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Beyond Beliefs: Psycho-cognitive, Sociocultural and Emergent Ecological Approaches to Learner Perceptions in Foreign Language Acquisition
Perceptions and beliefs play a significant role in directing human behaviour. In the SLA field almost two decades of research has revealed how students’ beliefs have the potential to shape their cognitive and affective processes in the classroom and impact on their actions.
Testing Oral Language Proficiency of University EFL Students
The present study aimed at developing a series of objective criteria for measuring and scoring the oral proficiency of EFL students in moving toward a more objective mode for scoring the oral language proficiency. To achieve this purpose, eighty students from the University of Masjed Soleyman in Iran were selected based on their availability…
Language Policy Implementation: A Look at Teachers’ Perceptions
This study explores teachers’ perceptions of the language policy implementation in the Chinese tertiary context. With data collected from classroom observations and follow-up interviews, the findings revealed a discrepancy between policymakers’ intentions and teachers’ executions.
Investigation of the factors that cause language anxiety for ESL/EFL learners in learning speaking skills and the influence it casts on communication in the target language
Feelings of anxiety, apprehension and nervousness are commonly expressed by second/foreign language learners in learning to speak a second/foreign language. These feelings are considered to exert a potentially negative and detrimental effect on communication in the target language. The use of modern communicative language teaching approaches in the language classrooms and the wide-spread use of English Language have increased the demand to learn good communication skills but existence of such feelings in the learners may prevent them from achieving the desired goal.
Reading Strategy, Amount of Writing, Metacognition, Metamemory, and Apprehension as Predictors of English Written Proficiency
This study investigated whether reading strategy, amount of writing, metacognition, metamemory, and apprehension significantly predicts writing proficiency in English. The sample is composed of 159 college students taking up their English course. Five instruments were administered for each of the predictor variables of written proficiency.
The Necessities, Feasibilities and Principles for EFL Teachers to Build A Learner-oriented Mini-corpus for Practical Classroom Uses
Corpus linguistics is developing at such an amazing rate that established corpora of different genres and for different purposes are emerging rapidly in recent years. However, though the advantages of all these corpora to language teaching and learning are well acknowledged, they haven’t produced “tangible pedagogical results†(Nunn, 2005) in an EFL classroom context.
An Exploratory Study of the Interplay between Teachers’ Beliefs, Instructional Practices & Professional Development
Previous research has revealed the influential role of teachers’ beliefs in determining their professional behaviour. Teachers’ beliefs affect not only their teaching, but also filter new input, suggesting significant implications for the implementation of educational innovations and teacher development.
This study explores the interconnections between teachers’ beliefs, their instructional practices and professional development, examining the extent to which the introduction of an innovative teaching approach impacts teachers’ beliefs and behaviour. It focuses particularly on grammar instruction in the context of English teaching in secondary schools of the Maldives.
Competition or Cooperation; War or Peace? Language and Education in Singapore
This paper examines Singapore’s response to its perceived geographical constraints by an analysis of the state discourses of its key leaders and through an examination of the current language textbooks used in its schools. It discusses the key metaphors of statehood, that is, war, sports and the marketplace and juxtaposes these with the predominant aim of the language syllabus which is to promote cooperative living and social harmony.
Do Academic Reviewers Readily Accept a First-Person Voice?
The international EFL teaching community has a variety of communication needs including the need to share unique experience with fellow professionals internationally. This paper will examine the last (March 2008) quarterly issue of AEJ to examine the extent to which our editorial process allows a first-person voice in accepted papers.
A Comparison of the Effects of two Vocabulary Teaching Techniques
The present study was conducted to compare the impacts of two vocabulary teaching techniques (a contextualizing technique and a decontextualizing technique) on vocabulary learning of a low proficiency group of Iranian learners of English as a foreign language (N=50), who were divided into an experimental group and a control group.
