Trialing project-based learning in a new EAP ESP course: A collaborative reflective practice of three college English teachers

Currently in many Chinese universities, the traditional College English course is facing the risk of being ‘marginalized’, replaced or even removed, and many hours previously allocated to the course are now being taken by EAP or ESP. At X University in northern China, a curriculum reform as such is taking place, as a result of which a new course has been created called ‘xue ke’ English. Despite the fact that ‘xue ke’ means subject literally, the course designer has made it clear that subject content is not the target, nor is the course the same as EAP or ESP. This curriculum initiative, while possibly having been justified with a rationale of some kind (e.g. to meet with changing social and/or academic needs of students and/or institutions), this is posing a great challenge for, as well as considerable pressure on, a number of College English teachers who have taught this single course for almost their entire teaching career. In such a context, three teachers formed a peer support group in Semester One this year, to work collaboratively co-tackling the challenge, and they chose Project-Based Learning (PBL) for the new course. This presentation will report on the implementation of this project, including the overall designing, operational procedure, and the teachers’ reflections. Based on discussion, pre-agreement was reached on the purpose and manner of collaboration as offering peer support for more effective teaching and learning and fulfilling and pleasant professional development. A WeChat group was set up as the chief platform for messaging, idea-sharing, and resource-exchanging. Physical meetings were supplementary, with sound agenda but flexible time, and venues. Mosoteach cloud class (lan mo yun ban ke) was established as a tool for virtual learning, employed both in and after class. Discussions were held at the beginning of the semester which determined only brief outlines for PBL implementation and allowed space for everyone to autonomously explore in their own way. Constant further discussions followed, which generated a great deal of opportunities for peer learning and lesson plan modifications. A reflective journal, in a greater or lesser detailed manner, was also kept by each teacher to record the journey of the collaboration. At the end of the semester, it was commonly recognized that, although challenges existed, the collaboration was overall a success and they were all willing to continue with it and endeavor to refine it to be a more professional and productive approach

ESP For Ecotourism: Discourse Skills,Technology,And Collaboration For Job Contexts

This capstone’s primary aim was to design a companion instructional guide for teachers of English for Specific Purposes for ecotourism professionals in Mexico. It identified gaps left by traditional EFL courses that tend to lack strong connections between language instruction and real-world job requirements for English usage. It looked at curricular reform efforts in other world regions with the intention to innovate ESP instruction in Mexico. Findings include recommendations for student-centered curricula that incorporate multimodal learning activities and authentic contexts for tourism jobs. Multiliteracies pedagogy drove the creation of the instructional guide’s components, which provide support in conducting small-group projects to develop interactive discourse, online research, and digital design skills within communities of practice. The guide includes resources, materials, and instructions to conduct needs analysis, foster mutual support, build collaboration among stakeholders, facilitate situated practice with applied technology, and increase knowledge for cross-cultural communication

Metadiscourse analysis of digital interpersonal interactions in academic settings in Turkey

Rapid technological advances, efficiency and easy access have firmly established emailing as a vital medium of communication in the last decades. Nowadays, all around the world, particularly in educational settings, the medium is one of the most widely used modes of interaction between students and university lecturers. Despite their important role in academic life, very little is known about the metadiscursive characteristics of these e-messages and as far as the author is aware there is no study that has examined metadiscourse in request emails in Turkish. This study aims to contribute to filling in this gap by focusing on the following two research questions: (i) How many and what type of interpersonal metadiscourse markers are used in request emails sent by students to their lecturers? (ii) Where are they placed and how are they combined with other elements in the text? In order to answer these questions a corpus of unsolicited request e-mails in Turkish was compiled. The data collection started in January 2010 and continued until March 2018. A total of 353 request emails sent from university students to their lecturers were collected. The data were first transcribed in CLAN CHILDES format and analysed using the interpersonal model. The metadiscourse categories that aimed to involve readers in the email were identified and classified. Next, their places in the text were determined and described in detail. Findings of the study show that request emails include a wide array of multifunctional interpersonal metadiscourse markers which are intricately combined and employed by the writers to reach their aims. The results also showed that there is a close relation between the “weight of the request” and number of the interpersonal metadiscourse markers in request mails

Motivating Students to Talk: TED Conference in University-Based Chinese Language Classrooms

This paper presents an innovative teaching method that uses TED conference to stimulate and support learners of Chinese in improving their speaking skills. In non-target language countries, students are often reluctant to use Chinese in real life. This study overviews a case where TED conferences were integrated into a university-based Chinese language course in New Zealand. It also discusses the major findings emerging from implementing this innovative pedagogy as well as the recommendations for future research. While motivating students to use Chinese in public setting, the approach has also enhanced critical thinking skills and co-learning in language classrooms. This paper ends by providing food for thought on designing engaging pedagogy in building and sustaining a knowledge-sharing culture in advanced Chinese courses in universities

Motivating Students to Talk: TED Conference in University-Based Chinese Language Classrooms

This paper presents an innovative teaching method that uses TED conference to stimulate and support learners of Chinese in improving their speaking skills. In non-target language countries, students are often reluctant to use Chinese in real life. This study overviews a case where TED conferences were integrated into a university-based Chinese language course in New Zealand. It also discusses the major findings emerging from implementing this innovative pedagogy as well as the recommendations for future research. While motivating students to use Chinese in public setting, the approach has also enhanced critical thinking skills and co-learning in language classrooms. This paper ends by providing food for thought on designing engaging pedagogy in building and sustaining a knowledge-sharing culture in advanced Chinese courses in universities

Technological Applications for Language Teaching

This paper suggests resources for teaching language for general or specific purposes with web-based technology. The authors review the most widely spread technological terms, options, and pedagogical uses

Metadiscourse: What is it and where is it going?

Metadiscourse – the ways in which writers and speakers interact through their use of language with readers and listeners – is a widely used term in current discourse analysis, pragmatics and language teaching. This interest has grown up over the past 40 years driven by a dual purpose. The first is a desire to understand the relationship between language and its contexts of use. That is, how individuals use language to orient to and interpret particular communicative situations, and especially how they draw on their understandings of these to make their intended meanings clear to their interlocutors. The second is to employ this knowledge in the service of language and literacy education. But while many researchers and teachers find it to be a conceptually rich and analytically powerful idea, it is not without difficulties of definition, categorisation and analysis. In this paper I explore the strengths and shortcomings of the concept and map its influence and directions through a state of the art analysis of the main online academic databases and current published research

Developing academic oral skills using the video pitch as a learning strategy

This research reports on the success of an online oral task developed for English for Academic Purposes learners in a Brazilian university context, which required recording and submitting a short video pitch about the students’ own research. We discuss the contributions the task brought to improving oral academic skills, focusing on the videos and comments posted in the online forum, and the students’ self-evaluations. Our results indicate that issues such as identity, agency, and autonomy play an important role in the teaching and learning of EAP and deserve attention when designing materials for students in this specific context.