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Using Improvisational Exercises for Increasing Speaking and Listening Skills

Using Improvisational Exercises for Increasing Speaking and Listening Skills

| May 21, 2011

If language learners do not interact with the material they are learning, it is difficult for them to understand and integrate it. In classes where students are reluctant to speak, it is often helpful to integrate a stem or other structure to encourage this skill. Acting and Comedy improvisational exercises allow students of all abilities and interests to participate and make manifest grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation lessons in a fun and realistic way,right away.

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The Impact of Phonetic Instruction on Iranian Students’ Listening Ability Enhancement

The Impact of Phonetic Instruction on Iranian Students’ Listening Ability Enhancement

| May 21, 2011

The purpose of this study was to see if phonetic instruction followed by the learners’ checking of their pronunciation by the use of phonemic transcription would enhance Iranian students’ listening ability. Since random assignment was not possible, the nonequivalent group, pretest-posttest design was employed to study two classes of third grade high school students as control and experimental groups.

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Online and Face-to-face Peer Review:  Measures of Implementation ESL Writing Classes

Online and Face-to-face Peer Review: Measures of Implementation ESL Writing Classes

| May 21, 2011

This paper is an attempt based on the author’s experience and feedback as an ESL teacher teaching Writing for Academic Purposes at Universiti Putra Malaysia. This paper reviews the theoretical background behind peer review in both Face-to-Face and Online formats. With the advent of the cutting-edge Internet technology,practitioners have presented intriguing techniques to improve efficacy of ESL learning.

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The Effect of Task-Based Language Teaching on Developing Speaking Skills among the Palestinian Secondary EFL Students in Israel and Their Attitudes towards English

The Effect of Task-Based Language Teaching on Developing Speaking Skills among the Palestinian Secondary EFL Students in Israel and Their Attitudes towards English

| May 9, 2011

Tareq, Mitib Murad. (2009). The Effect of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) on Developing Speaking Skills among the Palestinian Secondary EFL Students in Israel and Their Attitudes towards English. Ph.D. Dissertation, Yarmouk University. (Supervisor: Professor Oqlah Smadi).

This objective of this study was to investigate the effect of a task-based language teaching program on developing the speaking skills of Palestinian secondary students and their attitudes towards English. The students were in the eleventh grade (second secondary grade) during a period of three months in which this study was conducted (JanuaryMarch) of the academic year 2008/2009.

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Creating and Sharing Writing iRubrics

Creating and Sharing Writing iRubrics

| April 21, 2011

Rubrics are scoring guides, consisting of specific pre-established performance criteria, used in evaluating student work. iRubric is a comprehensive rubric development, assessment, and sharing tool. It shows the major skills and subskills to be mastered, the different mastery levels, and marks allocated to each level. Rubrics can be collaboratively assessed with colleagues, classes and other individuals.

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The Impact of “Imagination of Students” in the Development of the Professional Identity of Four Japanese Teachers of English in Japanese Higher Education

The Impact of “Imagination of Students” in the Development of the Professional Identity of Four Japanese Teachers of English in Japanese Higher Education

| April 21, 2011

This study investigates how relatively new Japanese teachers of English in higher education in Japan develop their professional identity. Teachers’ professional identity has come to be seen as one of the most critical components in shaping classroom practices (Varghese, Morgan, Johnston & Johnson, 2005). Language teachers, who were previously viewed as technicians who applied appropriate pedagogical methodologies…

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The Impact of EFL Students’ Vocabulary Breadth of Knowledge on Literal Reading Comprehension

The Impact of EFL Students’ Vocabulary Breadth of Knowledge on Literal Reading Comprehension

| April 21, 2011

Second language reading is a challenging task for foreign language learners. The amount of vocabulary students store in their brains will assist them in understanding reading, especially when students’ first language is a nonalphabetic language. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether EFL students’ vocabulary breadth knowledge influences their literal reading comprehension.

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Examining the Vocabulary Levels of Indonesia’s English National Examination Texts

Examining the Vocabulary Levels of Indonesia’s English National Examination Texts

| April 21, 2011

This study is designed to create a corpus of junior high school (JHS) and senior high school (SHS) English National Examination (NE) texts used in Indonesia throughout four years of administration to form the basis of analysis. By means of corpus analysis, it sought to find out the vocabulary levels of junior and senior high school English NE texts (distribution among the K1 – K20 vocabulary levels…

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Understanding Your Students: An Investigation on Topics of Interest to Chinese EFL Graduate Student

Understanding Your Students: An Investigation on Topics of Interest to Chinese EFL Graduate Student

| April 21, 2011

This paper is an illustration of a tentative study conducted to investigate the areas and topics Chinese Non-English major graduate students are interested in speaking, writing and reading about. A total of 172 Chinese Non-English major graduate students participated in this study. Each of the participants was required to…

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Towards a Functional Lexicogrammatical Syllabus

Towards a Functional Lexicogrammatical Syllabus

| April 9, 2011

This paper documents the development and preliminary implementation of a functional-lexicogrammatical (FL) syllabus, and reports on an experiment conducted to test its effectiveness for increasing student awareness of lexicogrammatical (LG) patterns and grammatical word order. Following a communicative, social-semiotic view of language, and attempting to fill…

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