Using six-word stories to trigger EFL learners’ creative writing skills

There has been a growing volume of six-word stories and related literature available in recent decades. In only six words, the authors are able to tell amazing stories of various types, packed with strong emotions. Inspired by the succinct and thought-provoking language use of these stories, the author has used this valuable source of materials as prompts in promoting EFL learners’ creativity and language development, both at high school and tertiary levels in a semi-structured case study in Vietnam. The article illustrates the different language activities that have been used with two groups of EFL students and their related products. Implications are introduced for their applications in similar educational contexts

Recultured language in Indonesian English Language Teaching

While historically language and culture had been seen as separable, since Whorfianism they have commonly been viewed as intertwined. Today however, opposing political ideologies surprisingly work together to dissociate English language in ELT in Indonesia from its cultural background. They are the influence of globalist critical theory/political correctness which seeks not to oppressively impose Westernization, and the rise of nationalism, with its traditionalist education reemphasizing religion and the nation and disidentifying with Western values, fearing them a threat to local ones. The trend can be seen in the 2013 curriculum with its character-based curriculum, Indonesian teaching practice, and use of locally produced materials. Assessment using Purnell’s cultural competence model of widely used locally produced textbooks, Scaffolding (2008), Bright (2014), and Bahasa Inggris (2014), shows English in Indonesian ELT being stripped of liberal Anglo-American Western culture and values and recultured with Indonesian. The varieties of Englishes coming out of the process, Indonesian English and Islamic English, are not threatening to local language and culture as some have feared English is. Recultured English seems to put ELT at the service of nationalism, something English teaching may be caught off guard by. TESOL may prepare by becoming aware of traditionalist approaches to education

The use of TED and YOUTUBE in Extensive Listening Course: Exploring possibilities of autonomy learning

This study explores how extensive listening can utilize internet based-media, namely TED and YouTube. The study also examines the researcher’s reflection on his teaching practice by adopting the participatory action research framework. Participating in this study are EFL freshmen of a state university in Indonesia during the Extensive Listening course. The findings showcase several changes in the teaching-learning circumstances that affect the implementation of in-class activities. The students share that YouTube and TED help them enrich their English vocabulary. Further, they also state that the tasks create a more dynamic and less monotonous learning atmosphere. Overall, the use of YouTube and TED can be designed to be effective instructional media for Extensive Listening tasks

Social actors in an Intercultural Communication classroom: A discursive lens of intercultural education

This study focused on how teachers and students as the social actors in an Intercultural Communication (IC) classroom were represented discursively. A video recording transcript of IC classroom activities at a state University in Indonesia was selected as the data source. The data source was rigorously analysed through van Leeuwen’s Socio-semantic inventory of social actors framework (Van Leeuwen, 1996). The main findings show that social actors in IC classroom can be categorised into two main thematic representations, namely positive and negative ones. disclosed that Hamzah as the representative of classroom presenters was represented as victimised, oppressed, intimidated and minoritised actor. Hamzah’s Mathematics teacher was depicted as an intolerant, dehumanising, discriminatory and oppressing actor. Hamzah’s Social Sciences teacher was illustrated as a racial, stereotyping, dominant and provoking actor. The Intercultural Communication teacher was delineated as the actor endeavoring to encourage his students to be tolerant, critical, supportive and open-minded people. Hamzah’s classmates in IC classroom were characterised as sympathetic, supportive, friendly and reactionary actors

Teaching L2 writing through the use of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)

This study aims to describe the implementation of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) of the textual grammar of message (or textual meaning) to enhance students’ critical response to the text they created. For EFL learners, transferring their ideas into writing is already a difficult task and that to give a response to the text they read or write critically is even more challenging. This study intends to approach the teaching of writing by adopting Halliday’s idea of textual meaning and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL). The students were introduced to samples of hortatory texts and trained to analyze the thematic patterns and grammatical cohesive devices. It is hoped that by training them to understand textual grammar (including thematic progression and cohesion), students (as readers and writers) are able to build their critical thinking skill and evaluate their own works. After the training, students were assigned to produce a hortatory text and to do self-editing activity. The data of this study were the twenty students’ hortatory texts which was analyzed using a framework of textual meaning proposed by Butt (2000). The analysis of the students texts show that most students were able to self-edit their own writings and edit their peer’s writing using thematic progression and cohesive devices. Students adopted skills of using both strategies in creating cohesiveness in their writing. In addition, students also produced critical response to the topic given through its theme and thematic displayed in the text analysis

How vocabulary is learned

Vocabulary learning requires two basic conditions – repetition (quantity of meetings with words) and good quality mental processing of the meetings.  Other factors also affect vocabulary learning. For example, learners may differ greatly in their motivation to engage in learning, and words may differ greatly in their learning burden.  However, without quantity and quality of processing, learning cannot occur.  The greater the number of repetitions, the more likely learning is to occur.  The deeper and more thoughtful the quality of processing, the more likely learning is to occur.  This paper explains quantity and quality, and shows how teachers and learners can increase the quantity and quality of their processing of vocabulary, thus increasing their vocabulary size

A study of three Indonesian teachers’ participation in a US graduate program

Many research have focused on the identity construction of Asian teachers (see, among others, Chang, 2004; Cui, 2006; Ha & Que, 2006; Tang, 1997; and Tsui, 2007). Among all these, studies focusing on Indonesian teacher identity construction are rare. Thus, the study aimed at filling the gap. The study examined the identity development of three Indonesian English teachers navigating in an in-service program in the US. The study found that their identities varied with one subject experienced identity shift while others illustrate the case of identity as relatively permanent. Whereas previous studies on L2 teachers have focused primarily on the construction of teacher identity per se, the findings of the study indicated that the construction of the three Indonesian teacher identities were grounded in other identity options such as nonnative speaker, gender as well as learner identity.&nbsp

The adoption of “like” and “not like” usage by Saudi international students at a US University

Language change has been a very natural phenomenon throughout the history. Languages adapt, acquire, add, or ultimately quite sadly they extinct. In current study’s case, language user acquired, adapt, add features from the source if they spent time and interact with the native speakers of a language and L2 speaker while immersed in the target language culture and linguistic environment. Therefore, it is inevitable to ignore the native feature acquisition process. The current study primarily aimed to look into the adoption and usage of English particle like as a discourse or pragmatic marker by Saudi female students at an American university in the United States. The results show that the length of the participants stay in the US and the amount of interaction with the American English users have largely influenced their usage of loose language and gap-filler “like” in their spoken English

Promoting Inter-Asian Understanding through English: Cross-border Exchanges through an Asian Youth Forum

This paper discusses the importance of going beyond the classroom to provide EFL learners with out-of-class opportunities to use their language skills in real-world situations with same-age peers. It introduces the Asian Youth Forum (AYF), a unique series of international youth conferences designed by English language educators in Asia that aims at promoting cross-cultural awareness, communication skills, leadership and international understanding through the medium of English-as-a-global-language. The Asian Youth Forum is an annual 1-week event that brings together college-aged EFL students from across the Asian region. Participants typically comprise 30 - 80 young people from 10 - 15 countries such as Japan, Korea, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines. During this all-English event, students take part in a rich program of academic seminars, presentations and social events built around the themes of language, culture, global issues, and leadership. This paper outlines the aims and history of the Asian Youth Forum, describes its design and special features and reports on the program's outcomes in terms of student attitudes, language development, learner identity and international understanding. The author concludes by calling for further EFL youth exchanges of this type in other regions of the world

The pedagogy of teaching English to young learners: Implications for teacher education

EYL (English for Young Learners) is a global phenomenon, and yet research is laden with reports suggesting teachers’ difficulty in developing appropriate EYL pedagogy (e.g. Butler, 2015; Copland, Garton & Burns 2014; Emery, 2012; Garton, Copland & Burns, 2011; Le & Do, 2012; Zein, 2015, 2016a, 2016b). This chapter reports on a study that investigated the perspectives of twenty-six (26) teachers on the appropriate pedagogy needed to teach in the EYL classroom. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. The findings demonstrate that in the EYL classroom larger emphasis needs to be given to the young learners rather than the language. The findings show that developing a child-friendly pedagogy in the EYL classroom is of vital importance; it is at the core of EYL pedagogy. This brings implications for TESOL teacher education at pre-service and in-service levels in the sense that TESOL teacher educators need to design courses aimed to foster child-friendly pedagogy. The chapter specifically argues for TESOL teacher education to make stronger emphasis on child individual differences (IDs). This is necessary in order to equip teachers with appropriate working knowledge in second language acquisition (SLA) that is prerequisite to the development of EYL teaching expertise