Earticle

Many in the EFL profession believe that they understand in advance what their learners’ needs are in regards to their EFL education. However, when this notion is questioned, and challenged by one’s own students, because of dissatisfaction with the teaching and learning input, one can end up with quite a predicament. In the ever-evolving field of EFL, there has been a move over the past 10 years towards considering what EFL learners need in the classroom through the use of needs assessment. Many have come to realize its necessity in order to meet and support students’ learning goals and objectives. Others, not knowing what it is and how to do one, find it difficult. In this article, the what, why, and how of needs assessment are addressed, and explored. In addition, examples of needs assessment and the research surrounding it, as well as questions for reflection are provided and discussed to reveal how EFL teachers can consider and incorporate student needs into the learning environment.

The present study explores the role of the mother tongue in the English language classroom through a survey conducted among 498 students and 10 teachers at one school in China. It aims to investigate (1) whether Chinese is still being used, and if yes, to what extent and for what purposes, (2) the attitudes of both teachers and students towards the use of Chinese, and (3) the actual and potential functions of Chinese in English classes. The results of this study indicate that Chinese was still quite extensively adopted in the English language classroom, and that both the teachers and the students responded positively to a reasonable use of the mother tongue, especially for pedagogical purposes. In addition, both similarities and disparities in opinions were found within and between the two parties of participants, in regards with their mutual use of Chinese and the functions of the mother tongue.

This paper explores some aspects of the relations between English literacy learning and the social situations in which it occurs. My aim is to illustrate the theoretical concepts of the New Literacy Studies (NLS) and Vygotskian approaches to language, and apply them to the field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). The focus is on one EFL undergraduate student who studied English in the School of Continuing Education at a university in Taiwan. In terms of methodology, I use interview transcripts, questionnaires, and field notes on observing student learning as the database. In consequence, the results reveal that for this student, learning as well as teaching is inevitably situated in the institutional contexts in Taiwan. The results also reveal that learning contexts and social networks appear to have a strong influence on the student’s EFL literacy learning. This in turn illuminates the importance of juxtaposing the theoretical concepts of the NLS and Vygotskian approaches to language and considering English literacy learning as a socially situated practice. Furthermore, the results suggest the importance of using multiple methods and the link between research and pedagogy. Finally, based upon the research findings, this paper makes some recommendations for EFL literacy pedagogy.

Topics in language textbooks provide frameworks in which to introduce language forms (target structures and skills). Over more than three decades, notional- functional approaches and communicative language learning approaches to language learning have underpinned the view that lesson topics should be aimed at providing meaningful contexts to introduce language forms. The globalization of English further requires the development of topics which better represent the multinational use of English in high school English textbooks. Thus, topic content plays an essential role in textbook development. In the present study, therefore, we will investigate the lesson topics that appear in high school English textbooks used in Japan, Korea and China. The textbooks in each of the three countries will be classified according to the same criterion, the Nippon Decimal Classification (NDC), which is used by almost all of the libraries in Japan. The results will be compared in order to identify their characteristics. Furthermore, we will investigate the forms (e.g., explanations, narratives, dialogues) of lessons and consider the relationship between the results of the content and the forms of the lessons. We will also consider topics by country in textbooks used in Japan, Korea and China at the end of the study.

Research into the teaching and learning of speaking in the ESL context is relatively neglected. There have been only a few studies that addressed the need to incorporate the development of strategic competence into the L2 oral classroom (e.g., Cohen, 1998; Dörnyei, 1995; Konishi & Tarone, 2004). This paper will report findings from a strategy interventionist study conducted in the secondary English oral classroom in Hong Kong. Based on a psycholinguistic model of speech processing, eight strategies were identified and introduced to the treatment class in the study. A data collection method comprising stimulated recall interviews and observations that aimed to investigate respectively the learning process (i.e., covert thoughts) and the learning product (i.e., overt speech) was employed. A comparison of the findings between the treatment class and the control class which was not exposed to any strategies-based instruction supports the view that not all strategies are equal and that some are more teachable than the others. Specifically, ‘Resourcing’ seems to function as a ‘bedrock strategy’ for young L2 speakers. Possible implications for strategy instruction are made with a view to enhancing the development of strategic competence in the L2 classroom.

From the ancient time of sundials and hour glasses to the modern day emphasis on time management skills, time has always been a key issue worthy of investigation by philosophers like Husserl, Heidegger and Derrida and more recently by business managers. However, relatively little attention has been paid by the academic community to include it in EFL classes. Dictionaries normally give only the meaning and not the context in which words and expressions occur. Therefore, students despite knowing the meaning, often find it difficult to use them appropriately. Thus it is essential to understand the concepts behind words and expressions. One way of doing this is to ‘ look for those contexts in corpora that are rich in knowledge about the concept, such as contexts that contain definitions or explanations, rather than contexts which simply contain an example of the term in use’ (Bowker & Pearson, 2002). This paper uses a corpus-based approach for the selection and prioritization of teaching time-related idiomatic expressions (both written and spoken) in this case, academic discourse, by drawing on the Hyland Corpus and Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English (MICASE). In the present research, a list of time related idiomatic expressions, based on an article in English Teaching FORUM (1996), Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms (2003) and Shehzad (forthcoming) was compiled and used as a reference. This inventory was used to investigate its usage in the academic corpora to provide a guideline to EAP teachers, material designers and text book writers. The major findings of the research show that academic spoken English uses relatively different idiomatic phrases from the written language. For instance, although there are more than three thousand entries for the word TIME, there is no expression like burn the midnight oil or till the cows come home, in MICASE. This helps in answering the question why foreign students sound like ‘books read aloud’. The paper concludes with some pedagogical ideas.