Motivation and Beliefs in Distance Language Learning: The Case of English Learners at RTVU, an Open University in China

To date, research into the role of affective variables in language learning has been conducted almost exclusively with learners in the classroom. However, the steady increase in the numbers of distance language learners worldwide calls for the research agenda to be extended to include this group of learners, given the specific characteristics and demands that learning at a distance places on its participants. This article reports on motivation and beliefs in the distance learning and teaching of English as a foreign language (EFL) at Shantou Radio and TV University (SRTVU) in China, a strand of a wider study investigating affect which replicated Hurd’s (2006, 2007a, 2007b) study conducted with distance French learners at the Open University (OUUK). As indicated in the findings, interest in English was top of the list of motivating factors, while workload and assessment content/difficulty were identified as the most demotivating factors. Of all the reported ways to stay motivated, positive self-talk was the most popular. The study also reveals that the beliefs held by Chinese students about their ‘ought self’ do not reflect perceptions of their ‘actual self’ as distance language learners. The article concludes that matters such as course workload, assessment content/difficulty, and course design need to be re-evaluated in the light of the study’s findings, and that it is crucial to provide learner support in order to help reduce the gap between the ‘ought self’ and the ‘actual self’

TESOL initial teacher training and TESOL curriculum goals: making the connection

APEC countries represent , in TESOL terms, two very different groups. Firstly there are the English L1 countries (US, Canada, Australia, NZ) where the English proficiency of the majority can be taken for granted and where English needs to be taught only as a second language or additional language to people arriving in the countries from overseas. In the second group, the majority of APEC countries, English is a foreign language, and if a government feels it to be an important aspect of the wider curriculum, systems need to be established to provide English teaching to all pupils in all schools. These are very different TESOL environments and what is appropriate and helpful in one, is not necessarily of relevance to the other. The paper that follows focuses on the EFL context typical of the majority of APEC members, although at times it draws from literature deriving from the English native speaker members also

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

Facilitating academic words learning: a data-driven approach using a collocation consultation system built from open access research papers

It is essential and beneficial for ESP students to master collocations of a set of core academic words. Corpus analysis tools (e.g. concordancers) have been widely used in facilitating collocation learning, and promising results have been demonstrated in the literature. This paper presents a learner friendly collocation consultation system built from 50,000 open access research papers made available by CORE (https://core.ac.uk/). The research papers are grouped into four disciplines: Arts and Humanities, Physical Sciences, Life Sciences and Social Sciences. From these articles, useful syntactic-based word combinations (e.g., verb+noun, noun+noun, adjective+noun) are extracted, organized by syntactic patterns, sorted by frequency, and linked to their context sentences. Learners can search collocations and look up the usage of an academic word in any of these four disciplines by simply entering the word or selecting it from one of pre-compiled academic word lists. The paper will also show how the system was used in an initial study carried out with 15 international students studying computer science at University of Waikato, New Zealand

Learning English as a Foreign Language in an Online Interactive Environment: A Case Study in China

This case study is designed to examine Chinese university students’ English as a foreign language (EFL) learning in an online interactive context. Investigation focused on the students’ perceptions of and engagement in EFL learning that occurred in a technology-supported context. Informed by the sociocultural theory, four theoretical constructs: learner autonomy, interactive learning, Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and scaffolding, form the theoretical framework to investigate Chinese university students’ EFL learning in a Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) context. This theoretical model informs the adoption of a qualitative case study approach with statistical descriptions. A total of 154 Chinese university EFL students participated in the research. Data were collected via a questionnaire, focus groups, individual face-to-face interviews and online documents. Through data analysis, it revealed that Chinese university EFL students had positive perceptions of interactive online language learning, which promoted learner autonomy. Participants were confident about their abilities to find out appropriate learning materials and associated well-scaffolded instructional resources that were within their ZPDs. In the learning process, they enjoyed an increasing level of autonomy in language learning. They autonomously selected, organized and engaged digital resources, including learning materials and tasks as well as learning strategies, in their learning which were appropriate to language levels and catered for their learning needs. They showed the sign of good language learners with high degree of learner autonomy, who indicated a desire to continue their language learning in the future. The participants also regarded online space as a low-stress context for more interactive learning in an English as a foreign language context. Although the participants had developed some degree of learner autonomy via learning in the online mode, their autonomy in language learning, particularly for after-class online EFL learning, was still in development. There was a need for them to expand their language knowledge and skills development, particularly in the area of intercultural learning. Their selection and adoption of learning resources were also expected to improve to suit their current language abilities and their learning needs. Their understanding of and engagement in interactive learning were yet to be enhanced as well as they became more familiar with learning in this emerging context. Built on these findings, a tentative model of online EFL learning for facilitating learner autonomy is proposed to fulfil Chinese EFL students’ language learning needs in an online context, and help them to achieve better learning outcomes. It is envisaged that such a model is replicable to teaching and learning EFL in similar contexts

Expectations eclipsed in foreign language education: learners and educators on an ongoing journey / edited by Hülya Görür-Atabaş, Sharon Turner.

Between June 2-4, 2011 Sabancı University School of Languages welcomed colleagues from 21 different countries to a collaborative exploration of the challenging and inspiring journey of learners and educators in the field of language education.\ud \ud The conference provided an opportunity for all stakeholders to share their views on language education. Colleagues met with world-renowned experts and authors in the fields of education and psychology, faculty and administrators from various universities and institutions, teachers from secondary educational backgrounds and higher education, as well as learners whose voices are often not directly shared but usually reported.\ud \ud The conference name, Eclipsing Expectations, was inspired by two natural phenomena, a solar eclipse directly before the conference, and a lunar eclipse, immediately after. Learners and educators were hereby invited to join a journey to observe, learn and exchange ideas in orde

Exploring the effectiveness of ChatGPT-based feedback compared with teacher feedback and self-feedback: Evidence from Chinese to English translation

ChatGPT,a cutting-edge AI-powered Chatbot,can quickly generate responses on given commands. While it was reported that ChatGPT had the capacity to deliver useful feedback, it is still unclear about its effectiveness compared with conventional feedback approaches,such as teacher feedback (TF) and self-feedback (SF). To address this issue, this study compared the revised Chinese to English translation texts produced by Chinese Master of Translation and Interpretation (MTI) students,who learned English as a Second/Foreign Language (ESL/EFL), based on three feedback types (i.e., ChatGPT-based feedback, TF and SF). The data was analyzed using BLEU score to gauge the overall translation quality as well as Coh-Metrix to examine linguistic features across three dimensions: lexicon, syntax, and cohesion.The findings revealed that TF- and SF-guided translation texts surpassed those with ChatGPT-based feedback, as indicated by the BLEU score. In terms of linguistic features,ChatGPT-based feedback demonstrated superiority, particularly in enhancing lexical capability and referential cohesion in the translation texts. However, TF and SF proved more effective in developing syntax-related skills,as it addressed instances of incorrect usage of the passive voice. These diverse outcomes indicate ChatGPT's potential as a supplementary resource, complementing traditional teacher-led methods in translation practice