“Check Your Face(Book) on Page…”: Unpacking the Pedagogical Potentialities of English Teachers' Wall Posts

This research aimed to show an increasingly digitized world where technology continued to revolutionize how human interactions were enacted, so the teachers must transcend educational boundaries to provide quality education that was responsive to the needs of the 21st-century society. This research examined the Facebook wall postings of selected English senior high school teachers in Metro Manila, Philippines. Using thematic analysis, the research investigated and analyzes these Facebook posts (wall posts) to identify whether teachers; (1) could potentially initiate communication (student-teacher interaction, in particular online/via Facebook) and (2) used such social network site for academic/instructional purposes. Main themes identify in the student-teacher interaction are gratitude and appreciation, longing, interest, and status, while those that are recorded in the teachers' wall posts are announcements, student activity documentation, and extra-curricular activities. The findings of this research help establish the importance of technology integration in the field of teaching and learning English as a second language. Moreover, the research is pivotal in the resurfacing of constructivism in education and the emergence of new communication norms brought about by technological innovations

Common Writing Problems and Writing Attitudes Among Freshman University Students in Online Learning Environments: an Exploratory Study

This paper is an exploratory study on college freshmen's writing problems in relation to their attitudes towards writing in online learning environments. The writing problems that were explored were the following, as identified by Yates and Kenkel (2002): a) Surface writing problems and b) Global writing problems. The problems were found in the essays of the participants. In conjunction with the writing problems that were identified, attitudes towards checking and revising one's work, towards writing, and towards receiving feedback on one's writing were also identified through the writing attitude scale adopted from Erkan and Saban (2011) and was re-worded to suit the Philippine college context. The results of the study revealed that the majority of the writing problems were surface problems, particularly those related to verbs, nouns, and prepositions. As for writing attitudes, the participants of the study generally manifested positive attitudes towards writing

A Literature Review on Remedial Reading Teachers: the Gaps in the Philippine Context

Remedial reading teachers are forerunners in elevating the reading achievement of students in schools. In the Philippines, there has been a continual enrichment of the reading skills of struggling readers through the initiatives of remedial reading teachers. However, the country does not have clear policies on the identities, roles, challenges, and needs of such teachers. This paper presents a review of the literature on remedial reading teachers. The results revealed that remedial reading teachers performed various roles in schools and that the cultivation of the roles and duties of remedial reading teachers rely so much on different factors, some of which are knowledge and the skills that they have, philosophical views in education and the whole school community, the rapport that remedial reading teachers have with their colleagues, the support of the administrators to their personal and career developments, and provisions of the local government. It was also evident in the review that literature and studies are scarce regarding remedial reading teachers in the Philippines, thus, suggesting to explore on the what's and the how's of remedial reading teachers in a hope of creating clear policies that will strengthen their identities and support their professional developments

Making Sense of Texts: a Meta-Analysis of College Students and Adults' Reading Strategies in a Hypermedia Environment

With the information influx from the hypermedia environment, queries have been made on the reading landscape, markedly related to college and adult readers, as they are perceived to have limited experience with the hypermedia environment. This environment calls on new literacies for a reader to cope with reading tasks inherent to its features. In this context, new challenges have been posed regarding online reading strategies of college and adult readers. With the dearth of literature about how college and adult readers navigate their way in their reading tasks in the hypermedia environment, this paper described their strategies in reading. The information gathered from the studies conducted before can contribute to the present plight of our readers who need to navigate their way through reading in a hypermedia environment. Eight studies that met the criteria on the variables of the study were included. The studies revealed the following reading strategies of college and adult readers: global, problem-solving, local, cognitive and metacognitive, and navigation strategies. This evidenced that print-based reading strategies are basics on which reading strategies in the hypermedia environment are built for strategic readers to be successful in their online reading tasks