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Nội dung
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‘Keep talking’: using music during small group discussions in EAP./ Clare Cunningham.
// ELT journal. 2014, Vol. 68, No. 2. 2014tr. 179-191. EAP tutors are increasingly aware of the issue of reticence in the classroom, especially during small group discussions. They note students’ reluctance to begin discussions in a quiet environment and observe short student contributions in group work. This study captured the perspectives of international postgraduate students studying on pre-sessional EAP programmes before pursuing Masters level studies in TESOL or Applied Linguistics, focusing on small group discussions and the use of background music during lessons, especially during those discussions. The findings indicated positive attitudes towards using background music in these settings, with more than half saying that it should or could be used during group discussions and almost two-thirds saying that they would adopt background music in future in their own language teaching classrooms. The findings of this exploratory study are useful for language teachers as well as tutors in other disciplines and with other age groups. Further research is required in order to consider tutors’ viewpoints and to study the actual effects of background music on group interaction during discussions in classrooms.
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A study into how high school students learn using narrative frames./ Takaaki Hiratsuka.
// ELT journal. 2014, Vol. 68, No. 2. 2014tr. 169-178 . In order to explore student learning experiences in English language classes, this study employed a qualitative data collection method known as narrative frames, which uses prompts to stimulate written expression of ideas. Data were collected through narrative frames on three different occasions from 36 second-year high school students in a team-taught EFL classroom in Japan, in both English and Japanese. After collecting the frames, individual interviews were conducted with two students from the class and their team teachers to further enquire about their experience, particularly with regard to the use of narrative frames. Findings suggest that the narrative frame technique proved to be a beneficial tool for improving learner autonomy. It facilitated the students becoming responsible for their learning in general, and encouraged them to become more serious about their learning of the English language. Methodological implications for the future use of narrative frames are provided.
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Getting to grips with noun groups./ Jill Musgrave, Jean Parkinson
// ELT journal. 2014, Vol. 68, No. 2. 2014tr. 145-154. Extended noun phrases are a feature of academic prose. An analysis of noun phrases in the writing of international students on an EAP course in New Zealand showed that their use of noun modifiers was atypical of academic writing in general. One example is that nouns as noun pre-modifiers were used relatively infrequently. Our purpose in this article is to present an approach to task development that can usefully guide teachers in developing their own complex noun phrase tasks. Our exemplar task aims to increase learners’ understanding and use of noun-noun phrases with repeated application to many different academic texts throughout a programme of study.
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Investigating teacher-supported peer assessment for EFL writing./ Huahui Zhao
// ELT journal. 2014, Vol. 68, No. 2. 2014tr. 155-168. Concerns over the quality of peer feedback and entrenched teacher-driven learning have resulted in the limited use of peer assessment in Chinese EFL writing instruction. This study sought to effectively implement peer assessment for EFL writing in China, by addressing learners’ concerns through tailor-made teacher intervention strategies. Eighteen English majors participated in peer assessment for nine writing tasks. Pre-intervention surveys elicited learners’ concerns over peer assessment, leading to the design of teacher-led support strategies. Post-task surveys examined learners’ satisfaction with teacher-supported peer assessment, and were supplemented by the assignment feedback data. The results show that a dynamic and continuous teacher support approach to peer assessment was reported which proved to substantially affect learners’ perceptions, and the nature and the perceived value of peer assessment respectively. This paper provides implications for EFL writing teachers regarding pedagogic motivation and strategies for the effective use of peer assessment.
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Learning English by walking down the street./ Chiou-lan Chern and Karen Dooley
// ELT journal. 2014, Vol. 68, No. 2. 2014.tr. 113-123. With internationalization and globalization, English has proliferated in urban spaces around the world. This creates new opportunities for EFL learning and teaching. An English literacy walk is one activity that can be used productively to capitalize on this potential. The activity has roots in long-established approaches to emergent literacy education for young children and pedagogic projects inspired by recent research on linguistic landscapes. Drawing on these traditions, teachers can target reading outcomes involving code, semantic, pragmatic, and critical knowledge and skills. We use the four resources model of literate practices to systematically map some of the potential of literacy walks in multilingual, multimodal linguistic landscapes. We suggest tasks and teacher questions that might be used for the explicit teaching of reading during and after literacy walks. Although grounded in Taipei, our ideas might be of interest to EFL teachers in other globalized cities around the world.
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