significant progress in content subject in comparison to their achievement in language proficiency. Regarding the interview, the students admitted that their failure to made progress in both subjects were mainly caused by their inadequate level of English. This, therefore, led to rising anxiety among the students to complete the tests.

Barriers and facilitators to birth without epidural in a tertiary obstetric referral center: Perspectives of health care professionals and patients.

Epidural rates are high in tertiary obstetric referral centers, even though many patients in tertiary settings might not want or need epidural analgesia. Epidural rates are influenced by factors including labor support and routine medical intervention. This study aimed to identify barriers and facilitators to birth without epidural in a Canadian tertiary center, from the perspectives of doctors, nurses, and patients. In this qualitative exploratory study, individual, semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2016 with 5 doctors, 5 nurses, and 4 patients who intended to birth without epidural. Interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using inductive qualitative thematic analysis. Several contextual factors in the tertiary center facilitated or were barriers to birth without epidural. The following themes emerged: (1) differing perceptions of pain, (2) being ready for things to go wrong, (3) labor support is more labor intensive, and (4) having insufficient resources for birth without epidural. Reconciling patient birth goals with staff focus on patient safety is challenging in the tertiary context. Discrepancies between health care professional and patient attitudes about childbirth pain may influence decision-making about epidural use. Maintaining labor support skills is challenging for health care professionals who have limited exposure to birth without epidural. There is a need to allocate dedicated resources to better support birth without epidural. Specifically, support could be improved through the implementation of guidelines for assessment and management of labor pain, provision of a variety of pain management options, and labor support training for health care professionals.

Using WhatsApp in EFL Instruction with Saudi Arabian University Students

Messaging tools such as SMS are effective tools for foreign language learning. While many quasi-experimental studies confirm efficacy and positive student attitudes towards these types of tools, little is known about existing teaching practices that utilize messaging tools in tertiary contexts, or the attitudes of students or instructors towards them. This qualitative study investigates the use of WhatsApp, one popular messaging application, in teaching English as a Foreign Language (EFL) through examining the attitudes of Preparatory Year students and faculty members at a university in the central-north of Saudi Arabia. Thematic analysis of focus group interviews indicated that WhatsApp is used in EFL instruction for information exchange, language learning support, and language practice. This is achieved through teacher-directed learning, peer learning, and autonomous learning instructional strategies. Thematic analysis also identified the affordances and affective outcomes of using WhatsApp. Student and faculty attitudes towards WhatsApp were positive although some faculty members expressed reservations towards its use. It is argued that applications such as WhatsApp should be leveraged to encourage autonomous and peer learning, repositioning instructors as facilitators, and to develop learning communities. However, increasing the informal, anywhere-anytime learning supported by mobile learning must be tempered with guidelines for students regarding faculty contact hours and response times to allay faculty fears and encourage greater student autonomy.

Improving Grammatical Accuracy in Thai Learners' Writing : Comparing Direct and Indirect Written Corrective Feedback

Written corrective feedback (WCF) is widely used to point students to the grammatical errors in their written work and help reduce them. This paper reports a quasi-experimental study that compared the effectiveness of direct and indirect teacher WCF in a Thai context. One hundred and twenty Thai students at two public universities in southern Thailand were assigned to write argumentative essays within a treatment period; each treatment had 60 students. The feedback was given by four ESL/EFL lecturers at the two universities. Grammatical aspects focused on were tenses, subject-verb agreement, articles, singular/plural nouns, prepositions and adjectives/adverbs. Means for the number of errors were obtained at three points, namely, pretest, immediate posttest and delayed posttest. The findings revealed that time and WCF type as main effects showed differentiated results on all six grammatical aspects. Interaction effects between time and WCF were found for tenses and subject-verb agreement. For between-subjects effects, indirect WCF was more effective than direct WCF. For within-subjects effects, generally the differences in the mean values were significant between pretest and delayed posttest, but not between pretest and immediate posttest. These findings have implications for writing instruction and research in an ESL/EFL tertiary context.

Language learner autonomy in a tertiary context: Teachers’ beliefs and practices

This questionnaire study examined the beliefs, practices and constraints related to learner autonomy reported by 359 teachers (mainly expatriate) working on an English Preparatory Year Programme (P...

Learning to feel like a lawyer: law teachers, sessional teaching and emotional labour in legal education

ABSTRACTContemporary higher education, including legal education, incorporates complexities that were not identified even a decade ago. Law programs first moved from traditional content-focussed programs toward incorporating critique and legal skills. Many are now working toward recognising inclusion and student wellbeing as integral to law graduates’ professional identities and skillsets. Yet the professional dispositions law teachers require to teach in these environments are ostensibly at odds with traditional lawyering identities founded upon an ideal of rationality that actively disengaged from affect. This article draws on our teaching experience and data drawn from the Smart Casual project, which designed self-directed professional development modules for sessional law teachers, to identify the limits of a traditional teaching skillset in the contemporary Australian tertiary law teaching context. We argue that contemporary legal education demands considerable emotional labour and we present sample contexts which highlight the challenges law teachers face in doing what is expected of them. The article makes explicit the emotional labour that has often been implicit or unrecognised in the role of legal academics in general, and in particular, in the role of sessional legal academics.

EFFECTS OF LEARNERS’ LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY ON THEIR LANGUAGE LEARNING STRATEGIES

Language proficiency is one prominent factor that could affect the use of language learning strategies (LLSs) in learning English as a second language among the learners. The influence of language proficiency on the use of LLSs might differ as language learning has extended to the contexts of learning other than the learners’ differences. With that in view, this study seeks to examine various types of LLSs based on the language proficiency of 1699 learners in a Malaysia tertiary context. This study utilised the adapted version of Strategy Inventory for Language Learning (SILL, 1990) Findings revealed that high proficiency learners employed LLSs from high to medium level whereas average and low learners showed medium strategy use of all LLSs. One-way ANOVA tests further indicated that there were significant differences in the use of direct strategies based on their language proficiency. It was also found that language proficiency had a significant influence on the use of cognitive, compensation, social, metacognitive and affective strategies. Positive to mix variation of the high strategy use for individual items of SILL with significant differences were reported. Implications of this study were also discussed.