The use of and responses to a letter writing process to increase communicative competence in ESL learners : a thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Second Language Teaching at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

This thesis is a study of how a teacher can help learners to increase communicative competence through an interactive letter writing process. The study was triggered in response to a specific group of immigrants' apparent improvement in not only their written English, but also in their ability to communicate more confidently with native speakers after using the letter writing process as the consistent medium of instruction. The research seeks to describe and ascertain the effectiveness of the letter writing process to enable the learners to become more communicatively competent. In order to do this, it explores some of the inherent underlying conditions to which improvement in communicative competence is attributed, and how these are incorporated into the letter writing process. The research identifies the areas to which the learners attribute their improvement in their communicative language ability. It also outlines the conditions needed to set up this process, the strategies used, and the ways in which the letter writing is extended into an oral activity. The research is in the action research tradition with a qualitative orientation. The researcher focuses on letters written weekly by the teacher to the learners over a one-year language course. The following strategies were explored in relation to the learners' perception of their improvement in communicative competence and their actual improvement in their writing ability: the self disclosure of the teacher in the letter, the introduction of language used in everyday conversation in New Zealand, and the interaction with native English speaking conversation assistants. The results of the research suggest that the instructional material, the weekly letter, provided the authenticity, relevance, interest and enjoyment to enable learners to maintain high levels of motivation and increase the level of output and accuracy of their writing. Through analysis of the learners' letters, there is a significant increase in not only the length of the letters, but also an increase in sentence length, the use of idioms and colloquial language, and a decrease in tense error. Through an analysis of written questionnaires and taped interviews, learners clearly identify the letters as significantly contributing to not only an increase in their linguistic performance, but also to their increased cultural awareness and confidence with native English speakers. The research highlights the potency of teacher/learner interaction and invites further research into the influence of the teacher's personality and teaching style, as well as the effectiveness of the letter writing process in the hands of other teachers

Improving instructional effectiveness with computer‐mediated communication

This study explores the use of asynchronous Computer‐Mediated Communication (CMC) in the delivery of instructional content, and points up the interaction among learners, as well as between learners and instructors. The instructional content in the project described was available to learners online as Microsoft Word documents, with email being used for communicating within the student group. Many students, as well as some of the instructors, felt uncomfortable with the flexibility and openness that a CMC environment allowed. However, once familiar with this process of instruction and interaction, learners were able to work consistently at their own pace, and understand that instructors are interested in every individual learner's opinion and in the collective views of the group. It was evident that a CMC‐based instructional delivery system, when carefully planned, has the potential to facilitate that outcome, and to improve instructional effectiveness

Constructivism and mediated learning in designing English-as-a foreign-language instruction

Social interaction is the foundation of knowledge construction in a constructivist classroom. This project proposes a mediated instruction that is based on the theory of constructivism and social interaction to help new adult immigrants successfully achieve English competence and adapt quickly to the culture of the United States

Content-Based Approaches and Second Language Instruction

Integration of content-based instruction into an English curriculum based on communicative goals is suggested to better solve the problems of materials and syllabus design in Taiwan. Historical antecedents and the rationales for content-based instruction are reviewed to illustrate a modern perspective on the interwoven relationship between language and content learning. The project proposes a three-year content-based English program for Taiwan\u27s elementary and preschool students. A first year curriculum and model lessons for mathematics, science, social studies, and language arts are presented

Adaptive intelligent tutoring for teaching modern standard Arabic

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyThe aim of this PhD thesis is to develop a framework for adaptive intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) in the domain of Modern Standard Arabic language. This framework will comprise of a new approach to using a fuzzy inference mechanism and generic rules in guiding the learning process. In addition, the framework will demonstrate another contribution in which the system can be adapted to be used in the teaching of different languages. A prototype system will be developed to demonstrate these features. This system is targeted at adult English-speaking casual learners with no pre-knowledge of the Arabic language. It will consist of two parts: an ITS for learners to use and a teachers‘ tool for configuring and customising the teaching rules and artificial intelligence components among other configuration operations. The system also provides a diverse teaching-strategies‘ environment based on multiple instructional strategies. This approach is based on general rules that provide means to a reconfigurable prediction. The ITS determines the learner‘s learning characteristics using multiple fuzzy inferences. It has a reconfigurable design that can be altered by the teacher at runtime via a teacher-interface. A framework for an independent domain (i.e. pluggable-domain) for foreign language tutoring systems is introduced in this research. This approach allows the system to adapt to the teaching of a different language with little changes required. Such a feature has the advantages of reducing the time and cost required for building intelligent language tutoring systems. To evaluate the proposed system, two experiments are conducted with two versions of the software: the ITS and a cut down version with no artificial intelligence components. The learners used the ITS had shown an increase in scores between the post-test and the pre-test with learning gain of 35% compared to 25% of the learners from the cut down version

Effectiveness of Teaching English for Specific Purposes in LMS Moodle: Lecturers' Perspective

Learning management systems (LMS) Moodle presents a beneficial arrangement of features that support language learning in the electronic environment. The English lecturers' challenge is to obtain interaction and adaptability with their online classroom. The study is to find the effectiveness of teaching English in Moodle-based.  The semi-structured interviews and open-ended questioner were employed to recognize the complete information to the English lecturer's teaching experiences based on Moodle. This study determines that the effective teaching of English Moodle-based depends on both lecturer competences in pedagogy English and lecturer experience in the Moodle system. It covers a complete curriculum with high expectations, composes applicable model content, and constructs it more obtainable, provides specific and culturally applicable instruction, maintains practical approaches to explicit learning strategies, allows learnings to use the first language, prepares vocabulary in various contexts, and develops reading comprehension, and integrates communicative competence abilities. The language learning activities of the Moodle classroom are capable of fulfilling learning practice for complete progression participants with peculiar configuration, management, adjustments, and teaching approach. The English teaching course designer should organize and manage an expected course model of course-related activity, and it applied to the utilization of the syllabus or course information page. The essential aspect of interchangeable communication significantly reshapes language teaching pedagogy in the electronic ecosystem. The effective teaching of English Moodle-based can be achieved with teaching pedagogy's full capabilities and technicality in the Moodle system

Standing up for teaching: the 'crime' of striving for excellence

In recent years a proliferation of local and national teaching awards has occurred in many countries. The new language of excellence has led institutions and policy-makers to embrace teaching awards. Although these award schemes harbour competing and coexisting drivers and appeal to different stakeholders for different reasons, they have helped to raise the profile and importance of teaching in higher education. At the same time, the idea of recognising individuals as excellent teachers remains distasteful to many educators. Awards remain controversial as they compete with traditional ideals of egalitarianism which dominate the education profession. In the backdrop of lingering controversy, this short opinion paper reflects on the costs of standing up for teaching after applying for and successfully winning a National Award for Sustained Excellence in Teaching. Using an acronym it describes the CRIME of excellence and makes the case for teaching awards criteria to recognise critical forms of scholarship. While definitions of excellence will always be contestable it argues that teaching awards are not mutually exclusive from an individual ethos of striving for continuous improvement. The paper concludes that the education profession does a great disservice to the status of teaching if we shame and snipe away at those judged by peers as our best

Bayesian Agent in E-learning

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