The Correlation Between Xreading Time Spent and Reading Comprehension & Efl College Students’ Attitudes Towards Xreading

AbstractThis study aimed to identify the correlation between reading time in XReading and students’ academic reading comprehension and find out students’ attitudes toward XReading. A quantitative and qualitative approach were used to answer the problems. The participants of this study were first-year EFL college students who take part in extensive reading (ER) program with XReading as the assigned platform. The data were collected from the recorded time spent by students in XReading and their scores on a reading comprehension test. The test was adapted from a Reading Comprehension Test designed for advanced readers. The data were analyzed using Pearson Correlation and Linear Regression to determine how XReading contributes to reading comprehension. The results showed that reading time in XReading contributed to reading comprehension by about 10%, yet there was no significant correlation between the two variables. In addition, Likert Scale questionnaires and interviews were analyzed using a descriptive qualitative design to determine the students’ attitudes toward XReading. The results found that students have positive attitudes to XReading. Therefore, it could be concluded that ER practices using XReading can be implemented by providing and encouraging students to read more academic reading materials to develop academic comprehensio

The ‘native speaker’ frame: issues in theprofessional culture of a Japanese tertiary EFLprogram

This thesis provides an ethnographic investigation into the ways in which the ideology of native-speakerism operated unrecognized under the surface of a Japanese university EFL program. While the program appeared to be free of explicit expressions of native-speakerism, such as discrimination against teachers, the study found that the claims which were used to justify the practices of the program were underlain by implicitly native-speakerist assumptions based on the stereotyping and Othering of Japanese students and the Japanese education system. The study develops the concept of “the ‘native speaker’ frame” as a way of explaining how, even in cases where native-speakerist ideology appears to be absent, the dominant framing of a program may still be influenced by, and in turn may serve to propagate, native-speakerist ideology. The study further shows how the program utilized a particularly strict teaching methodology, which, along with a specific discourse of ‘professionalism’ and a covert program of reinforcement, resulted in the instructors on the program aligning their own psychological frames almost completely with the program. Finally, it highlights how instructors were able to enact ‘frame transformations’ through acts of cultural resistance which led, in some cases, to a challenging of the ‘native speaker’ framing of the program and changes in the practices of the program itself. This study provides a new perspective on debates around native-speakerism, which have recently tended to focus on explicitly discriminatory beliefs and actions. In contrast, this study shows how the ideology of native-speakerism can exist undetected and unrecognized in the framing and structures of ELT programs and professional practice, and suggests that ‘native speaker’ framing may lie at the heart of much, if not all, of the English language teaching profession

SFL in L2 Writing Teacher Education: A Case Study of an EFL Pre-service Teacher in Conceptualizing Grammar

Abstract SFL in L2 Writing Teacher Education: A Case STUDY of an EFL PRE-SERVICE Teacher IN CONCEPTUALIZING GRAMMAR English education globally has been challenged by an increasing need for academic English practices to support access to content area knowledge and scholarly exchanges. However, EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teachers often lack the linguistic and pedagogical knowledge of how academic texts work to construct meanings in specific disciplines and how to design effective academic literacy instruction accessible to all students. This study, therefore, is aimed at responding to the intensifying demand for academic literacy instruction in international contexts by investigating an EFL teacher’s participation in MATESOL program in North America informed in part by Halliday’s SFL (Systemic Functional Linguistics) and Martin’s genre theory. The study focuses on exploring how this teacher’s conceptions of grammar shifted, if at all, over the courses in the teacher education program and how the teacher’s classroom practice during the first year in her career reflect, if at all, the perspective of language learning. This study is informed by two main conceptions as the theoretical frameworks. First, Halliday and Martin’s social conception of language and language learning serves as the theoretical basis informing the pedagogical knowledge that the teacher develops. Second, a sociocultural approach to teachers’ knowledge development serves as a framework to understand how the teacher conceptualizes a more functional conception of language and language learning for academic literacy instruction in a sustained process of teacher learning with respect to the teacher’s whole lived experiences. This study uses an ethnographic method of data collection and analysis. The data were collected from multiple sources including field notes, instructional materials, audio tapes, email exchanges, interviews, textbooks, and course assignments. Data collection focused on documenting this teacher in conceptualizing of grammar over her participation in the teacher education program and over one year of teaching experience upon completion of her MATESOL program. In analyzing these data, this study involved coding and categorizing processes to generate patterns of themes with reference to the research questions. This study is expected to contribute to an effort of preparing teachers with the expertise of teaching academic literacy and development in international contexts by considering how local contexts shape their pedagogical knowledge development

Learning Korean as an Act of Self-creation: Narratives of Foreign English Teachers in South Korea

Why are some people more motivated to learn languages than others? A person’s motivation can be understood as a complex phenomenon, influenced by individual and contextual factors like identity and ideology. In the present study, I adopt this perspective on motivation to explore the language learning decisions of a group to which I belong: foreign English teachers in South Korea. Foreign English teachers reside in a context where the Korean language predominates. Yet, research has shown that many do not invest much in learning Korean, while others learn it extensively. This disparity makes foreign teachers a prime candidate for motivational study, particularly as they operate in a context shaped by language ideologies: the English language education industry of Korea. In this study, I employ a theoretical framework that relates self-development decisions to identities and value systems: Foucault’s ethical self-formation. I present analysis of the long-term language learning narratives of six foreign English teachers, some of whom invested extensive effort into Korean, some of whom did not. I attend to the ways they variously saw Korean as a means to develop themselves or did not. I examine individual differences in motivation in relation to differing identities, values and goals, all in relation to the Korean ethnolinguistic context. Results indicate that the desire to acquire Korean for meaningful self-development was the most compelling sort of motivation for participants. Social and economic motivations were less influential because, as English speakers, they can survive in Korea without learning Korean. Participants’ narratives illustrate the ways that various identities – professional, ethnic, linguistic, etc. – influenced their language learning and use decisions. I provide details of these influences, and outline implications for stakeholders in the English education industry

Oral Proficiency and Language Learning Strategies: A Preliminary Effort to Find Learner Internal Factors that Enhance Oral Proficiency of Second Language Learners

The purpose of this study was to test empirical sustainability of three major positions about the nature of internal linguistic input processing that is associated with the enhancement of second language learnings’ oral proficiency. These three positions are what may be called an implicit-only position, an explicit-only position, and a weak interface position, respectively. An implicit-only position asserts that input processing for oral proficiency is exclusively implicit. An explicit-only position asserts that it is exclusively explicit. A weak interface position asserts that the processing is mainly implicit even though explicit processing plays a limited but important role in oral proficiency enhancement. These three positions make distinct predictions about the relationship between oral proficiency and the use of two kinds of language learning strategies (i.e., cognitive strategies and functional-use strategies). An implicit-only position predicts that oral proficiency has zero correlation to cognitive strategies while it has a positive correlation to functional-use strategies. An explicit-only position predicts that oral proficiency has a positive correlation to both cognitive and functional-use strategies. A weak interface position predicts that oral proficiency has a slightly positive correlation to cognitive strategies while it has a positive correlation to functional-use strategies. By using these predictions as research hypotheses, this study tested the empirical sustainability of the three positions. The nature of internal linguistic input processing that is associated with the enhancement of oral proficiency could be best inferred based on a position that would be empirically verified by this hypothesis testing. This knowledge is mandatory to identify the internal learning process by which second language learning come to acquire oral proficiency. To test the hypotheses, 175 non-native English speaker subjects were selected by stratified random sampling from UTK (The University of Tennessee at Knoxville) international graduate students who lived in four UTK apartment complexes, and whose first language was Chinese, Korean, or Japanese. To measure the subjects’ use of the above two kinds of strategies, 31 items were selected from the Strategy Inventory for Language Learning, Version for English Speakers Learning a New Language (Oxford, 1990). To measure the subjects’ English oral proficiency, a 20-item oral proficiency scale was created for this study. These two tools comprised a questionnaire together with several demographic items. Data were collected by mail survey. As many as 124 subjects returned the questionnaire. Four subjects turned out not to belong to the population. The return rate was thus 72.5%. By factoring the respondents’ answers on the 31 strategy items using the principal axes method with the Varimax rotation, cognitive strategies and functional-use strategies were empirically defined. Cognitive strategies were defined as a combination of two strategy categories that emerged from the factor analysis (i.e., structural interest and transfer caution). Functional-use strategies were defined as a combination of three strategy categories that also emerged from the same analysis (i.e., idiom use, naturalistic exposure, and English for fun). The validity and the reliability of the oral proficiency scale were checked. Then, multiple R’s were computed between oral proficiency and each of these five categories. All the three functional-use strategy categories showed a medium correlation to oral proficiency (R’s between .564 and .622). The two cognitive strategy categories showed a small correlation to oral proficiency (R’s of .300 and .356). This result matched the prediction made by a weak interface position. It was concluded that the nature of internal linguistic input processing that was associated with the enhancement of the respondents’ oral proficiency was mainly implicit. At the same time, explicit learning of discrete grammatical items was concluded to play a limited but important role in the enhancement of the respondents’ English oral proficiency

Investigating the impact of including videos or still images in computer-based academic listening comprehension tests

Visual materials are central to second language listening (L2), yet their use in L2 listening assessment is very limited. Disagreement about the listening abilities that should be included in L2 listening construct and the absence of empirical evidence about the effects of visual materials on performance in L2 listening tests led to disagreement about their use in L2 listening tests. Moreover, previous research did not explore how test takers interact with visual materials other than video texts. The present research attempts to contribute to the existing literature by exploring test takers’ viewing patterns using eye-tracking technology with video and still photo texts during L2 academic listening tests. In addition, cued retrospective reports are employed to extract test takers’ perceptions about the two types of visual materials and shedding light on the underlying cognitive processes they employed. Mixed-research method based on triangulation design was used to investigate test takers’ (n = 30) performance in the video, still photo, and audio texts, in addition to recording their viewing patterns, and their reported perceptions about the visual materials. The results revealed that test takers’ performance in the video texts was superior to both still photos and audio texts, with statistically significant differences to audio texts. Cued retrospective report data showed higher helpful perceptions by test takers related to video texts with a strong correlation to their scores, while still photo texts were perceived with higher distractedness. Eye tracking data partially coincided with the rest of the results, with two out of three measures�Fixation counts and Total dwell time- found higher with video texts. Implications of the study are that visual materials, especially video texts, should be considered in L2 listening tests as they present better representations of the target language use domain, which requires reconsidering the current L2 listening construct

Evoking Visual Imagination in Teaching Writing: ESL Students\u27 Perspectives

This study examines the relationship between encouraging visual imagination and ESL (English as a Second Language) writing performance. It was designed as a onesemester case study of two groups: high-intermediate and intermediate ESL writers, using a series of pre-writing activities designed to stimulate visual imagination. As an investigation of imagination across different cultures and languages, this study is intended to shed new light on the role of visual imagination in ESL writing instruction. The data collected in this qualitative research study included four principal methods: 1) participants essay assignments exploring different writing topics throughout the 16-week semester; 2) participants\u27 reflection reports with one or two questions exploring their thought process during writing; 3) the researcher\u27s observation notebook with descriptions of her observations during class instruction; and 4) participants\u27 audiotaped interviews designed to explore their perspectives on the instruction in general, and the usefulness of the pre-writing exercises in particular. The data in this study was analyzed, first, by finding common themes; and second, by using cross-analysis of all viii codes from all data. In addition, the researcher used contextual analysis of the participants\u27 narratives and content analysis of their essays. The research findings show that participants in this study found pre-writing exercises emphasizing visual imagination very helpful in their writing process. The overwhelming majority of the participants expressed that they were able to visualize the writing topic during these exercises, and that these exercises provided them with more ideas to write about. The majority of participants also reflected on the relationship between their past or personal experience and their writing process, and used words \u27see\u27, \u27saw\u27, \u27something I see\u27, or \u27look\u27 when asked to describe this process. The participants\u27 perception that pre-writing exercises emphasizing visual imagination were helpful is supported by the rich content and overall improvement in their essay writing during the course of this 16-week intensive ESL writing course. In the absence of significant research in the area of ESL writing instruction and visual imagination, the findings of this study have important implications for the development of hypotheses which may be tested with other populations of ESL students. This may lead to better theories about the role of visual imagination in ESL writing instruction.\u2