EFL classrooms in the new millennium : selected papers from the 40th FAAPI conference

The following themes are well represented in this collection: • Global citizenship, diversity, and interculturality • Multimodality: information literacy and multiliteracies • ICT in education • Latest trends in teaching EFL, ESP, and EAP • Distance education, blended learning, and autonomy Such topics illustrate the prism that ELT has become in our country and the different levels and situated narratives of expertise and lived experiences found across our country and beyond. ELT and EFL in the new millennium demand and generate not only new skills, new questions, new concerns, but also the opportunity for us to look at the past and reflect on the present in order to create a future collaboratively

A writerly trajectory: reflections on published classroom resources for learners of English and students of academic writing

The works submitted for this PhD by Public Works include three books, six book chapters and eight articles from peer-reviewed academic journals. Arising from my practice as a teacher and university lecturer in teaching English as a second/foreign language and academic literacies, the key theme is the production of classroom resources or approaches for promoting language development through the use of literary texts and metaphor, or for enhancing academic literacy in Higher Education. The works place students of English or academic writing, with diverse linguistic needs and cultural backgrounds, at the centre of the learning process. They embody research practices which apply theoretical insights from linguistics, education and literary studies; draw on pertinent data, such as corpora; or utilise action learning to investigate classroom problems and suggest solutions to them in the form of classroom resources or strategies. The works make a significant contribution to knowledge and practice by bringing together insights from different disciplinary paradigms, by focusing on neglected groups of learners or neglected linguistic skills, and by engaging with disciplinary and technological developments in order to devise original teaching resources and procedures. The impact of the works in the public domain is noted through book sales, citations and reviews. Drawing on a wide range of theoretical perspectives, the context statement accompanying the works provides both an account of their origin, writing and reception, and a critique of their limitations. It delineates my trajectory as the writer of the works, exploring the personal, disciplinary and social factors influencing my writing. It identifies the writing practices I have employed, conceptualises how I have developed a sense of audience, and investigates the values informing the works. Through the lens of a classroom practitioner, its key contribution is making more visible the complex, and often conflictual, process of writing classroom resources

Chinese learners and computer assisted language learning: a study of learning styles, learner attitudes and the effectiveness of CALL in Chinese higher education

E-leaming has become a staple diet in many learners’ academic lives in higher education institutions all around the world. This study did not follow the techno- centric standpoint and the comparative research design tradition in this field; instead, it focused on how learners’ learning styles and attitudes interact with the effectiveness of E-leaming implementation in the field of foreign language learning. The research was set in the author’s home institution—a comprehensive university in mainland China, where the first- and second-year undergraduate students who were studying a compulsory English course were surveyed from 2003 to 2004. For this course, the College of Foreign Languages developed an online computer-assisted language learning (CALL) environment—NCE Online which was the basis of this investigation. The author’s former colleagues helped organise the distribution and collection of 4 questionnaires and 9 groups of student interviews over one academic year. A total of 5258 participants completed the first questionnaire in 2003 while the numbers of participants who completed the other questions varied from around 200 to 700. To understand data from the learners in more depth, the language teachers and NCE Online developers were also surveyed with a questionnaire and individual interviews. The results showed that the learners had very positive attitudes towards the use of computer technologies in their study, and that there was an evident tendency to expect an increasing proportion of CALL elements as the students progressed in their English study. Despite these positive attitudes, what was equally clear was that there were still more students who preferred to have traditional classroom learning as their main learning mode, and they did not think of the E- leaming materials available as more effective than the traditional ones. Meanwhile, their teachers’ attitudes and the University’s policies also played an important role in influencing learners’ attitudes and actual behaviour toward the CALL system. In addition, the research revealed that Chinese learners have learning styles distinct from their peers in the west, which suggests that a CALL environment for Chinese learners should not follow blindly the much-advocated constructivist design model in the west. Reconsideration of both the ideals of foreign language teaching methodologies and E-leaming pedagogies, which originated mainly in Europe and Northern America, needs to take place before the design of a CALL system for Chinese learners. The implications of this research were therefore discussed to begin just such a rethinking of CALL implementations in Chinese higher education

Fl reading strategies for metaphor and word game interpretation in a non-specialized magazine: a case study

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente.O objetivo deste estudo é contribuir para a discussão sobre compreensão metafórica e investigar as estratégias usadas por leitores em língua estrangeira quando lêem linguagem metafórica em títulos de artigos genuínos de revistas na língua inglesa. Pesquisas na área de leitura focalizaram no conhecimento prévio que o leitor traz para o texto como sendo crucial para o processamento da informação (Afflerbach, 1990; Daneman, 1991; Fincher-Kiefer, Post, Greene & Voss, 1988; Just & Carpenter, 1987; Pritchard, 1990; Spiro & Myers, 1984). Outros teóricos focalizaram na formação da metáfora (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) e, mais recentemente, em como os leitores realmente processam metáforas (Steen, 1994; Vieira, 1999c). Este estudo se baseia na premissa de que leitores em língua estrangeira têm dificuldades em compreender jogos de palavras nos títulos de textos, o que por sua vez tem implicações na compreensão do texto que se segue. Desta forma, este estudo mostra as estratégias utilizadas por estes leitores de forma a compreender metáforas em títulos. Um enfoque qualitativo, etnográfico de estudo de caso foi utilizado, através do uso de métodos de triangulação. Os resultados mostraram que a metáfora não é nem acessada automaticamente nem possui um único significado. Os leitores têm dificuldade em observar significados metafóricos em títulos possivelmente devido a três variáveis principais: nível de proficiência dos leitores; diferenças culturais entre produtores e receptores de metáforas; e crenças dos leitores sobre o papel do especialista e do leitor na co-construção de significado. Os resultados indicam a necessidade de se incorporar, na sala de aula em língua estrangeira, estudos de gênero e conscientização da existência de metáforas